The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery of Concordia University presented the exhibition, The Modernist Document, as part of Montreal's Le Mois de la Photo biennial event. The show featured photographic works by Moyra Davey, Stan Douglas, Charles Gagnon, Petra Mueller, and Catherine Opie. In its discursive position as both an instrument of knowledge and mode of aesthetic and perceptual exploration, the modernist document, especially as it pertains to photography, was the critical focus of this exhibition. With the rise to predominance of digital imaging technologies and in light of changes wrought by globalization, queries surrounding the status of the real and its representation are contentious. At stake, is the question of how art can best contribute to constructing livable realities, and conducting social critique. In exploring the contemporary status of the real and its rendering, the artists critically investigated the modernist document in their mingling and clashing of realist and formalist discourses, pictorial codes, and modes of social and perceptual organization. As such, they engage the modernist document and its surrounding formations in order to produce culturally located forms of social and aesthetic research and critique. The exhibition was curated by Nancy Shaw and was accompanied by an illustrated, bilingual catalogue.