Pounding the Pavement. Montreal Street Photography

Capturing the Urban Experience

Montreal, April 16, 2025 – From April 18 to October 26, 2025, the McCord Stewart Museum is presenting the exhibition Pounding the Pavement: Montreal Street Photography. This project explores street photography as it has been practiced in Montreal from the 19th century to the present. Drawn primarily from the Museum’s Photography collection, the exhibition features thirty groups of images created by photographers from different backgrounds who have each chosen to record their experience of city life. What emerges is a history of Montreal – more specifically, of the way Montrealers have used the street. The approximately four hundred images occasionally reveal the city’s beauty but more often convey its complexity, grittiness, diversity and comedy.

Montreal Revealed by Street Photography

The thirty selections of photographs are organized according to six themes: “The Street as Spectacle,” “The Built Experience,” “Signs of Local Life,” “Collective Identities,” “Taking to the Streets” and “Events and Incidents.” Each theme focuses on a particular aspect of the city and the many people who have shaped and enlivened it, offering a plural reading of public space as seen through the photographers’ lenses. A tribute to the richness of the Museum’s Photography collection, the exhibition constitutes a history of Montreal street photography – the first ever.

“Montreal, like other major metropolises, has inspired an astonishing number of photographers intent on documenting their unique view of the city. The breadth of the exhibition certainly seems to suggest that the genre is particularly prevalent in Montreal – perhaps more so than in any other Canadian city,” observes the exhibition’s curator Zoë Tousignant, Curator, Photography, at the Museum.

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Multiple Viewpoints

The definition of street photography underlying this project is extremely broad, allowing for the inclusion of a wide variety of viewpoints and approaches. The exhibition features a number of photographers whose work is highly acclaimed and whose reputations are established, such as Bertrand Carrière, Clara Gutsche, Brian Merrett, Serge Clément and Gilbert Duclos. It also includes pictures by photographers who are less known, like Edith H. Mather, David W. Marvin, Alan B. Stone and John Taylor, who have nonetheless earned a place in the history of photography owing to the pertinence and aesthetic quality of their images. Through their work, these photographers offer a vividly personal view of the city that mirrors the course of their own life and their own urban experience. They represent the vanguard of those non-dominant voices whose visions and perspectives have helped create this singular chronicle of Montreal.

As Zoë Tousignant explains: “The starting point of the exhibition was the Museum’s own Photography collection, which encompasses several different types of practitioners, among them artists, amateurs and professionals. Many of the photographers featured will be unknown to even the most avid followers of photography history. Their relative obscurity does nothing to lessen their contribution to this history, however, nor to diminish the aesthetic quality of their work. These practitioners have been included because they have all, in a very personal and dedicated way, chosen to depict Montreal’s streets. I hope that the people visiting the exhibition will be as enthralled as I have been with the work done here.”

As well as the thirty groups of selected works, the exhibition includes a mural composed of twenty-four photographs produced during a community engagement project undertaken by the Museum in close collaboration with the Montreal organization L’Itinéraire and six of its magazine’s vendors, who took part in a series of workshops led by artist and mediator Bertrand Carrière. Their images offer an authentic vision of life as experienced on the street.

The exhibition concludes with a 24-minute film by artist Vincent Lafrance. It consists of interviews with four of the photographers included in the exhibition – Serge Clément, Marik Boudreau, Burt Covit and Martin Akwiranoron Loft – together with two photographers who represent new approaches to the practice – Liv Mann-Tremblay and Daniel Cross – thus giving a voice to those behind the pictures.

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Looking at Montreal

A leaflet accompanying the exhibition invites families to have fun observing and discussing various aspects of city life. This free activity is aimed at children from 6 to 12.

A Round Table on the Famous Duclos Affair

A second mural composed of newspaper cuttings recounts the famous “Affaire Duclos,” which focused on image rights in the public space. Finally decided by the Supreme Court of Canada, this case changed the course of street photography in Quebec. A round table on the impact of the Duclos Affair on street photography as practiced today will be held at the Museum on April 24 at 6 p.m.

