Photography

The National Gallery of Canada’s photography collection is one of the world’s most comprehensive holdings of photographs and related materials. It represents the entire history of the medium, revealing and reinterpreting the most important stories of our past, present and future.

In 2015, a generous donation from Scotiabank supported and enhanced collecting and outreach activities. The Scotiabank Photography Program at the National Gallery of Canada embraces digital content creation, education, exhibitions, and the New Generation Photography Award, which recognizes outstanding work in photographic and lens-based arts by Canadians 35 and under. 

The Gallery has been actively collecting photographs since 1967, thanks to the prescience of then-Director Jean Sutherland Boggs and Curator of Photographs James Borcoman, who recognized photography’s growing importance to art history.

Now encompassing more than 50,000 photographs and 146,000 negatives, the collection contains significant holdings by some of photography’s key practitioners, including William Henry Fox Talbot, Charles Nègre, P.H. Emerson, Hill and Adamson, Frederick H. Evans, Josef Sudek, Walker Evans, Lisette Model, Leon Levinstein, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Lynne Cohen, Arnaud Maggs and Mark Ruwedel. Also represented is a fine collection of European and American daguerreotypes, and rare 19th-century war photographs.

The Gallery’s photography collection also comprises the complete holdings of the former Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP), spanning nearly sixty years, from the early 1950s to 2009. Originating in the National Film Board of Canada’s Still Photography Division, the CMCP collection features some of the best documentary and art photography ever produced by Canadian artists and photographers. It also includes an extensive collection of negatives and transparencies generated during government assignments documenting a critical period in the country’s history, from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.

As well, the Gallery’s photography holdings include photographs associated with photojournalism, such as the Photo League and 19th-century images of conflict from the Crimean War, the 1860 China War, the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. Recent donations of major collections of news photographs related to the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War have enhanced the collection’s representation of 20th-century conflict. This expansion of photojournalism, as well as images of a vernacular nature, encourages interdisciplinary research and scholarship into the intellectual history of the photographic image.

The National Gallery of Canada's photography collection is widely respected, as are its groundbreaking exhibitions and stellar publications, including Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science, Oscar G. Rejlander: Artist Photographer and Photography in Canada, 1960-2000.

Curatorial Team

Andrea Kunard.

Andrea Kunard
Senior Curator of Photographs
Andrea Kunard (PhD Queen’s University 2004) curates, researches and publishes on historical and contemporary Canadian photography.  Exhibitions include Shifting Sites (2000), Susan McEachern: Structures of Meaning (2004), Steeling the Gaze (2008), Scott McFarland: A Cultivated View (2009), Fred Herzog (2011), Clash: Conflict and Its Consequences (2012), Michel Campeau: Icons of Obsolescence (2013), Photography in Canada 1960-2000 (2017) and Moyra Davey: The Faithful (2020). Collaborations on exhibitions include those with Charles Hill on the historical photography component of Artists, Architects and Artisans: Canadian Art 1890-1918 (2013); with Terry Graff (Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton) on Jaret Belliveau: Dominion Street (2014); with Susan Gibson Garvey (former director of the Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax) on Marlene Creates — Places, Paths, and Pauses (2017); and with Sophie Hackett (Art Gallery of Ontario) and Urs Stahel (La Fondazione MAST, Bologna) on Anthropocene (2018), which showcased the photographs of Ed Burtynsky and the films of Jennifer Baichwal and Nick de Pencier.

Virtual exhibits include Photostories Canada which focuses on the National Film Board of Canada, Still Photography Division collection. Kunard has taught photo history, Canadian art and cultural theory at Carleton and Queen's University, and lectured on photography throughout Canada. Co-editor of The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada (McGill Queen’s U.P. 2008), she has also published articles on contemporary and historical photography in Photography: Crisis of History, Joan Fontcuberta, ed. (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), The Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era (Princeton Architectural Press: Ryerson Image Centre, 2013), National Gallery of Canada Review, (University of Toronto Press), The Journal of Canadian Art History, the International Journal of Canadian Studies, and Early Popular Visual Culture.

 

Euijung McGillis Assistant Curator, Photographs Collection

Euijung McGillis
Assistant Curator, Photographs Collection
Euijung McGillis first came to the National Gallery of Canada in 2015 as a practicum student in the Photographs Collection. She continued to work as a research assistant on PhotoLab2: Women Speaking Art (2017), an exhibition presented concurrently with Photography in Canada: 1960–2000. Before joining the Gallery as Assistant Curator of Photographs, she worked with the Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa Art Gallery, Korean Cultural Centre, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Kamloops Art Gallery, and Vancouver Art Gallery on various curatorial projects as a curator and educator.

