Photographic objects are embedded in urban contestation, aesthetically charged by artists, reinserted into social histories, and mobilized to imagine a future city. Photogenic Montreal takes a question initially posed by heritage debates - what does photography preserve? - and creates a rich conversation about the agency of the human actors before and behind the camera, and of the medium itself.

Martha Langford is research chair and director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University and author of Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums. Johanne Sloan is professor of art history, Concordia University, and editor of Urban Enigmas: Montreal, Toronto, and the Problem of Comparing Cities.