“In keeping with the McCord Stewart Museum’s mission to tell the story of Montreal and with its desire to highlight unique viewpoints, Pounding the Pavement: Montreal Street Photography offers an original take on the city’s urban development and the habits of its residents. Bringing together thirty groups of works drawn mainly from the Museum’s remarkable collection, along with a selection of photographs taken by vendors of the magazine L’Itinéraire, the exhibition reflects the different roles played by our streets,boulevards and parks. Representing them variously as places of protest, playgrounds and spaces for the affirmation of identity or for celebration, the works on view paint the portrait of a city in a state of perpetual effervescence. We are grateful to Power Corporation of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, Royal Photo and Fugues for their contributions to the project,” says Anne Eschapasse, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Publication

The exhibition Pounding the Pavement: Montreal Street Photography is accompanied by a similarly titled book with texts by Zoë Tousignant, who also served as its artistic director, and graphic design by the Wedge agency. Following the same thematic model as the exhibition, the book explores the thirty selections of work via one hundred and twenty images. It highlights street photography’s role as a tool for documenting some of the stories that have shaped the metropolis from the 19th century to today.

Publisher: McCord Stewart Museum
Texts: Zoë Tousignant
Graphic design: Wedge
198 pp., bound, available in separate English and French versions
CAN $35
On sale at the Museum Boutique and in bookstores
ISBN: 978-1-7389247-6-9 (ENG) – 978-1-7389247-6-9 (FR)

Curatorial and Production Team

An exhibition produced by the McCord Stewart Museum

Curatorship: Zoë Tousignant, Curator, Photography
Project management: Caroline Truchon, Senior Project Manager
Exhibition installation and design: Principal

This project has been made possible in part by the Documentary Heritage Communities Program of Library and Archives Canada.

Activities Related to the Exhibition

• • Round Table: Street Photography since the Duclos Affair
    Wednesday, April 24, 2025, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. – At the Museum – Free
    On April 9, 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the publication of a photograph by Gilbert Duclos depicting a young woman sitting on a Montreal sidewalk had infringed the subject’s right to her image. This decision, which concluded a ten-year legal battle, would forever change street photography in Quebec. At this round table, Gilbert Duclos himself will reflect on the Duclos Affair and its impact. He will be joined by other photographers and specialists to discuss the evolution of street photography in Montreal since 1998 and to examine a number of questions: How has the public’s attitude to photographers changed? Is consent important? What impact has social media had on the practice of taking photos in public?
    Activity in French. Space is limited, reservation required
  • 5 to 9 at the Museum – Reclaim the Street
    Friday, June 13, 2025, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. – Museum Alley – Paid activity
  • Film screening: A Close-up of Three Photographers
    Sunday, September 28, 2025, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. – At the Museum – Free – As part of the Journées de la culture
  • Family workshop: Looking After My City
    Every Saturday, from April 19 to October 25, from 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. – At the Museum – Free

Photography Contest

The Museum invites photography lovers to take part in its Street Photography – Capturing Montreal contest. Between June 13 and July 12, 2025, participants are being asked to take inspiration from the photographs included in Pounding the Pavement: Montreal Street Photography to capture their own authentic Montreal moment. The winners of the Jury Award and the Audience Award will receive a number of prizes offered by the Museum, Royal Photo and FujiFilm Canada.

Pounding the Pavement: An Eco-design Approach

Environmentally aware and convinced that museums can play a part in the transition to a more sustainable future, the McCord Stewart Museum has set itself the goal of minimizing the amount of waste generated by its exhibitions. During the conception and production of the exhibition Pounding the Pavement: Montreal Street Photography, various eco-design strategies were adopted aimed at reducing its environmental impact, including the reuse of existing display cases, audiovisual equipment, light boxes, display walls and frames, and the use of Green Seal certified paint. Efforts have also been made to reduce the environmental impact of the publication accompanying the exhibition: the book was designed and printed locally on FSC-certified paper using vegetable inks, and the print run has been kept low.

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Press Release PDF
Press Release WORD

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Object photographs
Exhibition Views