Can architectural photography be as much about people as it is about the built environment? Typically, it is a genre that focuses on formalism: how a structure looks, or how it looks translated on to a two-dimensional surface. Architectural photographs are commonly collected and interpreted as records of the work of architects, planners, and builders; as the creative expressions of photographers; and as signs of societal shifts and values. The people who animate and intervene in pictured environments—communities, neighbours—are rarely discussed.

People appear infrequently in the photographs held in the CCA Collection. Yet, exploring the Collection with communities in mind frames a more human-centred approach to architectural photography. This exhibition presents seven ways of seeing community in architectural photographs: through the people and places of neighbourhoods in transformation; the physical environments of diaspora communities; the self-directed building of migrants; the social lives of peers and colleagues; the spaces of immediate family; the shared interiors of neighbours; and the public/private terrains of social housing. It asks how and for whom we design neighbourhoods today by considering how communities use the environments they inhabit and influence what is built, not built, demolished, and preserved.

Neighbours is part of a longer, ongoing investigation at the CCA into the use of photography and new media as a means of studying the built environment. This new chapter of the project aims to shift the conversation around architectural photography from form to use—from buildings to the communities whose needs and desires they emblematize, serve, and frustrate. Many of the photographs on view are new acquisitions signalling the CCA’s continued commitment to architecture as a communal endeavour.

Curator: Katie Addleman
Curatorial Assistant: Laura Aparicio Llorente
Research: Kioni Picou and Shaw Quan
Conservation: Émilie Demers with Audrey Lafond and Roxane Grandchamps
Design development: Sébastien Larivière and Anh Truong

The CCA gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.