The record
A national portrait and voice record
Portrait of Canada is a record of the country in portraits and voices. A person sits for a real photograph and answers one shared question. Held together, with consent, that becomes something a country can return to.
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- Frame —
The frames fill as people join and are photographed. Submissions open July 1, 2026; each portrait goes up only after its contributor signs consent.
Why it exists
A hundred years from now, someone will want to know what Canada looked like, and what Canadians were thinking. Most of what we say now lives in feeds that scroll away. This is the record we are building to answer them.
It is not made for attention this week. It is made to be read in a hundred years.
A record,
not a collection
Everyone answers the same question. One question, asked across the country, year after year: that is what turns a set of portraits into a record.
Each person leaves two things. A portrait, made by someone who knows what they are doing. And a short spoken answer, in their own words, kept as audio and a transcript. The image and the voice are held together, because a face without what the person had to say is only half a record.
How it is kept
A record is only as good as the care around it. Four things hold this one together.
- Consent
- Nothing is public until the person agrees. Consent comes before any publication decision.
- Provenance
- Who made the work, and who vouched for whom, travels with it. The record knows where it came from.
- Archival standard
- Every portrait is made and stored to last, not sized for a feed.
- A lasting home
- The long-term aim is to place the record with an institution built to keep things: a library, a university, or a museum, so it can outlast any one platform.
The shape we
are reaching for
A record its members help steer, with a representative recognized in each province, each territory, and federally. The shared question chosen together rather than handed down. Each year's record gathered into a printed book a country can hold.
None of this is promised. It is the direction, and 2026 is where we test whether it holds.
2026, then 2027
Photographers begin the record in 2026: a proof of concept for the story, the workflow, the consent process, and the submission system. It is deliberate and bounded, not a race for numbers.
In 2027 the record opens to the wider public, and the country answers the same question. How that happens depends on what photographers help us learn first.