It is often everyday objects and events that hold the key to understanding imperial networks of trade, influence, and harm. Photography is a technology of exposure; cameras have produced images that evidence imperial processes of conquest, enduring violence and its quotidian manifestations, while sustaining imperialism’s extended reach. Exposure suggests physical encounters between bodies and environments, the moment of photographic capture, and the systems of knowledge these practices set into motion.

The 2027 iteration of the Photography Research Fellowship Program is grounded in a collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal (CCA) and the Paul Mellon Centre for the Studies in British Art (PMC) in London. The 2027 program foregrounds the CCA and PMC’s shared research commitments to the critical legacies of practices of imperial exposure. Applicants are encouraged to approach the CCA’s photography collection across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries as a space of experimentation and exploration. This offers the fellow an opportunity to treat the collection as a corpus of materials that articulate forms of exposure generated by imperialism as a photographic and physical enterprise.

The CCA’s photography collection comprises roughly 65,000 individual photographs, more than half of which were taken before 1900. Various techniques and formats are represented: mounted and unmounted prints on paper, cased photographs, negatives and positives on glass, stereographic prints, glass negatives, daguerreotypes, artist’s books, portfolios, and albums. Within the collection are thousands of photographs made across Asia, North and East Africa, Indigenous territories across what is now the North American West, Mexico, Peru, and elsewhere. Many of the photographs were taken by European photographers in colonial contexts, although not all were commissioned by colonial regimes. This extensive body of visual materials attest to how imperial photographic practices played a key role in violent territorial claims and expansion, through exposure, publication, and circulation of colonial documentation. Photographic mobility, of both the photographer and technologies, was an iterative practice that continuously generated a corpus of imperial material remains.

The 2027 Photography Research Fellowship Program offers the fellow the opportunity to engage in a multiday workshop, co-organized by the CCA and the PMC, that will host a small group of international researchers working on topics between imperialism and visual culture. The workshop will take place at the CCA during the fellow’s residency period and incorporate a public research roundtable.

In addition, the 2027 CCA-PMC Fellow will have the opportunity to deliver a public talk on their research at a later stage at the Paul Mellon Centre in London. They will also be encouraged to benefit from the research networks of the PMC, and will be welcome to submit an article or propose a feature resulting from their fellowship to British Art Studies, the open access journal co-published by the PMC and the Yale Center for British Art. More broadly, the fellow will be in dialogue with and have access to support from staff at both the CCA and PMC.

Photography Fellows are offered a residency at the CCA between June and August for a period of one to two months, with the goal of creating a community of researchers on site, particularly alongside our Research Fellowship Program, Indigenous-led Design Fellowship Program, and Doctoral Research Residency Program. Each Fellow will receive a monthly stipend of CAD 5,000, as well as additional financial support for travel expenses. Based on the scope of the proposed research project, the CCA’s curatorial committee will determine the duration of the residency in discussion with each candidate to best support their project. In addition to a public presentation of their work in progress, Photography Fellows are expected to participate in discussions, seminars, and workshops organized at the CCA, exchange with CCA staff, and engage with the local academic, artistic, and architectural community.

The Photography Research Fellow should be in residence for one to two months. The residency window is between 7 June to 30 July 2027, with prospective fellow required to accommodate a start date during the second or third week of June. The Photography Research Fellow is expected to be in residence at the CCA during their tenure and to be active participant in the summer events at the CCA. This harmonized fellowship period allows the fellows more in depth access to the CCA Collection as well as for exchanges across their research projects.

Applicants whose proposals centre photography as a central question of inquiry should apply exclusively to the Photography Fellowship Program. All other proposals that address visual media as forms of historical evidence and exploration should apply to the CCA Research Fellowship Program. If you are unsure whether to apply for the Photography Fellowship Program or our longstanding Research Fellowship Program, please reach out to studium@cca.qc.ca.

One fellowship is available for 2027. Applications (in English or French) must include:

• a proposal (750–1,000 words) addressing how the research project relates to the theme of imperial exposure, particularly through engagement with the CCA Collection

• an abstract of the research proposal (250 words)

• a brief project schedule (300 words) for a one- or two-month period of research, describing key milestones and materials in the CCA Collection

• a curriculum vitae

• a short biography (80–100 words)

• one representative publication (article or book chapter) or equivalent

• the names of two potential referees. Letters of recommendation are not required at the time of application and will only be requested in the case of shortlisted applicants.

Candidates for the 2027 Photography Research Fellowship Program are invited to submit an application online through the CCA application portal.

Deadline: 16 October 2026 at midnight (12am, HNE)

You can consult the application Guidelines and Terms for more details on the requirements.

The selection committee includes Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director, Research, CCA); Katie Addleman (Curator, Photography and New Media, CCA), Sria Chatterjee (Head of Research Initiatives, PMC), Monica Bravo (Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University), Deepali Dewan (Dan Misha Curator of Global South Asia, Royal Ontario Museum), and Steffen Siegel (Professor of the Theory and History of Photography Folkwang University of the Arts).

The selection committee will meet in November 2026 to select candidates. The results will be communicated in December 2026. Once granted for a specific year, the Photography Fellowship is non-renewable or transferable.

For questions regarding the program, please contact studium@cca.qc.ca.

For updates on the CCA Photography Fellowship Program, please subscribe to the CCA newsletter.

Sarah Churchill
Fairfield University
The Origins of Housing Crisis: Photography, Empire, and the Architecture of Precarity