Photography Research Fellowship Program

Canadian Centre for Architecture and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Location: Montréal, Canada, with a later public talk in London, UK
Residency period: 7 June–30 July 2027
Duration: One or two months
Number of fellowships: One
Stipend: CAD 5,000 per month
Additional support: Travel expenses
Application deadline: 16 October 2026 at midnight HNE
Application languages: English or French
Results announced: December 2026

The 2027 Photography Research Fellowship Program is a collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London.

Titled Imperial Exposure, the programme examines the role of photography in recording, producing and extending imperial networks of trade, influence and harm.

Everyday objects and events can provide crucial insights into imperial systems. As a technology of exposure, photography has produced images documenting conquest, enduring violence and its everyday manifestations while contributing to imperialism’s extended reach.

Exposure can describe physical encounters between bodies and environments, the moment of photographic capture, and the systems of knowledge set into motion through these practices.

Research Theme

The 2027 programme reflects the CCA and PMC’s shared commitment to examining the critical legacies of imperial exposure.

Applicants are invited to approach the CCA’s nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first-century photography collection as a space for experimentation and exploration. The selected Fellow will investigate the collection as a body of material articulating forms of exposure generated by imperialism as both a photographic and physical enterprise.

Applicants whose proposals centre photography as the primary subject of inquiry should apply to the Photography Research Fellowship Program. Projects using visual media principally as historical evidence or a form of exploration are more suited to the CCA Research Fellowship Program.

The CCA Photography Collection

The CCA’s photography collection comprises approximately 65,000 individual photographs, more than half of which were created before 1900.

The collection encompasses:

• Mounted and unmounted prints on paper;
• Cased photographs;
• Glass negatives and positives;
• Stereographic prints;
• Daguerreotypes;
• Artists’ books;
• Portfolios; and
• Albums.

It includes thousands of photographs produced across Asia, North and East Africa, Indigenous territories across what is now the western United States and Canada, Mexico, Peru and elsewhere.

Many were made by European photographers in colonial contexts, although they were not all commissioned directly by colonial regimes. Together, these materials demonstrate how imperial photographic practices contributed to violent territorial claims and expansion through colonial documentation’s exposure, publication and circulation.

About the Fellowship

The Photography Research Fellow will undertake a residential research period of one or two months at the CCA.

The residency must take place between 7 June and 30 July 2027, with the Fellow expected to begin during the second or third week of June. The precise duration will be determined by the CCA’s curatorial committee in consultation with the selected candidate and according to the scope of the proposed research.

The coordinated summer residency period will allow the Photography Research Fellow to work alongside participants in the CCA Research Fellowship Program, Indigenous-led Design Fellowship Program and Doctoral Research Residency Program.

The Fellow must remain in residence at the CCA throughout their appointment and participate actively in its summer programme.

Programme Activities

The Fellow will:

• Conduct sustained research using the CCA Collection;
• Participate in discussions, seminars and workshops organised by the CCA;
• Exchange knowledge with CCA staff;
• Engage with Montréal’s academic, artistic and architectural communities;
• Present their work in progress publicly; and
• Participate in a multi-day workshop co-organised by the CCA and PMC.

The workshop will bring together a small international group of researchers working across imperialism and visual culture. It will take place at the CCA during the residency and include a public research roundtable.

At a later stage, the Fellow will have the opportunity to deliver a public talk at the Paul Mellon Centre in London and engage with the PMC’s research networks.

They will also be invited to submit an article or propose a feature arising from the fellowship to British Art Studies, the open-access journal co-published by the Paul Mellon Centre and the Yale Center for British Art.

Selection

The selection committee comprises:

• 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 Mishra 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 committee will meet in November 2026, with results communicated in December 2026.

The fellowship is awarded for a specific year and cannot be renewed or transferred.