The Collection

The Collection

Historical photographs by such seminal figures as Eugène Atget, Brassaï, Andreas Feininger, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, and Edward Weston join works by contemporary artists including Edward Burtynsky, Clara Gutsche, Ruth Kaplan, Arnaud Maggs, and Gabor Szilasi. To more fully represent the working methods of photographers and news agencies, the RIC has in recent years acquired a number of large archival collections, including the Black Star collection of press photography, the Rudolph P. Bratty Family Collection of Canadian subject matter from the New York Times Photo Archive, and several individual artist archives. Other highlights include a complete run of unbound issues of the popular picture magazine Life, an important contextual complement for the RIC’s photojournalistic holdings, as well as nearly 3,000 19th and early-20th-century stereographic objects from the Dr. Martin J. Bass and Gail Silverman Bass Collection. The RIC’s longstanding commitment to collecting and connoisseurship is reflected through the continued preservation, study, and display of a wide range of photographic subjects, mediums, and approaches. 

Hours
Monday – Friday: 10am to 5pm

Access
For information on access to the collection, please contact: riccollections@ryerson.ca or 416.979.5000 x 2376

Location:
122 Bond Street, Second Floor,
Room RIC-241
Toronto, Ontario M5B 1E9

About

The Peter Higdon Research Centre (PHRC), located on the second floor above the galleries at 33 Gould Street, supports scholarly activities by students, faculty, curators, visiting artists and critical writers in an environment that maintains an extensive range of collections material.

Related resources in the form of artist files, journals and a rare books collection provide further support material. The Research Centre is staffed with professionals who are available to researchers for consultation. An accessible database is provided in aid of focused collections searches.

The RIC, though it owns the works in its collections, does not own copyright to all objects. Presently, we are not engaged in licensing image use or in providing reproductions.

Peter Higdon

The RIC's research centre is named after Peter Higdon, our founding Collections Curator, who retired in 2014 after 35 years of service at Ryerson University. Peter played an instrumental role in shaping Ryerson's photography collection into a world-class resource.