Starting from the early 1900s, a new exhibition documents the rapid expansion of urban life in the United States through the eyes of the most important photographers from the 20th century.

Dulwich Picture Gallery in London is hosting only its second-ever photography exhibition, and this one charts American cities as they shifted through decades of profound social, cultural, and economic change.

Titled Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography, the exhibition features photographers including Diane Arbus, Lewis Hine, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Mary Ellen Mark, Richard Avedon, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and many more. All of the works belong to the DNB Savings Bank Foundation collection.

The exhibition opens in the early 1900s, a moment when American cities expanded rapidly through mass immigration, industrial growth, and new forms of labor — drawing photographers to sites of social and economic shift.

After the Wall Street Crash in 1929, photography took on an urgent social role, recording mass unemployment, poverty, and migration. The exhibition then turns to artists documenting the dramatic physical changes reshaping American cities in the mid‑20th century.

Moving into the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition explores how photographers responded to a nation undergoing cultural and political transformation.

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.

Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography opens at Dulwich Picture Gallery July 28 – October 4, 2026. Presented in partnership with Savings Bank Foundation DNB and created in collaboration with Lillehammer Art Museum.