Since joining the Gallery, McGillis has co-curated the installation Over the Rainbow: Works by LGBTQ2S+ Artists (2022) and the exhibition Movement: Expressive Bodies in Art (2022), while also working on many collaborative projects with other galleries nationwide.  In 2021, in collaboration with the Carleton University Art Gallery, she co-created and presented four spotlight videos on individual photographic works by artist Jin-me Yoon: (it is this/it is that) (2004), Rest (2012), Long View (2017), and Living Time (2019).

McGillis holds an M.A. in Art History from Carleton University, and specializes in contemporary Asian Art with an emphasis on Korean modernism.  She is currently working on a doctorate in Visual Culture from the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture (ICSLAC) at Carleton University.

 

Photo Blog

Explore the art of photography from the medium’s earliest days to cutting-edge contemporary techniques, through fascinating stories inspired by works in the national photography collection.

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Yamamoto Masao, # 280 (from the series A Box of Ku), 1987–2018 (printed in 1994), gelatin silver print with hand-applied ink, 11.1 x 17.3 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa © Yamamoto Masao, courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery. Photo: NGC

Yamamoto Masao, # 280 (from the series A Box of Ku), 1987–2018 (printed in 1994), gelatin silver print with hand-applied ink.

latt D. Babbitt, Niagara Falls from Prospect Point, Daguerreotype.

Viewing
Room

Take a closer look at a selection of historical photography from the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. Use the zoom feature to explore details not easily seen by the naked eye, and activate hotspots to learn more.

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Focus Series

The Focus Series is an ongoing partnership between Library and Archives Canada and the National Gallery of Canada, building on the rich collections of both institutions.

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Focus Series

Exhibitions and publications

1969-1989

1990-1999

2000-2009

2010-2019

2020-

Featured Content

Kan Azuma, Untitled, c.1973, from the series Erosion. Gelatin silver print
Exhibitions

A Place That Matters to Kan Azuma

During his decade-long stay in Canada, Japanese photographer Kan Azuma communicated his emotional response to the country's landscapes, cityscapes and people in his images.
March 27, 2024
Installation view of Strange Love exhibition, Urbanspace Gallery, Toronto, 2024
In the Spotlight

Photography and the Strange Love of the Sixties

These photographs express the drama of the 1960s, the propaganda battle of the Cold War, and a strange love of science and technologies as forms of economic, social, scientific and cultural advancement.
May 22, 2024
Séamus Gallagher, A Slippery Place 5, 2021
Exhibitions

Sobey Art Award 2023: Séamus Gallagher

Finalist Séamus Gallagher’s beguiling art draws our gaze closer into queerly uncanny worlds unburdened by traditional boundaries of gender, sexuality and societal expectations.
October 19, 2023

Find out more

Margaret De Patta: Shaping Light and Space / April 26, 2023
Michèle Pearson Clarke: Beyond Words / February 22, 2023
Jin-me Yoon’s Time is Nested  / December 19, 2022
Stephen Waddell and Visualizing the World  / October 29, 2020
A Pastor's Pastures: the Hatfield Rectory Album / January 17, 2020
Japan in Transition: 20th-Century Photography from Kimura to Morimura / October 9, 2019
Metaphors and imagination: Sophie Ristelhueber's "WB" series / September 5, 2019
Focus on the Collection: Yamamoto Masao / November 13, 2019
Life in Norfolk: Photographs by Peter Henry Emerson / August 23, 2019
A Speculative Process: Reading Jayce Salloum’s Mute Pictures / August 14, 2019
Focus on the Collection: Sammy Baloji / July 24, 2019
From Monochrome to Colour: Dave Heath's Photographs and Slide Tape Presentations / June 26, 2019
Solitude and Connection: Dave Heath's Universal Expression / March 13, 2019
People of New York: the photography of Leon Levinstein / January 25, 2019
History and Identity: Althea Thauberger's "L’arbre est dans ses feuilles" / October 19, 2018
Oscar Rejlander and the beginning of art photography / October 17, 2018
Human-altered Landscapes: Visions of the Anthropocene / September 26, 2018
Dark Side of the Moon: Forensic Analysis of Lewis M. Rutherfurd's "Moon" / August 21, 2018
Universal experiences and the aesthetic eye: images by Donald Buchanan / July 3, 2018
Candid but kind: the photographic world of Lisette Model / June 15, 2018
Work by one of the most important photographers of the 20th century is gifted to Canadian Photography Institute / January 24, 2018
Don’t Take My Kodachrome Away — A Review of Fred Herzog: Modern Color / October 17, 2017
Lady Aberdeen's Memorial Photobook to her Son: An Elegy in Visual Form / February 6, 2019
Unwinding Time: Clocks for Seeing at the Art Gallery of Alberta / March 1, 2017

Supported by

Scotiabank Photography Program

Collection