Description
In 1987, The Main: Portrait of a Neighborhood celebrated tolerance and the urban immigrant experience around Montreal’s Boulevard Saint Laurent. This 2025 reimagining investigates belonging, identity and memory in a globalized world.
In 1987 The Main: Portrait of a Neighborhood was published and quickly sold out. The critically acclaimed project celebrated the communities around Montreal’s Boulevard Saint Laurent and contributed to the eventual designation of “The Main” as a Canadian heritage landmark. In 2017 to celebrate the city’s 375th anniversary, the author was invited to re-imagine the original book. Returning to his former neighbourhood, his new book weaves old and new photographs with texts and archives, inviting us on a journey into his creative process to reflect on questions of home, identity, time, memory, and the evolving urban landscape, and asking: in a globalized world where people and cities are in constant movement, what happens to places and memories? Can we go home again?
Edward Hillel is a photographer and multidisciplinary artist exploring history, memory, and cities in flux. He has received several prestigious awards, including the German Critics Visual Arts Prize and the Golden Sheaf Film Award. His work is included in renowned collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Montréal). Hillel's photographs have appeared in major publications like Le Monde, Esquire, and Newsweek, reflecting his significant contribution to public space and social practice. Through his art, he engages with themes of urban identity and the evolving nature of communities.
Shirley Madill is executive director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. She was director/curator, Rodman Hall Art Centre; CEO, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; chief curator/director and VP, Art Gallery of Hamilton; and curator of contemporary art and photography, Winnipeg Art Gallery. Curator of important international exhibitions and author of numerous publications, Madill has held led the International Council of Museums Canada; Canadian Association of Art Museum Directors; Galleries Ontario; University and College Association of Canadian Art Galleries; and ArtsBuild Ontario. Prominent member of the International Association of Contemporary Art Curators and CiMAM, a global network of 700 art museum experts.
Michel Hardy-Vallée (PhD) is a Visiting Scholar at the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, an editorial manager, and an independent curator. His main research interests include the history of Canadian photography in the twentieth century, the photographic book, visual narration, interdisciplinary artistic practices, aesthetics, and the archive. He has contributed numerous book chapters on photographic narrative and graphic novels, and is a guest curator for the 2022 Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie. He advises on acquisitions by museums and private collections and teaches the history of photography.
