© Dulwich Picture Gallery
© Dulwich Picture Gallery
Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography
28 July 2026 to 4 October 2026
Critic score
34 photographers trace 100 years of American urban life — from immigration and industry to protest and counterculture — with works by Arbus, Lange, Evans and Winogrand.
From Dulwich Picture Gallery
The exhibition explores one hundred years of American urban life through the people who lived, worked, and moved through its streets. Featuring works by 34 influential photographers from 1907 to 2012, the exhibition traces how photography evolved alongside the modern city, capturing individuals and communities shaped by and shaping their environments. Set in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, the photographs reveal cities as dynamic stages for social change....
Read more at Dulwich Picture Gallery →Critic Reviews (2)
TimeOut
Alice Saville
Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography
"Ultimately, there's a slightly overwhelming quality to this exhibition: the walls are covered in potted biographies, in who's who of US photography, many of them represented by just one or two images. It's telling so many stories at once. But that means that everyone who visits will find something to delight in, as they pull out faces from a crowd of varied, jostling, unsettling perspectives on American life."
Read full review →The Guardian
Charlotte Jansen
Master photographers capture the US cityscape in all its grime, grit and glory
"There is a work of achingly simple genius by Roy DeCarava. Hallway is a photograph of an empty corridor in a tenement building in Harlem, much like the one the artist grew up in. It’s lit dimly by a single lightbulb, almost entirely swallowed by shadows, as the lines of the walls draw your eye in and down the space."
Read full review →Visit
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