Blacktop Eye
In Ottawa, the National Gallery of Canada embarks us on a photographic journey where the street reveals itself as an intimate stage, and every sidewalk as the theatre of an unspoken drama.
By Guénola Pellen
Drawn from the Gallery’s collection, “Camera and the City” unfolds in three sections. The first explores the city as movement and theatre. Ming Smith places two women in ruffled bonnets in 1976 New York, upright and unruffled before the Regal Shoes sign. Their stubborn composure cuts sharply against the commotion one senses just beyond the frame.
Fred Herzog captures that commotion head-on. In 1968, a man with a bandaged arm and a bloodied chin swathed in gauze hails a cab, cigarette in hand, on a street ablaze with neon. Behind him, a gloved woman in a hat waits, unmoved. The whole unruly vitality of the street lives in that contrast.
The section devoted to the city as community reveals more intimate bonds. Around 1970, Leon Levinstein catches a father bent over his child, pacifier at the lips, in a clasp so tight the entire street falls away. The coarse grain of the gelatin silver print heightens this almost tactile closeness.
James Van Der Zee brings the journey to a majestic close. West 127th Street, 1932: a couple in raccoon fur coats poses before their Cadillac, backs turned to Harlem. The image embodies the exhibition’s third thread — the city as idea — where the street becomes the stage for a deliberate, self-fashioned assertion.
Around 1965, Kwame Brathwaite photographs Deedee in a pink convertible, surrounded by a cluster of children and beaming faces during Garvey Day in Harlem. The image sets the tone for the exhibition: the city is not merely crossed — it is inhabited, celebrated, claimed by those who bring it to life.
“Camera and the City” is on show at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, until March 15, 2026.
