A new review examines "Portrait of a City", an exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London that traces a century of American urban photography, drawn entirely from the DNB Savings Bank Foundation collection. Only the gallery's second photography exhibition, it charts two parallel stories: the growth of the modern US city and the evolution of photography as an art form, moving from early pictorialism through social documentary work to darker, more atmospheric night-time imagery.

The show features work by major figures including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Dorothea Lange, Lewis Hine, Ilse Bing, Mary Ellen Mark, Diane Arbus, Saul Leiter, Richard Avedon, Aaron Siskind, Weegee and Roy DeCarava. Highlights include Lange's Great Depression-era images, Louis Faurer's 1949 photograph of the RCA Building, and Weegee's stark nocturnal crime scenes, alongside short archival films that offer contrasting perspectives on some of the still photographs, such as 1931 footage of a San Francisco soup kitchen shown as a lively, upbeat scene.