Portrait of a City: a century of American photography (28 July – 4 October 2026)

In summer 2026, Dulwich Picture Gallery will present a major new exhibition Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography, bringing together more than 100 landmark works by some of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. The exhibition will chart the dramatic evolution of American city life from the early 1900s to the century’s end, featuring images from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. The works are drawn exclusively from the DNB Saving Bank Foundation’s collection in Norway.

Showcasing 38 leading photographers of the modern era, Portrait of a City traces how photography has shaped our collective understanding of the American city. It demonstrates how rapid urban expansion catalysed the medium’s rise as a tool to document changing conditions, presenting a compelling visual account of a nation in motion.

The exhibition opens in the early 1900s, a moment when American cities expanded rapidly through mass immigration, industrial growth and new forms of labour, drawing photographers to sites of social and economic shift. Evolving skylines became symbols of change, captured in works such as Lewis Hine’s Riding the Ball High up on Empire State, 1930. At the same time, photographers like Alfred Stieglitz were redefining the medium’s artistic potential; his seminal image The Steerage, 1907, reveals the realities of labour and class with striking immediacy.

After the Wall Street Crash in 1929, photography took on an urgent social role, recording mass unemployment, poverty and migration. Iconic works, including Dorothea Lange’s White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933 and Margaret Bourke-White’s Augusta, Georgia, 1936 trace the profound impact of the Great Depression, bringing into sharp focus the harsh realities of the following years for people across the United States.

Here, the exhibition changes gear, tracing the rise of photographic modernism through artists such as Walker Evans, whose work helped secure photography’s place within the modern art world. Alongside this, the influence of the New York Photo League is represented through photographers including Weegee, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, Aaron Siskind, Rebecca Lepkoff and Lisette Model, whose socially engaged images document the rhythms and pressures of everyday urban life. Also presented are intimate portrayals of marginalised communities in New York, including Helen Levitt and Saul Leiter’s studies of street life and Roy DeCarava’s tender images of Black life in Harlem.

The exhibition then turns to artists documenting the dramatic physical changes reshaping American cities in the mid-20th century. Works by Berenice Abbott record the evolution of New York’s skyline, setting new architectural forms against the city’s historic fabric, while Arthur Leipzig’s Divers, East River, 1948 captures how peripheral urban spaces became sites of leisure and community.

Moving into the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition explores how photographers responded to a nation undergoing cultural and political transformation. Artists such as Ed Ruscha and Robert Adams examined the structures and systems of the built environment, while  Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander brought new immediacy to street photography. This section also presents powerful depictions of life on the margins, including Mary Ellen Mark’s The Damm Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, 1987, which confronts the realities of homelessness, and Peter Hujar’s Richie, 1985, offering an intimate insight into communities affected by the AIDS crisis.

Portrait of a City concludes with a presentation of Bruce Davidson’s renowned Subway series, 1980–85, whose vivid, unflinching photographs capture the diversity, individuality and raw immediacy of New York life, an enduring hallmark of the photographer’s career.

“American photography offers one of the most vivid and influential records of the modern city, and by bringing this remarkable collection to London, we invite audiences to reflect on how the rhythms, challenges and possibilities of urban life continue to echo through our own – a century of human stories told with extraordinary immediacy and invention,” says Alexander Moore, creative producer, Dulwich Picture Gallery and curator of the exhibition.

“These photographs capture the profound social and cultural changes that have shaped the modern American city,” adds Anders Bjørnsen, manager, Art & Culture, DNB Savings Bank Foundation. “We are pleased to share this important collection with new audiences through our collaboration with Dulwich Picture Gallery, and to highlight photography’s unique ability to tell human stories across time and place.”

The full list of photographers featured are: Berenice Abbott, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Ilse Bing, Margaret Bourke-White, Ted Croner, Imogen Cunningham, Bruce Davidson, Roy DeCarava, William Eggleston, Morris Engel, Walker Evans, Louis Faurer, Lee Friedlander, John Gutmann, Lewis Hine, Peter Hujar, André Kertész, William Klein, Dorothea Lange, Saul Leiter, Arthur Leipzig, Rebecca Lepkoff, Helen Levitt, Mary Ellen Mark, Elaine Mayes, Lisette Model, , Nicholas Nixon, Ruth Orkin, Ed Ruscha, Aaron Siskind, Herbert Snitzer, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand.

Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography is curated by Alexander Moore, Creative Producer, Dulwich Picture Gallery (Curator of Unearthed: Photography’s Roots, 2021). The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-colour publication. written and edited by Alexander Moore and Nils Ohlsen, Director, Lillehammer Art Museum, published by Dulwich Picture Gallery, June 2026.

For more information visit dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk