Beauty, craftsmanship, style, for the very wealthy.
Opulence … but at what cost?
No mention here of the menials that would have been forced to mine the original stones in Africa, India or South America.
No mention of the horrors of colonialism of the British, French, Dutch, Belgiums etc… which allowed the exploitation of foreign countries: “The ruling nation takes natural resources, wealth, and cheap labor from the colonised area to enrich itself.”
No mention of the people (or the greased palms) that traded these gemstones and allowed them to reach Western markets and into corporate and private hands.
This “spectacular” display – the spectacle – is beautifully presented at the NGV but it’s all just a bit – what’s the word – gauche for me, especially the over the top 1950s-contemporary pieces. Less is more.
At least the Paris branch of Cartier actively resisted the Nazi occupation and the London offices operated as a frequent meeting place for Charles de Gaulle’s Free French movement, unlike Coco Chanel who was a documented Nazi collaborator and intelligence agent with the Abwehr, holding the agent number F-7124 and the codename “Westminster”, during World War II.
Why you would buy anything by Chanel even today is completely beyond me.
Colour, cut and craftsmanship – that’s the magic at the heart of the 2026 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces®: CARTIER exhibition.
Watch as NGV Director Tony Ellwood AM, along with Helen Molesworth, Senior Curator of Jewellery at Victoria and Albert Museum, Pierre Rainero, Cartier Director of Image, Style and Heritage, exhibition designers Studio Sabine Marcelis and Paul Cournet of CLOUD and NGV Senior Curators Dr Miranda Wallace and Amanda Dunsmore, share what makes this exhibition shine – from diamond necklaces and glittering tiaras to original drawings, sketchbooks and photography.
CARTIER, a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition featuring nearly 500 jewels, objects, archival materials and never-before-exhibited pieces, traces the remarkable story of the French jewellery house from around 1900 to now.
Watch on for your first glimpse into the exhibition as Helen Molesworth, Senior Curator of Jewellery at Victoria and Albert Museum, Pierre Rainero, Cartier Director of Image, Style and Heritage, Pascale Lepeu, Director of Cartier Collection and NGV Senior Curator Miranda Wallace introduce you to the wonderful world of CARTIER.
2026 MWM Cartier – Announcement Broll
Installation views of the exhibition Cartier at NGV International, Melbourne, June – October, 2026
Featuring 300+ resplendent and beautifully-crafted jewels, tiaras, necklaces, brooches, timepieces, design drawings and more, the 2026 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces presentation, Cartier, is the largest exhibition on the global jewellery house ever staged in Australia. Direct from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and opening exclusively in Melbourne at NGV International on 12 June 2026, the exhibition explores Cartier’s unparalleled reputation for design excellence, craftsmanship and innovation through a dazzling selection of Cartier creations owned and worn by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Rihanna, Princess Margaret, The Duchess of Windsor, Dame Nellie Melba, the Maharaja of Patiala, the Begum Aga Khan III, and American heiress Barbara Hutton. The Melbourne-exclusive exhibition also features many jewels and objects that have never-before-visited Australia.
The exhibition charts the evolution and artistic legacy of the jewellery house, including its transformation at the turn of the twentieth century by brothers Louis, Pierre and Jacques Cartier, grandsons of the house’s founder Louis-François Cartier. The brothers established branches in Paris, London and New York, creating the first internationally recognised jewellery maison, and honed Cartier’s inimitable style by bringing design and manufacturing in-house. With an enviable client list of royalty and aristocracy, Cartier was described as ‘the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers’ by King Edward VII, who granted his Royal Warrant in 1904. Cartier’s reputation later broadened thanks to the devotion of leading creatives from the worlds of cinema, music and fashion.
A major highlight of the exhibition will be a display of more than 20 magnificent tiaras, a timeless symbol of royalty, glamour and artistry – and some of Cartier’s most celebrated creations. With symbolic links to the laurel wreaths of classical antiquity and celestial halos, the tiara has been worn for centuries across cultures from Asia to Europe. The spectacular display includes Cartier’s celebrated Scroll tiara (1902), crafted in the house’s signature ‘Garland style’ and worn by Clementine Churchill at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and by Rihanna on the cover of W magazine in 2016. Others include the Sun tiara of 1907 with a 32-carat fancy intense yellow diamond in its centre; and the Art Deco diamond and platinum Halo tiara of 1934, which was inspired by ancient Egypt and owned by Her Highness the Begum Aga Khan III.
The exhibition includes a 1951 necklace gifted to Elizabeth Taylor by her third husband and film producer, Mike Todd, while on holiday in the French Riviera in 1957. The necklace features a geometric latticework design of diamonds that showcase seven Burmese rubies, exceptional for their size and matching colour. Taylor herself described the necklace as ‘like the sun – lit up and made of red fire.’
The exhibition also focuses on Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, who was an early client of Cartier when the firm was becoming known internationally for its ‘Garland style’ jewels, often featuring floral swags and bows wrought in platinum and precious gemstones. Pierre Cartier was a fan of Dame Nellie, and a signed 1902 photograph of Melba, once owned by Pierre, will feature in the exhibition along with necklaces and bodice ornaments that the world-famous opera singer owned and wore both on and off the stage.
On display will be an intricate diamond Rose clip brooch (1938) worn by Princess Margaret at her sister’s coronation, as well as a major selection of exceptional jewels belonging to Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor and wife of former King Edward VIII. These include her famous Flamingo brooch (1947), an extraordinary Bib necklace encrusted with diamonds, amethysts and turquoise, and her 1949 Panther sapphire clip brooch which features an impressive 152.35-carats Kashmir cabochon sapphire.
Named for their colourful use of rubies, emeralds and blue sapphires, a rich selection of Cartier’s iconic Tutti Frutti jewels will also feature. Additionally, there will be a standout selection of Cartier timepieces that showcase the jeweller’s industry-leading innovations in watchmaking, alongside a selection of contemporary works featuring Australian opals.
The never-before-seen exhibition design is a collaboration between the NGV, Studio Sabine Marcelis and CLOUD, two multidisciplinary design practices based in Rotterdam in The Netherlands. The exhibition design will be inspired by colour, light and materiality, three elements that are synonymous with the aesthetic qualities of Cartier’s jewellery. The exhibition design will reflect Cartier’s expansive network of cultural and gemological sources that inspire their jewellery creations. …
Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV, said: ‘Cartier are world-renowned for their excellence in jewellery and timepiece design and innovation – a reputation fostered by the three entrepreneurial brothers Pierre, Louis and Jacques Cartier. This exhibition tells the story of how they transformed their grandfather’s jewellery business into one of the most prestigious international jewellery houses with a clientele including royalty, high society and movie stars. We’re indebted to our partner institution the V&A, for their support of this Australian-exclusive exhibition, as well as key lender Cartier.’
Helen Molesworth, Senior Curator of Jewellery, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, said: ‘Cartier is one of the most famous jewellery houses in the world. This exhibition will explore how Louis, Pierre and Jacques Cartier, initiated a strategy of original design, exceptional craftmanship and international expansion that transformed the Parisian family jeweller into an international household name. The V&A is delighted to tour its Cartier exhibition which celebrates the pioneering achievements of Cartier and its transformative ability to remain at the centre of culture and creativity for more than a century. We are excited to be able to share with visitors of the NGV some of Cartier’s most famous creations as well as revealing previously unseen objects that further enrich our understanding of a jewellery house that continues to influence the way we adorn ourselves today.’
Pierre Rainero, Director of Cartier Image, Style and Heritage, said: ‘Building on the success of its presentation at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the NGV iteration of the Cartier exhibition will showcase pieces never-before-seen in Australia. It promises to be an enlightening experience for the public, offering a captivating journey into the world of Cartier and its signature style, a living language in permanent evolution. We hope that it will not only inspire delight and awe, but also intellectual curiosity, fostering a deeper appreciation for jewellery as a distinct and powerful artistic expression.’
The Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition Cartier will be on display at NGV International from 12 June – 4 October 2026. Admission fees apply. Information and tickets are available via the NGV website: NGV.MELBOURNE
Exhibition created by the V&A in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria and in collaboration with Cartier.
Press release continues below…
Unknown photographer/Bain News Service (publisher) Nellie Melba, her father, David Mitchell, and a young girl (Nellie’s niece, Nellie Paterson), in Melbourne, Australia 1903
George Grantham Bain Collection Helena, nee Zimmerman, daughter-in-law of Consuelo Montagu, Dowager Duchess of Manchester, wearing the Manchester tiara to the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary 1911 George Grantham Bain Collection. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
This brooch was one of the items displayed by Cartier at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925.
The exhibition opens with an introduction to Louis, Pierre and Jacques Cartier, who were united in their ambition to expand the family business globally, which had been established by their grandfather in 1847. The emergence of the ‘Garland style’ will be explored as well as early cultural influences on Cartier’s creations, including ancient Egyptian design. This section reveals how the Maison developed its own instantly recognisable style, one that combined modernity and innovation with elegance and refinement.
The next section of the exhibition focuses on the rise of Cartier’s signature design aesthetic, its workshops, the Maison’s exceptional access to significant gemstones and its technical innovation. At the Paris 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Cartier prominently displayed its creations alongside leading Parisian jewellers and couturiers in the Pavillon de l’élégance. A new aspect of the NGV exhibition will be a focus on Jeanne Toussaint, Cartier’s longstanding female Creative Director from 1933 to 1970 and her innovative design aesthetic. Visitors will see how the panther motif, celebrated by Toussaint and one of the Maison’s most iconic symbols, continues to evolve in contemporary jewels, using many of the same jewellery techniques that have been practised for decades.
In the early twentieth century, Cartier secured access to some of the most important gems in the world, notably due to sourcing trips made by Jacques Cartier to the Middle East, India and Sri Lanka, as well as the house’s elite clientele and dealer networks. In a section entirely devoted to the materials behind the creations, some of the finest gems in the world will be on view. A section on timepiece design illuminates Cartier’s exceptional technical innovation, whether in jewellery, clocks or watches.
The final section of the exhibition celebrates Cartier jewels that were worn by stars of the stage and screen, and the stylistic evolution of the Maison in to the 21st century. The exhibition will culminate in a spectacular display of more than 20 tiaras. Cartier became a master of these crowning jewels at a time when high society wore them to the most glittering events in the social calendar.
About the Cartier Collection
In the 1970s, Cartier began to gather together pieces that had been produced in its earlier years; jewelry, timepieces and other precious accessories were collected for conservation, leading to the foundation of the Cartier Collection in 1983.
Today, the Cartier Collection includes pieces dating from as early as the 1860s until as recently as the 2000s. These pieces act as material records of Cartier’s more than 170-year history of style and creativity, as well as provide a wider historical account of evolutions within the decorative arts since the end of the 19th century.
With approximately 3,500 pieces and still growing, the Cartier Collection has sparked the attention of museums worldwide. Since the first major exhibition in 1989 at the Petit Palais in Paris, the Cartier Collection has been showcased by some of the world’s most renowned institutions in 45 monographic exhibitions, including most recently at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
Press release from the NGV
Unknown photographer Gloria Swanson in “Perfect Understanding” 1933 Heritage Auctions
The iconic Cartier Flamingo Brooch ordered for the Duchess of Windsor on the eve of the Nazi Occupation of Paris.
The brooch was delivered to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor only a few days before they left the French capital ahead of the German invasion. Via Spain and Portugal, the Duke and Duchess travelled to Nassau in the Bahamas where the Duke took on the role of governor for the duration of World War II. Upon arrival in Miami, en route to Nassau, the Duchess wore her brand-new Cartier flamingo brooch when greeting the crowds. She paired it with a now-famous bi-corned hat, one of her boldest and most iconic fashion choices.
The flamingo brooch was one of the star lots in Sotheby’s landmark sale of the Duchess of Windsor’s Collection in 1987 and was again offered at Sotheby’s London in November 2010 in a sale that re-united several highlights from the Duke and Duchess’ collection. Today, the original flamingo brooch is part of the Cartier heritage collection and is frequently featured it in exhibitions all over the world.
Tiara (installation view) Cartier Paris Special order, 1908 Diamonds, turquoise, platinum, yellow gold Commissioned by Dame Nellie Melba Private collection
This piece is transformable and can be worn either as a necklace or as a tiara
Dame Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba was a renowned opera singer, one of few who achieved global celebrity in the era before recorded music. Born Helen porter Mitchell in Richmond, Melbourne in 1861, she was known as Hellie from childhood and took the stage name ‘Melba’ – an homage to her home town – upon her Paris debut in 1886.
Wall text from the exhibition
Tutti Frutti strap bracelet (installation view) Cartier New York Special order 1928, modified in 1929 Emeralds, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, enamel, platinum Cartier Collection
Pair of Tutti Frutti clip brooches Cartier New York 1929 Rubies, emeralds, diamonds, enamel, platinum, white gold Cartier Collection
Tutti Frutti bracelet-watch Cartier Paris 1929 Emeralds (42.38 carats total), rubies, sapphires, diamonds, platinum Cartier Collection
Secret watch Cartier 2024 Emeralds (including one of 17.02 carats), sapphires, rubies, diamonds, onyx, white gold Collection of Mrs Lolita Younes
Necklace (installation view) Cartier London Special order, 1932 Emerald (143.23 carats), diamonds, platinum Commissioned by Beatrice Mills, Countess of Granard Cartier Collection
Beatrice Mills, daughter of American financier and philanthropist ogden Mills, married the 8th Earl of Granard in 1909. Lady Granard, as she became known, was a lotyla client of Carter London and was famous for her extravagant jewellery collection. According to the society diarist Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, ‘Lady Granard could scarcely walk for jewels’ while attending on of his dinner parties in 1938. This spectacular necklace was created from stones entirely supplied by the Countess. It is in the style of the heavier but shorter collar necklaces popular in the 1930s, while its powerful S-shaped diamond-set scrolls surrounding the magnificent emerald in the centre.
Wall text from the exhibition
Brooch, originally set as a head ornament (installation view) Cartier Paris 1925, modified in 1927 Diamonds, onyx, enamel, platinum, gold Cartier Collection
Bracelet Cartier Paris 1925 Diamonds, coral, onyx, platinum Cartier Collection
This onyx and diamond orchid brooch was on display at the 1925 Paris Exhibition as one of four orchid flowers mounted as a pair of hair ornaments. The coral, onyx and diamond bracelet was also displayed at the exhibition, along with an identical example of the bracelet with coral and emeralds. They exemplify Cartier’s innovative colour combinations and striking geometric designs.
Wall text from the exhibition
‘Hindou’ Necklace (installation view) Cartier Paris 1936, modified in 1963 Special order Sapphires (240.15 carats total), emeralds, rubies, diamonds, platinum, white gold Cartier Collection
This necklace is generally regarded as the most spectacular example of Tutti Frutti jewellery ever created by Cartier. Recorded in the Cartier Archives as ‘Hindou’, the necklace was originally mounted on a long Indian-style cord so that it would sit lower down. Daisy Fellowes supplied Cartier with jewels from her own collection (including from a Tutti Frutti bracelet, the design sketch for which is displayed on the wall opposite). Her daughter the Comtesse de Casteja had the necklace remodelled by Cartier in 1963.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation views of the exhibition Cartier at NGV International, Melbourne, June – October, 2026 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Curator: Alexander Moore, Creative Producer, Dulwich Picture Gallery
Artists: Berenice Abbott, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Ilse Bing, Margaret Bourke‑White, Ted Croner, Imogen Cunningham, Bruce Davidson, Roy DeCarava, William Eggleston, Morris Engel, Walker Evans, Louis Faurer, Lee Friedlander, John Gutmann, Lewis Hine, Peter Hujar, André Kertész, William Klein, Dorothea Lange, Saul Leiter, Arthur Leipzig, Rebecca Lepkoff, Helen Levitt, Mary Ellen Mark, Elaine Mayes, Lisette Model, Nicholas Nixon, Ruth Orkin, Ed Ruscha, Aaron Siskind, Herbert Snitzer, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand
Some well-known favourites sprinkled with photographs unknown to me:
Berenice Abbott’s Exchange Place, New York (1933) Margaret Bourke‑White’s Augusta, Georgia (1936) Morris Engel’s Harlem Merchant, New York (1937) Louis Faurer’s Looking at the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (1949) Saul Leiter’s Orange Umbrella (c. 1950) William Klein’s Happy Days Bar, 3rd Avenue, New York (1954) Peter Hujar’s Richie (1985)
I thought I knew most of Hujar’s photographs but not this one!
My favourite of the photographs I haven’t seen before is Roy DeCarava’s Hallway (1953), a moody evocation of tenement life in an American city.
So many images so little time!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The exhibition as a whole retells the American narrative of the city – almost all of the photographers here are first- or second-generation European immigrants. It also shows how photography became a way for artists to deal with the overwhelming nature of the city, to try to take hold of it, to make it their own – or try, like Garry Winogrand, to disappear into it completely, to come closer to “not existing” as the photographer described his process, a quote emphasised on the exhibition wall. Portrait of a City is about the multiplicity of quiet-but-dazzling instants that happen every day – like Peter Hujar’s Richie, standing to reflect for a second in the rain on a street in New York at night, raindrops glimmering on a car windscreen.”
Step into a century of American city life through photographs that capture the people who built, inhabited, and transformed urban spaces into living, breathing communities.
The exhibition explores one hundred years of American urban life through the people who lived, worked, and moved through its streets. Featuring works by 34 influential photographers from 1907 to 2012, the exhibition traces how photography evolved alongside the modern city, capturing individuals and communities shaped by and shaping their environments.
Photography and the American City
Set in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, the photographs reveal cities as dynamic stages for social change. From mass immigration and industrial growth to moments of counterculture and protest, photographers used urban spaces to examine identity, labour, and belonging. Adapting the traditions of portraiture, they recorded faces and lives that reflect the inner story of a nation in flux.
Artists and Highlights
Highlights include works by Alfred Stieglitz, Helen Levitt, Dorothea Lange, Lewis Hine, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Bruce Davidson. Seen together, these portraits and cityscapes form a collective narrative that is both intimate and expansive, capturing the human experience at the heart of America’s evolving cities.
Partners and Collections
The exhibition is presented in special partnership with The Savings Bank Foundation DNB, drawing from its outstanding collection of twentieth-century American photography, with thanks to our partner, Lillehammer Art Museum.
Text from the Dulwich Picture Gallery website
Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940) Riding the Ball High up on Empire State c. 1930 Courtesy of The Savings Bank Foundation DNB Collection, on deposit at Lillehammer Art Museum
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) Main Street, Saratoga Springs, New York 1931 Gelatin silver print
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) The Maypole (Empire State Building) 1932 Gelatin silver print
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Exchange Place, New York 1933 Gelatin silver print
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, California 1933 Gelatin silver print
Dulwich Picture Gallery announces Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography
In summer 2026, Dulwich Picture Gallery will present a major new exhibition Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography, bringing together more than 100 landmark works by some of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. The exhibition will chart the dramatic evolution of American city life from the early 1900s to the close of the 20th century. Featuring images from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, the exhibition draws exclusively from the DNB Saving Bank Foundation’s collection in Norway.
Showcasing 38 leading photographers of the modern era, Portrait of a City traces how photography has shaped our collective understanding of the American city.
It demonstrates how rapid urban expansion catalysed the medium’s rise as a tool to document changing conditions, presenting a compelling visual account of a nation in motion.
The exhibition opens in the early 1900s, a moment when American cities expanded rapidly through mass immigration, industrial growth and new forms of labour, drawing photographers to sites of social and economic shift. Evolving skylines became symbols of change, captured in works such as Lewis Hine’s Riding the Ball High up on Empire State, 1930. At the same time, photographers like Alfred Stieglitz were redefining the medium’s artistic potential; his seminal image The Steerage, 1907, reveals the realities of labour and class with striking immediacy.
After the Wall Street Crash in 1929, photography took on an urgent social role, recording mass unemployment, poverty and migration. Iconic works, including Dorothea Lange’s White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933 and Margaret Bourke‑White’s Augusta, Georgia, 1936 trace the profound impact of the Great Depression, bringing into sharp focus the harsh realities of the following years for people across the United States.
Here, the exhibition changes gear, tracing the rise of photographic modernism through artists such as Walker Evans, whose work helped secure photography’s place within the modern art world. Alongside this, the influence of the New York Photo League is represented through photographers including Weegee, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, Aaron Siskind, Rebecca Lepkoff and Lisette Model, whose socially engaged images document the rhythms and pressures of everyday urban life. Also presented are intimate portrayals of marginalised communities in New York, including Helen Levitt and Saul Leiter’s studies of street life and Roy DeCarava’s tender images of Black life in Harlem.
The exhibition then turns to artists documenting the dramatic physical changes reshaping American cities in the mid‑20th century. Works by Berenice Abbott record the evolution of New York’s skyline, setting new architectural forms against the city’s historic fabric, while Arthur Leipzig’s Divers, East River, 1948 captures how peripheral urban spaces became sites of leisure and community.
Moving into the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition explores how photographers responded to a nation undergoing cultural and political transformation. Artists such as Ed Ruscha and Robert Adams examined the structures and systems of the built environment, while Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander brought new immediacy to street photography. This section also presents powerful depictions of life on the margins, including Mary Ellen Mark’s The Damm Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, 1987, which confronts the realities of homelessness, and Peter Hujar’s Richie, 1985, offering an intimate insight into communities affected by the AIDS crisis.
Portrait of a City concludes with a presentation of Bruce Davidson’s renowned Subway series, 1980-85, whose vivid, unflinching photographs capture the diversity, individuality and raw immediacy of New York life, an enduring hallmark of the photographer’s career.
Alexander Moore, Creative Producer, Dulwich Picture Gallery and Curator of the exhibition, said: “American photography offers one of the most vivid and influential records of the modern city, and by bringing this remarkable collection to London, we invite audiences to reflect on how the rhythms, challenges and possibilities of urban life continue to echo through our own – a century of human stories told with extraordinary immediacy and invention.”
Anders Bjørnsen, Manager, Art & Culture, DNB Savings Bank Foundation, said: “These photographs capture the profound social and cultural changes that have shaped the modern American city. We are pleased to share this important collection with new audiences through our collaboration with Dulwich Picture Gallery, and to highlight photography’s unique ability to tell human stories across time and place.”
Jennifer Scott, Director, Dulwich Picture Gallery, said: “The spirit, aspiration, and reality of the 20th Century are captured in these photographs. Meticulously collected over the past ten years by the DNB Savings Bank Foundation, the exhibition is testament to this outstanding Norwegian art collection and creates exciting visual links to the landscape paintings in our Collection.”
Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography is curated by Alexander Moore, Creative Producer, Dulwich Picture Gallery (Curator of Unearthed: Photography’s Roots, 2021). The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-colour publication written and edited by Alexander Moore and Nils Ohlsen, Director, Lillehammer Art Museum, published by Dulwich Picture Gallery, June 2026.
Press release from the Dulwich Picture Gallery
Arthur Leipzig (American, 1918-2014) Divers, East River 1948 Gelatin silver print Arthur Leipzig/Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
Louis Faurer (American, 1916-2001) Looking at the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center 1949 Gelatin silver print Louis Faurer/Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
Roy DeCarava (American, 1919-2009) Hallway 1953 Gelatin silver print
Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) John F. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles 1960 From the portfolio Big Shots Gelatin silver print
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) Untitled 1980-85 From the Subway series Dye-transfer/chromogenic print
“I wanted to transform the subway from its dark, degrading, and impersonal reality into images that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that ride it each day.”
“It’s a great social equalizer … From the moving train above ground, we see glimpses of the city, and as the train moves into the tunnels, sterile fluorescent light reaches into the stony gloom and we, trapped inside, all hang on together”
“I feel that there was a passion and a purpose to photographing in the subway. We were all in the same boat and I was just expressing the everyday occurrences in the subway at that point in 1980. It’s a different subway, although you still have to watch your back.”
~ Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) Untitled 1980-85 From the Subway series Dye-transfer/chromogenic print
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) Untitled 1980-85 From the Subway series Dye-transfer/chromogenic print
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) Untitled 1980-85 From the Subway series Dye-transfer/chromogenic print
Brassaï’s chimerical – an idea that seems real or possible but is actually an impossible illusion – shimmering, urban light creations are photographs, sometimes staged, from the imagination and nocturnal life of the photographer.
As I have written elsewhere, “It takes a great eye and a great mind, and the liberation of that mind, to be able to transform the mundane, the everyday, the vernacular – into art. Brassaï’s folklore, his mythology of life, suggests that the life of others (those living on the edge) is as valuable and essential to the formation of culture as any other part of existence.”
Brassaï saw something clearly, so that we might see it now.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Moderna Museet for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Brassaï’s photographs invite us to decipher signs – the traces of events and human presence – and to search for the answer to the city’s many mysteries.”
Anna Tellgren, Curator
Brassaï | Introduction by Anna Tellgren with Martina Hoogland Ivanow
In this video, you meet curator Anna Tellgren and artist Martina Hoogland Ivanow, who introduce the exhibition “Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris” at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Brassaï is one of the most famous photographers in the history of photography. In the early 1930s, he set out with his camera on long nocturnal walks through Paris. Revolving around this treasure of images, the exhibition “Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris” includes over 160 black-and-white photographs.
Text from the YouTube website
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, March – October, 2026 showing at right in the bottom image, Brassaï’s Open Gutter (c. 1931/1956, below)
Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) Open Gutter c. 1931/1956 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, March – October, 2026 showing at left, Brassaï’s Night View Old Paris from Notre Dame – “the Devil” Chimaera (1933); at top right, Morris Column (1933, below); and at bottom right, Urinal on Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui (c. 1930-32)
Brassaï (1899-1984) is the pseudonym of Gyula Halász, who grew up in Brassó in Transylvania, then Hungary. After studying in Budapest and Berlin, he moved to Paris at the age of twenty-five.
There are three themes in Brassaï’s photographic production and in the exhibition “Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris”: the city of Paris with its inhabitants and environments, the portraits of artists and their works, and the city’s graffiti.
Nocturnal Environments and People
When Brassaï moved to Paris in 1924, he first worked as a journalist. His major breakthrough as a photographer came with the book “Paris de nuit” (Paris by Night), published in 1933. Many of his famous motifs can be found here – Notre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower, bars and dance halls, artists and workers, policemen and petty thieves.
The black-and-white photographs with motifs in soft tones were the result of his long nocturnal walks through Paris – his camera lens captures environments and people in the light of street lamps and the light falling from the buildings of the city.
Bars, Dance Halls and Brothels
After the success of “Paris de nuit”, Brassaï received requests to publish the material that includes his more intimate photographs of Paris by night – the bars, dance halls, gay clubs and brothels. But at that time, in post-war Paris, censorship had become stricter and publication had to wait.
It was not until about forty years later, in 1976, that the book “Le Paris secret des années 30” (The Secret Paris of the 30’s) was published, based on Brassaï’s large collection of photographs.
Night Photographs, Graffiti, and Life in Paris
The exhibition “Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris” includes more than 160 vintage gelatine silver prints made by the photographer himself.
The first room of the exhibition features Brassaï’s legendary night photographs of Paris, its inhabitants and environments. The middle room shows his extensive documentation of the city’s graffiti, and the last room of the exhibition presents more of his images of life in Paris.
Brassaï’s film from the mid-1950s, “Tant qu’il y aura des bêtes” (As Long as There Are Animals), which was awarded as the most innovative short film at at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956, is also included in the exhibition.
Biography Gyula Halász
Gyula Halász (1899-1984) grew up in Brassó in Transylvania, then Hungary.
After studying art in Budapest and Berlin, he moved to Paris in 1924 and took the name Brassaï, which means “from Brassó”. He was versatile and devoted himself to drawing, painting, sculpture and photography in parallel. Literature was another great interest.
Brassaï moved in Parisian artist circles and his contact with the surrealists, as well as his friendship with Pablo Picasso, sharpened his eye for the unexpected and overlooked. His major breakthrough as a photographer came with the book “Paris de nuit” (“Paris by Night”), published in 1933.
On his wanderings in Paris, Brassaï also discovered street graffiti, which he documented in an extensive series of photographs until the 1950s. At the same time, he also made reporting trips for the magazine “Harper’s Bazaar” to Brazil, Greece and Sweden, among other places.
Brassaï died in 1984, after receiving several awards and participating in exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States during his final years.
Text from the Moderna Museet website
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, March – October, 2026 showing at centre second left, Brassaï’s Bal des Quatre Saisons, rue de Lappe (c. 1932, below)
Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) Bal des Quatre Saisons, rue de Lappe c. 1932 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) Couple d’amoureux dans un petit café, quartier Italie c. 1932 Gelatin silver print
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, March – October, 2026 showing from left to right, top to bottom, Brassaï’s A Couple at the Magic-City Dance Hall, Rue Cognacq-Jay (c. 1931-32); A Two-in-One Suit, the Magic-City Dance Hall (1931, below); Magic-City Dance Hall, Rue de l’Universite (1931); The Magic-City Dance Hall, Rue Cognacq-Jay (c. 1931-32)
Brassaï (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) A Two-in-One Suit, the Magic-City Dance Hall 1931 Gelatin silver print
Brassaï is one of the most famous photographers in the history of photography. In the early 1930s, he set out with his camera on long nocturnal walks through Paris. Revolving around this treasure of images, the exhibition at Moderna Museet includes over 160 black-and-white photographs and is the first major presentation of Brassaï in Sweden.
Brassaï (1899-1984) is a pseudonym for Gyula Halász, who grew up in Brassó in Transylvania, then Hungary. After studying in Budapest and Berlin, he moved to Paris at the age of twenty-five. There he became part of the Humanist Photography that emerged during the interwar period. The street and the life that unfolded on the sidewalks and cafes became typical motifs for the genre.
Paris, Portraits and Graffiti
The exhibition “Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris” includes more than 160 vinted gelatin silver prints, made by the photographer himself.
The audience encounters three central themes in Brassaï’s photographic production: the city of Paris with its inhabitants and environments, the portraits of artists and their works, as well as his extensive documentation of the city’s graffiti.
The title of the exhibition alludes to how Brassaï opens up a hidden world with the help of his camera, his curiosity and his artistic practice, curator Anna Tellgren says.
His photographs invite us to decipher signs – the traces of events and human presence – and to search for the answer to the city’s many mysteries. Here, the extensive series of photographs of graffiti becomes an important part of understanding what Brassaï saw and how he moved in the city. In the exhibition, we follow in his footsteps.
In the exhibition, Brassaï’s short film “Tant qu’il y aura des bêtes” (As long as there are animals) from the mid-1950s is also shown. At the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 it was named the most innovative short film.
The Environments and People of the Night
Brassaï’s major breakthrough as a photographer came with the book “Paris de nuit” (“Paris by Night”), published in 1933. The black-and-white photographs with motifs in soft tones were the result of his long nocturnal walks through Paris – a city in transition between history and modernity. His camera lens captures environments and people in the light of street lamps and the light falling from the city’s most characteristic buildings.
After the success of “Paris de nuit”, Brassaï received requests to publish the material that includes his more intimate photographs of Paris by night – the bars, dance halls, gay clubs and brothels. But at that time, in post-war Paris, censorship had become stricter and publication had to wait.
It was not until about forty years later, in 1976, that the book “Le Paris secret des années 30” (The Secret Paris of the 30’s, 1976) was published, based on Brassaï’s large collection of photographs. In the book, he himself wrote and told the stories behind the images and about the personalities he had met and portrayed.
Press release from Moderna Museet
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, March – October, 2026 showing from left to right, Brassaï’s Fairgrounds, Place d’Italie (c. 1931); “No One Under 18 Allowed”, at the Fairgrounds (1932-33); Three Women Masked for the Parade (1931, below); The Hands of the Fortune Teller (1933, below)
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, March – October, 2026 showing from left to right, Brassaï’s Hotel du lion d’Or in the Chaconne Neighbourhood (c. 1934); Marlene, Paris (1937, below); Kiss on a Swing at a Street Fair (c. 1935-37)
At the age of twenty-five, the Hungarian-born Gyula Halász, better known as Brassaï, moved to Paris, the city that became his home and which came to shape his entire life and oeuvre. Brassaï was multifaceted, using a variety of media, including drawing, sculpture, painting and photography. Literature was another of his major interests and writing was part of his practice throughout his career.
In different contexts, Brassaï has elaborated on why he started photographing, on his longing to preserve everything he experienced and was fascinated by as a flâneur through Paris. Photography became the form of expression that best corresponded to what he wanted to achieve. A shimmer lies over the memories from the first years in the French capital, from the bars in the neighbourhoods around Montparnasse and Montmartre where he hung out with his friends until the early hours of the morning. Through the images, we gain access to the famous monuments, bridges, the small squares, markets, and fairgrounds – magically illuminated by the glow of gas lanterns. But we see them captured from another perspective, from other angles, presenting an alternative Paris, beyond the tourist hotspots. The exhibition focuses on the intense period in the 1930s when Brassaï became an innovator of nocturnal photography and one of the foremost portraitists of the city and life in Paris. The title of the exhibition, “The Secret Signs of Paris”, alludes to how the photographer opened the door to a hidden world using his camera, his curiosity, and his artistic practice [1]. His photographs challenge us to interpret signs – the traces of events and human presence – and to look for the answer to the many mysteries of the city. Here, the comprehensive series of photographs of graffiti becomes an important element in understanding what Brassaï saw and how he moved through the city. The exhibition allows us to follow in his footsteps.
Gyula Halász was born in 1899 in Brassó, Transylvania, which was part of Hungary at the time [2]. That was also where he grew up, with the exception of when his father, a professor of French, stayed in Paris with his family from 1903 to 1904 [3]. In the lead-up to the First World War, the family fled to Budapest. After serving a year in the Austro-Hungarian cavalry, Gyula Halász started studying at the art academy in Budapest in 1918. He moved to Berlin in 1920, where he continued studying art. In February 1924 he arrived in Paris, where he stayed for the rest of his life, never returning to his home country.
In the early years in Paris, he supported himself by writing articles for Hungarian and German magazines, illustrated with his photographs and those of other photographers. He assumed the pseudonym Brassaï, which means “from Brassó”, and continued to publish and work under this artist name. He moved in artist circles, and contacts in the Hungarian diaspora led to different kinds of commissions. Photographer André Kertész and Charles Rado were among his compatriots. The latter started the photo agency Rapho, which represented Brassaï both in Paris and New York. Around 1930 he began photographing more seriously, using a folding camera of the brand Voigtländer Bergheil with glass negatives (6.5 x 9 cm), switching to a Rolleiflex in the mid-1930s with medium-format (6 x 6 cm) negatives. His career as aphotographer took off fast and photography became his main source of income. He took all kinds of jobs, even photographing hairstyles for the famous hairdresser Monsieur Antoine and hiring two assistants to keep up [4]. In the early years, Brassaï moved around between small hotels in Montparnasse, where he even installed a darkroom to develop his own photographs, which he continued doing throughout his career.
Brassaï’s photographic production encompasses three main themes, of which the city of Paris is the most famous; but his portraits of artists and their work, as well as his interest in graffiti are also well-known. One of the many writers and artists that Brassaï met and socialised with over the years was Henry Miller, who lived in Paris from 1930 to 1939, becoming a friend and champion of Brassaï’s photography in several contexts [5]. Another major influence was Pablo Picasso. They were introduced to each other in 1932 by the publisher Tériade, ahead of a commission for the Surrealist magazine Minotaure, leading to a lifelong friendship. Brassaï continued to photograph Picasso’s sculptures and published the book “Conversations avec Picasso” (Conversations with Picasso) in 1964, which presents personal and everyday images of one of modern art’s most celebrated artists [6]. Other artists that he portrayed in text and image include Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Germaine Richier, and Jacques Villon – later collecting the portraits in a book about the artists in his life [7].
Brassaï’s major breakthrough as photographer came with the book “Paris de nuit” (Paris by night) which was published by Arts et Métiers graphiques in 1933, with a text by the writer and diplomat Paul Morand. The book contains sixty-four carefully selected photographs published in a spiral-bound soft-cover book (25 x 19.3 cm). The photographs are printed as full-page bleeds on matt, black, relatively thick paper. The title on the cover is written with red dots to resemble the city’s many neon lights. The book includes many of the famous motifs – the dark cobblestone streets, the narrow alleyways, the prostitutes, Notre-Dame, the metro, the Eiffel Tower, and the cats – all rendered in dark tones, only illuminated by the light emanating from the many characteristic buildings around Paris. The production of the book is a complex story, with Brassaï collaborating closely with the designer and publisher Charles Peignot and the journalist Jean Bernier, who wrote all the captions [8]. The book was part of a tradition from the late nineteenth century, in which established writers, and later filmmakers, were fascinated by the underworld of Paris, describing it from the perspective of a flâneur. Other popular publications at the time were the many magazines reporting on crime and publishing detective stories illustrated with images by Brassaï and other photographers who specialised in these nocturnal adventures.
After the success of “Paris de nuit”, Brassaï started a new collaboration around his more intimate photographs of Paris by night – the bars, dance establishments, the homosexual clubs, bordellos [9]. Despite the interest it generated, he decided to pursue other projects instead. After the war, the atmosphere had shifted and stricter censorship than in the 1930s was put into place, making it simply too difficult to publish these types of images openly. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that Brassaï got in touch with the publisher Claude Gallimard, suggesting a number of book projects based on the vast material from Paris. This led to the book “Le Paris secret des années 30” (1976) for which Brassaï himself developed the design idea and was closely involved in the entire process [10]. With the distance of forty years, he told the story behind the images and whom we encounter. We learn of Grand Albert and his gang, La Môme Bijou, Kiki de Montparnasse, of the atmosphere at Le Monocle and Chez Suzy. But, as it turns out, we weren’t told everything – it was later revealed that Brassaï’s assistant Gabriel Kiss played the role of customer in the series from Chez Suzy, but the prostitutes were really working there. Brassaï staged a sequence of events at the brothel, which was probably necessary to fulfil the discretion guaranteed to customers and to obtain permission to enter as a photographer. The photographs included in the book were all taken between 1929 and 1934, and it’s as if Brassaï here achieved his photographic zenith and is one with the events, people, and surroundings he lived in and documented. The book has become one of the most important sources with regards to his practice as a photographer and is a classic within the history of photobooks.
At the time of Brassaï’s breakthrough as a photographer, the medium was in an intense phase of development, which was influenced by the breakthrough of the small-format camera and the major entry that photography made into the illustrated press [11]. News from all corners of the world was reported in the form of large photo reportages. There was a high demand for photographs and a market emerged in which different types of photo agencies and photo editors handled the assignments and managed the contacts. Examples of these popular magazines include the French Vu, and the English Picture Post, American Life and Look and in Sweden, from 1938 onwards, the illustrated magazine Se. While press photography was professionalised, many of the avant-garde movements, like Futurism, Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism, were also interested in photography. Paris was a hub and had been the epicentre of new ideas since the discovery and establishment of photography from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. This is where many of the most famous photographers came to live and work, including Brassaï and his colleagues Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, and Sabine Weiss. They were all representatives of the so-called humanist photography, a movement that arose in the interbellum years in parallel with technological, artistic, and commercial progress [12]. The streets and the life that unfolded on their sidewalks and in the cafés, became symbols in themselves for this special visual poetry, which enticed the photographers, like the writers and artists, to go on long, lonely rambles through the city.
On his recurring walks through Paris, Brassaï discovered street graffiti [13]. Throughout his entire oeuvre from the early 1930s onwards, these signs from walls are present. His work on the graffiti images continued until the late 1950s and was collected in a book by the photographer in 1960, where he sorted them into nine different themes [14]. The collection included the well-known “Le Roi Soleil” (The sun king) and other images of primitive masks, faces, and animals, as well as expressions of magic, love, and death. Brassaï wrote about his extensive series of graffiti photographs in several articles, interpreting these signs on the city walls as a kind of original writing, reading mythological figures into the motifs – demons, heroes, and gods [15]. One could define his collection of graffiti as a kind of archive of human expressivity and creativity. Later he wrote specifically about graffiti in Paris and reflected on his interest in this art form with neither name nor status [16].
In connection with his interest in graffiti, Brassaï collaborated with and moved in Surrealist circles for some years [17]. His first commission was to photograph Picasso’s sculptures for the debut issue of Minotaure in 1933 [18]. Thereafter his article on graffiti was published in the double number 3-4 and in the same number he collaborated with Salvador Dalí on an article about unintended sculptures, as well as one about modern architecture, in which his close-ups of the famous Art Nouveau Paris metro entrances were included [19]. He had many friends in the group and also shared Surrealism’s interest in the rediscovered French photographer Eugène Atget, who had documented the old Paris during the decade following the turn of the twentieth century. Later, Brassaï came to oppose the view of his photographs as “Surrealist” and unreal, claiming that everything he documented was real – which did not, however, hinder him from participating in Minotaure or André Breton’s books [20]. In this period he also created a series of nude studies, whose forms made their way into his sculptures and the series “Transmutations” (1934), a kind of engravings executed on his already exposed photographic glass plates, clearly influenced by his association with the Surrealist movement.
In the war years, Brassaï stayed in Paris, since he didn’t want to leave his photographic archive of negatives in the apartment on rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques, where he had moved in 1935 and that he kept for the rest of his life. But he refused to have his photographs published during the war or to work for the German occupying forces and spent his time writing and drawing instead. After the war, he started photographing again and his photographs were among other things shown as enormous enlargements as part of the set design in several theatre productions. This was when he met Gilberte Boyer. They married in 1948 and she would accompany her husband on trips and work assignments. One of his most important employers at the time was Carmel Snow, the legendary editor of the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar in New York [21]. They had met in 1937 and collaborated for over twenty-five years. Initially he took portraits of artists in their studios for the magazine, but later he also engaged in fashion photography – from balls, exclusive dinner parties, and Parisian high society. In the 1950s he started producing photographic travel reportages for Harper’s Bazaar, travelling to Brazil, Greece, Italy, Morocco, Spain, and Sweden.
When the borders reopened after the Second World War, many young photographers went out into the world and established themselves for shorter or longer periods in the French capital to learn and experience. One of this next generation of photographers was the American photographer Louis Stettner, who made the acquaintance of Brassaï when he settled in Paris [22]. Stettner’s inner circle included the Frenchman Édouard Boubat and the Swedish photographers Rune Hassner and Tore Johnson [23]. They were inspired by and worked in the tradition of the humanist photographers. Rune Hassner was based in Paris from 1949 to 1957; he took on reportage commissions from various magazines, as well as working as a fashion photographer. Through the years he wrote a large number of articles for Swedish photo magazines, in which he introduced European photography and its practitioners to Swedish readers [24]. Brassaï was one of the people he met and interviewed, describing him as one of the most innovative photographers of our time and a well-known personality in French cultural circles [25]. The article is one of several published to highlight Brassaï’s visit to Stockholm and Vålådalen in December 1953.
In the 1950s, Brassaï became the object of several retrospective exhibitions and new book projects. Early on, he had participated in a number of group exhibitions of contemporary photography at galleries in Paris and already in 1937 six photographs by him were included in the exhibition “Photography 1839-1937” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Later, in 1956, MoMA presented the celebrated exhibition “Language of the Wall: Parisian Graffiti Photographed by Brassaï”, which was followed by a retrospective in 1968. The exhibition led to him being rediscovered by American photo historians, curators, and gallerists, which resulted in further exhibitions and inclusion in the collections of many of the major art institutions in the US, as well as the many important museums and collections in France. He stopped photographing in the 1970s, stating that he preferred to travel in his own universe of photographs and make them better known [26]. In the last ten years of his life, he received several prizes and distinctions, such as the first Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1978. Brassaï died in 1984 in Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. His spirit hovers over all of us who love Paris and return again and again to visit our own favourite places – and over new generations of young people who travel there for several months or years to find themselves and the soul of the city.
Anna Tellgren
Notes
1/ The title is inspired by the book Paris’ hemliga tecken, Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1952, with texts by Göran Schildt and photographs by Tore Johnson. The book is one of many slightly more poetic travelogues from Paris that came about as a collaboration between a writer or poet and a photographer.
2/ For a detailed biography see Giberte Brassaï, “Biographie”, in Alain Sayag and Annick Lionel-Marie, Brassaï, Paris: Centre Pompidou and Éditions du Seuil, 2000, pp. 303-305. See also, Stuart Alexander, “Chronology”, Brassaï, ed. Peter Galassi, Madrid: Fundación Mapfre, 2018, pp. 338-343.
3/ Brassaï’s father, whose name was also Gyula Halász, was professor of French literature at the local university. His mother’s name was Matilde Verzár, and he had two younger brothers, Kálmán Halász (1900-1978) and Endre “Bandi” Halász (1913-1944). Brassaï wrote to his parents regularly – these letters were published in Hungarian in 1980 and later in translation. They are the main source of information when it comes to his early life and career, see Brassaï, Letters to My Parents, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997.
4/ For an in-depth analysis and interpretation of all the different steps in Brassaï’s career, see Peter Galassi, “Brassaï: Photographer”, Brassaï, ed. Peter Galassi, Madrid: Fundación Mapfre, 2018, pp. 10-71.
5/ Henry Miller wrote an essay about Brassaï, “The Eye of Paris”, c. 1932, which was published in Henry Miller, Max and the White Phagocytes, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1938. The essay was also published in the photobook Brassaï, Paris: Édition Neuf, 1952, edited by Robert Delpire and Pierre Faucheux.
6/ The book was illustrated with 53 photographs by the photographer, Brassaï, Conversations avec Picasso, Paris: Gallimard, 1964.
7/ Brassaï, Les artistes de ma vie , Paris: Éditions Denoël, 1982.
8/ See also Sylvie Aubenas and Quentin Bajac, “From Paris After Dark to the Secret Paris of the 1930s”, Brassaï Paris Nocturne, London: Thames & Hudson, 2013, pp. 11-33. The book was printed in an edition of 12,000 starting at the end of 1932 and into early 1933, which is why both years of publication occur in bibliographies.
9/ It resulted in the book Volupté de Paris, Paris: Paris-Publications, 1934, published in a small edition by Victor Vidal, who worked with erotic literature. Brassaï was very critical of how the content was changed without consulting him and he never included it in his own bibliography. When it came to the photographs in Paris de nuit, the publisher never returned the negatives to the photographer and they were first found in 1984 in the archives of the publishing house Flammarion, which had bought up Arts et Métiers graphiques, see Kim Sichel, Brassaï: Paris le jour, Paris la nuit, Paris: Musée Carnavalet, 1988.
10/ Brassaï, Le Paris secret des années 30, Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1976. In English translation by Richard Miller, The Secret Paris of the ’30s, London: Thames & Hudson, 1976.
11/ See Stuart Alexander, “Brassaï and the Illustrated Press”, Brassaï, ed. Peter Galassi, Madrid: Fundación Mapfre, 2018, pp. 72-87.
12/ On humanist photography see Marie de Thézy, La photographie humaniste 1930-1960, Histoire d’un movement, Paris: Contrejour, 1992.
13/ See also Karolina Lewandowska, Graffiti Brassaï. Le langage du mur, Paris: Édition du Centre Pompidou and Édition Xavier Barral, 2016.
14/ Brassaï Graffiti. Zwei Gespräche mit Picasso, Stuttgart: Chr. Belser Verlag, 1961. Graffiti de Brassaï, Paris: Les éditions du temps, 1960. See also the later expanded edition in English Brassaï Graffiti, Paris: Flammarion, 2002.
15/ Brassaï, “Du mur des cavernes au mur d’usine”, Minotaure, no. 3-4, 1933, pp. 6-7.
17/ See further La Subversion des images: Surréalisme, photographie, film, eds. Quentin Bajac and Clément Chéroux, Paris: Édition du Centre Pompidou, 2009.
18/ André Breton, “Picasso dans son element”, Minotaure, no. 1, 1933, pp. 8-29.
19/ Salvador Dalí and Brassaï, “Sculptures involontaires”, Minotaure, no. 3-4, 1933, p. 68; Salvador Dalí, “De la beauté terrifiante et comestible, de l’architecture modern’ style”, Minotaure, no. 3-4, 1933, pp. 69-76.
20/ Sylvie Aubenas, “Brassaï and Paris by Night”, Brassaï Paris Nocturne, London: Thames & Hudson, 2013, pp. 110-113. Three night photographs by Brassaï are included in André Breton, L’Amour fou, Paris: Gallimard, 1937.
21/ Together with the Russian art director Alexey Brodovitch, Carmel Snow made the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar into one of the more innovative magazines in the 1940s and ’50s, both in terms of form and content. See also Gabriel Bauret, Alexey Brodovitch, Paris: Éditions Assouline, 1998.
22/ Brassaï later wrote a foreword dated 1983, published in the book by Louis Stettner, Early Joys. Photographs from 1947-1972, New York: Janet Iffland, 1987, pp. 7-9.
23/ For more information on the young Swedish photographers in Paris, see Anna Tellgren, Tio fotografer. Självsyn och bildsyn. Svensk fotografi under 1950-talet i ett internationellt perspektiv (Ten Photographers. Self-perception and Pictorial Perception. Swedish Photography in the 1950s in an International Perspective), diss., Linköping Studies in Arts and Science no. 151, Stockholm: Informationsförlaget, 1997, pp. 151-229.
24/ See for example Rune Hassner, “Fotobohemer, skickliga yrkesmän och ‘konstfotografer'”, Svensk Fotografisk Tidskrift, no. 7, 1949, pp. 139-142. For a compilation see also Rune Hassner, Bilder & Ord. Bibliografi, filmografi, utställningsförteckning med mera, eds. Rune Hassner and Birgitta Forsell, Visuellt. Konst- och bildvetenskapliga institutionens skriftserie no. 7, Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, 2002. In 1988 Rune Hassner (1928-2003) became the first director of the Hasselblad Centre (part of the Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg) – a position that he held until his retirement in 1994.
25/ Rune Hassner, “Brassaï”, Nordisk Tidskrift för Fotografi, no. 1, 1954, pp. 13-15.
26/ From an interview with Brassaï in 1974 in Paul Hill and Thomas Cooper, “Brassaï”, Dialogue with Photography, Manchester: Cornerhouse Publication, 1979/1992, pp. 38-42.
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, March – October, 2026 showing Brassaï’s Graffiti – Croix de Lorraine (Series II) (c. 1945)
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, March – October, 2026 showing from left to right, top to bottom, Brassaï’s Graffiti from series III The Birth of Mankind c. 1932/1956; Graffiti from series III The Birth of Mankind c. 1932/1956; Graffiti from series VII Death c. 1932/1956; Graffiti from series VIII Magic c. 1932/1956
Installation view of the exhibition Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, March – October, 2026 showing Brassaï’s Graffiti de la série IX “Images primitives”/Graffiti from Series IX “Primitive Images” (c. 1932-1956)
Hungarian-born Gyula Halász, better known as Brassaï, was only twenty-five when he moved to Paris, the city that became his home and shaped the rest of his life and work. His walks through the city awakened a longing to preserve all the fascinating things he saw and experienced, not least the people and milieus that emerged after nightfall. The exhibition focuses on the intense period in the 1930s when Brassaï became an innovator of nocturnal photography and one of the foremost portraitists of Paris.
Brassaï was born in 1899 in Brassó, Transylvania, and studied art in Budapest and Berlin. Versatile in his practice, he worked across drawing, painting, sculpture and photography. Literature was another major interest, and writing remained important to him throughout his career. After arriving in Paris in 1924, he initially worked as a journalist. His breakthrough as photographer came with the 1933 book Paris de nuit. It features many of the city’s famous motifs, evocatively illuminated by the glow of gas streetlights – Notre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower, bars and dancehalls, performers and workers, policemen and thieves.
He moved in artist circles and his interaction with the Surrealists, as well as his friendship with Pablo Picasso, sharpened his awareness of the unexpected and overlooked. On his rambles through the city, Brassaï also discovered street graffiti and he continued to document these signs, symbols and traces of life in a comprehensive series of photographs until the 1950s. He compared them to children’s drawings and cave paintings, but also saw similarities with contemporary art. In the final years before his death in 1984, Brassaï received major recognition, including numerous awards and exhibitions around Europe and the USA.
The title of the exhibition, The Secret Signs of Paris, alludes to how the photographer revealed a hidden world through his camera. His photographs become clues to interpreting the city’s poetry. In the exhibition, we follow Brassaï through all hours of the day, from evening to early morning, during the day in the streets and squares of Paris, and back to the night’s shadowy activities.
Technique and Practice
Around 1930, Brassaï started photographing in earnest. He used a Voigtländer Bergheil folding camera with a glass negative (6.5 x 9cm), and, from the mid-1930s onwards, a Rolleiflex with medium-format negatives (6 x 6cm). In the early years he installed a darkroom in the hotel he was staying at, in which he developed his own photographs. In 1935, he bought an apartment on rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques in Montparnasse, which was both his home and his studio, including a darkroom and his photographic archive. Throughout his career he continued to develop his own photographs. Initially the prints were relatively small, from c. 5 x 5cm to c. 20 x 30cm, on different types of photo papers. From the 1950s onwards, Brassaï worked on larger prints, up to 40 x 50cm, on glossy paper in editions of c. 30, adapted to the American market.
Paris has long been perceived as the city above all others for lovers and romantic encounters. Many of Brassaï’s nocturnal photographs show couples entwined on benches, in parks and in dark allies. The flip-side of this was the widespread prostitution, that had women offering their services to passing men in the alleyways and hotels around town. Brassaï often photographed the women who worked the streets around the old fresh food market in central Paris, Les Halles, which was demolished in 1971. His images speak the tough lives of the prostitutes, but also the strong sense of community among them and the invisible safety net that it provided. In recent years, his photographs of prostitutes and other marginalised people have been criticised for aestheticising vulnerable lives and reinforcing the position of power that the photographer – and thus also the viewer – occupies. Brassaï himself saw his nocturnal photographs as a way of preserving the old, mythical Paris that writers and artists have depicted for centuries.
Brassaï and Swedish Photographers
When the borders re-opened after the Second World War, a great number of young photographers went abroad. Several of them established themselves in Paris to learn, work, and experience the city – some briefly, others for longer periods of time. Among them were the Swedes Rune Hassner and Tore Johnson. Hassner started his career as a fashion and documentary photographer, but he also wrote articles for Swedish photography magazines, in which he introduced European photography to his colleagues and photo enthusiasts back home in Sweden. One of the people he met and interviewed was Brassaï, who in turn was producing travel reportages for Harper’s Bazaar, visiting places such as Brazil and Greece – as well as Stockholm and Vålådalen, in December 1953. During this visit, he had his portrait taken by Hans Hammarskiöld, who, together with Hassner and Johnson, belonged to the circle of Swedish photographers who debuted in the early 1950s, and later formed the influential group Tio fotografer (Ten Photographers).
Les Bals Musette
In the 1976 book Le Paris secret des années 30 (The Secret Paris of the ’30s) Brassaï recounts about the dance halls that were popular at the time, the so-called Bals musette, which were often located on the outskirts of Paris. Young working-class women and men gathered there to socialise and dance to small orchestras of brass instruments, drums, and accordions. The bal musette scene had its own fashion, music, codes, and often even interiors, featuring fixed benches upholstered in red imitation leather, glass lights, and multicoloured paper garlands hanging from the ceiling. It radiated poetry, gaiety, and dreams, but also came with risks. This was where pimps found young girls to exploit, and knife fights between rival gangs were not uncommon. Several of these establishments were on the rue de Lappe in the 11th arrondissement. With time they were bought up and remade into a kind of scenography for tourists looking for the “real Paris”, seeking out the city’s underworld.
The Balls
At this time, several large-scale public balls were organised, that would spread across Parisian streets and squares. At the ball for medical students that was held every autumn after their final exams the participants appeared almost naked, covered in nothing but gold glitter. One of the more famous balls was Le Bal des Quat’z’Arts, the art students’ spring ball. Although the theme changed from year to year, for example from Egyptian to Gallic, not many people actually wore a costume. Instead the event was known for its playful atmosphere. The festivities kicked off in the art school courtyard, continuing into the rue Bonaparte and the surrounding quarters, ending in a morning dip in the fountain at the Place de la Concorde. One of the balls that Brassaï attended and documented was Magic-City, the legendary masquerade ball organised for a few years around 1930 for members of the queer community. Here he met all of them who came to dance, party and be seen. Brassaï’s photographs today stand as important testimonies to an early queer nightlife in Paris.
Queer lives
In the 1930s, there were a few meeting places for the city’s queer communities in the area around Montparnasse in Paris. One of the first lesbian bars was Le Monocle on boulevard Edgar-Quinet, or “the temple of Sapphic love”, as Brassaï put it. He was introduced to the scene by “La grosse Claude”, one of the regulars. Fat Claude’s real name was Violette Morris and she was a renowned athlete, who during the Second World War, was recruited as a Nazi spy. She was killed in 1944 by activists in the French Resistance Movement. Brassaï’s photographs of the queer scene were early, unusually candid depictions of what was then a marginalised and often disregarded group. In his writings, he often reiterated how he was drawn to the people who lived and worked at night, describing his method of being introduced and accepted into the scenes that he moved in. He never photographed in secret. Even so, he was more than once threatened and had his plates stolen by those who did not want to risk being recognised and exposed.
Graffiti
Brassaï discovered the city’s graffiti on his recurring rambles through Paris. From the early 1930s until the end of the 1950s he worked on documenting these signs on walls and facades. Over the years he refined his method, carrying a notepad around with him in which he sketched the figures and noted their locations so he could revisit them. Sometimes he returned to photograph them in better light or he would find them several years later to examine how they had developed. In this way he assembled a kind of visual archive of human expression and creativity. Brassaï collated the images in the book Graffiti (1960), where he organises them in nine chapters, each with their own theme. The first chapter was entitled “The Wall as Proposition”, followed by “Language of the Wall”, “The Birth of Mankind”, “Masks and Faces”, “Animals”, “Love”, “Death”, “Magic”, and “Primitive Images”.
Presented here are around forty of Brassaï’s graffiti photographs, including the well-known Le Roi Soleil (The Sun King). In several articles, Brassaï wrote about his comprehensive graffiti series, explaining how he understood these spontaneous signs on the city’s walls as a form of archetypal writing. He saw the motifs as representing mythological figures like demons, heroes and gods, comparing them to children’s drawings and cave paintings. He shared this interest with the Surrealists and one of Brassaï’s first articles was published under the title “Du mur et des cavernes au mur d’usine” (From cave walls to factory walls) in Minotaure no. 3-4 1933, a Surrealist-oriented art journal.
Brassaï developed his thoughts on graffiti in dialogue with others, notably the artist Pablo Picasso and the poet Jacques Prévert. At the same time, the French artist Jean Dubuffet developed the term l’art brut (raw art) in his search for a more original, primitive imagery beyond the art establishment. Graffiti came to be part of this artistic movement and Dubuffet included photographs by Brassaï in his vast collection, now housed at the museum Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne. The first monographic exhibition of the series, Language of the Wall. Parisian Graffiti Photographed by Brassaï, was presented in 1956 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It featured some 120 photographs, among them a number in larger formats, a few of which are also included in this exhibition.
Conversations with Picasso
The artist who came to mean the most to Brassaï was Pablo Picasso. They were introduced to each other in 1932 by the publisher Tériade, ahead of an assignment for the Surrealist magazine Minotaure. This led to Brassaï photographing Picasso’s sculptures for an article by André Breton. In the 1930s, they moved in the same circles, but it was not until the war years in the early 1940s that their friendship deepened. Brassaï continued documenting Picasso in his studio – his sculptures, work process, visiting artist friends – collating his recollections of their encounters in the book Conversations with Picasso (1964). Reflected in recurring motifs in their respective oeuvres, such as acrobats, horses and clowns, is their shared love of the circus, which they often attended together. There are several examples from the legendary Cirque Medrano on boulevard Marguerite de Rochechouart in Montmartre, a place that had been a hub for artists and performers since the late nineteenth century.
Chez Suzy
In the 1930s, bordellos were still a lucrative industry. The businesses were spread all over the city, both in affluent areas and in those marked by organised crime. Often there was just an illuminated, enlarged house number sign indicating that there was a bordello behind the closed doors. Chez Suzy was a smaller bordello in the Latin Quarter, where clients could come and go completely anonymously. Brassaï photographed the Madame and “her girls”, for example when meeting with a client. Later, it was revealed that the man seen in these images was Brassaï’s assistant Gabriel Kiss and that the captured events were staged, which was probably necessary in order to uphold the promised customer discretion. When the so-called Marthe Richard law came into power in 1946, the system in which prostitutes were controlled by the state, forced to register with the police and undergo regular medical exams was abolished. The law also criminalised pimping. As a result, over one hundred bordellos in Paris closed down.
As Long as There Are Animals
In the years 1954 and 1955 Brassaï returned again and again to Zoo de Vincennes (Parc zoologique de Paris), not with his still camera but with a 16 mm film camera. The result is the 1956 short film Tant qu’il y aura des bêtes (As Long as There Are Animals), in which the animals’ movements and behaviour produce a kind of visual choreography. The film consists of a series of scenes that register rather than explain, working with repetition, rhythm, and form. It was first shown at the Cannes film festival in 1956, where it won an honorary mention for innovative and experimental short film: Mention au film de recherche – court métrage. In retrospect, it appears as a moving-image work related to Brassaï’s graffiti studies, reflecting his interest in the hidden patterns of existence.
Violette Morris, known as Fat Claude, was a multi-talented athlete who excelled in soccer, car racing, shot put, and boxing during the 1920s. She was well-known in Parisian bohemian and queer circles, frequently dressed in men’s suits, and captured iconically by Brassaï. During the Nazi occupation of France, Morris became an informer and collaborator for the Gestapo, accused of passing French military secrets and intelligence to Germany. She was assassinated by the French Resistance in 1944 while driving her car in Normandy.
Brassaï – The Secret Signs of Paris exhibition catalogue cover
Explore the exhibition catalogue
An extensive catalogue accompanies the exhibition, published by Moderna Museet and Silvana Editoriale, Milan.
The catalogue reproduces all of the more than 160 photographs included in the exhibition and features, among other texts, a piece by Brassaï himself, one by his nephew Philippe Ribeyrolles, along with a newly written essay by the French author Nina Bouraoui. Design: Malmsten Hellberg, Stockholm.
Writers: Nina Bouraoui, Brassaï, Philippe Ribeyrolles, Anna Tellgren Editor: Anna Tellgren Binding: Hardcover with dust jacket Language: English Graphic design: Malmsten Hellberg Format: 21.7 × 28 cm Number of pages: 208 Number of images: approx. 160
ISBN 978-91-988136-1-6
Published in collaboration with Silvana Editoriale, Milan
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Moderna Museet is ten minutes away from Kungsträdgården, and twenty minutes from T-Centralen or Gamla Stan. Walk past Grand Hotel and Nationalmuseum on Blasieholmen, opposite the Royal Palace. After crossing the bridge to Skeppsholmen, continue up the hill. The entrance to Moderna Museet and Arkitekturmuseet is on the left-hand side.
Curators: Barbara Tannenbaum, Curator of Photography and Chair of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Cleveland Museum of Art
Unknown photographer Black Horseman in Front of a Doorway c. 1855 Salt print from wet collodion negative Image: 15.5 x 13.5cm (6 1/8 x 5 5/16 in.) Mounted: 47 x 30.6cm (18 1/2 x 12 1/16 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 40.6cm (20 x 16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
The uniform of the rider identifies him as a major in the Chasseurs d’Afrique (African Light Infantry), a cavalry group within France’s colonial army in Africa. By 1855, African people were living in France, so he may have been born and raised there or have been African-born and in France for training.
Magnificent gems of 19th-century French photography.
The studied simplicity of Nadar’s Man on a Horse (c. 1860s, below), man and animal captured against a painted studio backdrop.
The formal beauty of Édouard Baldus’ architectural salted paper and albumen prints of Notre-Dame, Paris (1852-1853, below), Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris (c. 1860s, below), Louvre, Façade rue de Rivoli, Paris (1855, below) and Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris (1856-1857, below) which emphasise the volume of the structures, their scale and grandeur.
Compare these to the spatial openness and intimacy of Charles Marville’s Rue de la Ferronnerie (c. 1865, below) only 10 years later which leads, inexorably, to the alleyways and architectural details of Eugène Atget capturing a disappearing Paris, an Old Paris, towards the end of the 19th century.
Dotted amongst these are an atmospheric landscape of the French interior near Lyon by that most bucolic of photographers Félix Thiollier; a pastoral village scene of impressionistic intimacy by Adolphe Braun, Untitled (Farm Animals) (1850s, below); and a superb photograph of a stone bridge set in mountainous landscape near the Spanish border taken by Gustave Le Gray, The Bridge of Palalda (near Amelieles-Bains) (1851-1852, below)
No conceptual histrionics, no untoward flourishes, just photographs of the utmost integrity of people and places in a time of change, photographs that hold the viewer’s gaze through the holistic balance and beauty of the images.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
. Many thankx to The Cleveland Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Nadar (French, 1820-1910) Man on a Horse c. 1860s Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 17 x 22.3cm (6 11/16 x 8 3/4 in.) Matted: 35.6 x 45.7cm (14 x 18 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Robert Hershkowitz and Charles Isaacs
Nadar (French, 1820-1910) Portrait of Ernestine Nadar, the artist’s wife, wearing fur stole c. 1880-1883 Uncut sheet of three matte gelatin silver carte-de-visites Overall: 10.8 x 21.9cm (4 1/4 x 8 5/8 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
This striking and unusual uncut sheet of carte-de-visite exposures was taken by one of France’s most successful early portraitist photographers, Nadar. His wife Ernestine frequently modeled for him, including when he tried out new equipment or processes such as these gelatin silver prints. These portraits seem to be an intimate, direct exchange between sitter and camera, wife and husband.
Born Gaspard-Félix Tournachon in Paris, Nadar is probably the best known French photographer. His portraits of celebrities and public figures help define our impression of France in the second half of the 19th century; his panache in conducting his business helped popularize photography. Educated at the Collège Bourber, Paris (1833-36), Nadar moved to Lyon, where he studied medicine (1837-38) before continuing his studies at the Hôtel Dieu and the Bicêtre in Paris. He wrote satires and essays and drew caricatures (his pseudonym derived from his barbed wit aimed against the establishment) for a number of Paris publications, eventually founding several of his own, and was a highly visible figure in the city’s cultural and artistic life. Learning photographic technique from Adophe Bertsch and Camille d’Arnaud, Nadar founded a studio in 1854. Twenty years later his son Paul, also a photographer, became director of the business and by 1886 headed the firm. He also worked for a time with his brother, Adrien, who sometimes called himself Nadar jeune, a practice which later prompted Nadar to file a lawsuit. Nadar’s exploits with aerial balloon photography were of both photographic and historic importance. Below ground, he used artificial light to make surveys of the catacombs and sewers of Paris, novel and highly popular curiosities. With his son Paul as photographer, he is credited with the first photo-interview, conducted with the scientist and color theorist Michel-Eugène Chevreul on his 100th birthday in 1886. Because of the importance of his work and the notoriety of his sitters, among them Franz Liszt, George Sand, Sarah Bernhardt, and Honoré Balzac, Nadar will long occupy a key place in the development of photography. T.W.F.
About the exhibition
Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot lived during a tumultuous yet fertile period in France. Events included war and the loss of territory; modernisation and the rise of industry; and a shift from rural to urban living. As both artists were living in Paris, it became the largest city in continental Europe and the arts capital of the world. Manet and Morisot’s lifetime also coincided with the birth and rise of a new art form – photography – which recorded many of these social, political, and cultural changes.
Masters of the new medium such as Charles Marville and Édouard-Denis Baldus were commissioned by the Emperor Napoleon III, the Louvre museum, and the railroads to document both historic monuments and the construction of new architectural and engineering marvels throughout the country. This era also saw the rise of celebrity portraiture and of the general public as patron. Actresses such as Sarah Bernhardt and popular authors Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas, and others sat for photographers such as Nadar, André-Adolphe-Eugene Disderi, Gustave Le Gray, and Étienne Carjat. The resulting portraits were printed – and sold – in large quantities to meet a soaring public demand for portraits of the luminaries of the time. When the rising urban middle class sought to have their own likenesses recorded, they flocked to the same studios.
In this exhibition, drawn from the museum’s rich holdings of 19th-century French photography, we can feel that we, like the photographers, are eyewitnesses to the transformation of France in the 1800s. This show was organised to complement Manet & Morisot, on view in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Gallery from March 29 through July 5, 2026.
Text from The Cleveland Museum of Art website
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (French, 1819-1889) Monsieur Merlen 1861 Albumen print from wet collodion negative, uncut carte-de-visite proof print Image: 19.9 x 23.1cm (7 13/16 x 9 1/8 in.) Matted: 35.6 x 45.7cm (14 x 18 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Paula and Robert Hershkowitz in memory of Sam Wagstaff Public domain
The carte-de-visite process was so inexpensive, Monsieur Merlen felt he could clown around, riding a child’s toy horse in the first two exposures.
The carte-de-visite, a small photograph mounted on card stock, was patented by André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri in 1854. This efficient, inexpensive process employed a camera with four lenses and a sliding plate holder that produced eight sequential exposures on a single glass negative. The resulting paper print was cut into individual images. This uncut sheet, which includes several humorous views, was probably produced for the sitter’s approval. The low cost of the carte-de-visite led to the trend of collecting celebrity portraits. By 1862, Disdéri’s studio was producing over 2,000 prints a day, making him reputedly the world’s richest photographer.
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri
André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri French, 1819-1889
Disdéri is best known as a portraitist and populariser of the carte-de-visite. He spent 10 years as a painter and working in the theatre, and another five in the clothing business, before becoming seriously interested in photography around age 30. He first operated studios in Brest and Nîmes, then moved to Paris and opened a studio in 1854, and a second in 1863. In 1854 Disdéri patented the carte-de-visite, a method of producing a number of small images on a single negative that achieved great popularity. He later opened additional studios in London, Madrid, and Toulon. Disdéri was one of the best known portrait photographers of his day, with many important commissions and sitters. Like Mathew Brady, he was an innovator and entrepreneur as well as an artist. The carte-de-visite, which he did not invent, but rather adapted, helped photography to become increasingly versatile as a medium and available to people of all means. In 1879 Disdéri sold his business and moved to Nice. Despite his success, he died 10 years later in Paris in poverty, obscurity, and poor health. T.W.F.
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (French, 1819-1889) Village Scene (Southern France) c. 1853 Salted paper print from waxed-paper negative Image: 15.2 x 12.2cm (6 x 4 13/16 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri is best known for his development in Paris in 1854 of the carte-de-visite format for portraits. The year before, he was living in Southern France where he made this rural view. Disderi used waxed-paper negatives for only a short time. The oval cropping and picturesque scene – posed but seemingly spontaneous – suggest that this is meant to be an artistic, rather than a documentary, photograph.
Édouard Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, Paris c. 1860s Albumen print from collodion negative Image: 21.5 x 28.2cm (8 7/16 x 11 1/8 in.) Paper: 21.5 x 28.2cm (8 7/16 x 11 1/8 in.) Mounted: 32.6 x 43.5 cm (12 13/16 x 17 1/8 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund Public domain
For three decades starting in 1854, Paris was a construction site as Baron Haussmann replaced the crooked streets and crumbling buildings of medieval Paris with a modern city. The cobblestones in the foreground were for paving the newly expanded set of broad avenues that radiated from the Arc, part of Baron Haussmann’s urban renewal plans. Exposure times for film in the 1860s were usually too long to capture people in the street, but a man – perhaps the paver – paused long enough to leave his “ghost” to the left of the cobblestones.
Édouard Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Notre-Dame, Paris 1852-1853 Salted paper print from wet collodion negative Image: 29.5 x 44.7cm (11 5/8 x 17 5/8 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 61cm (20 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund
Édouard Baldus photographed the side of the famed cathedral to capture the volume of the structure. Visible from this angle are two workshops for the church’s restoration, some of the construction materials, and scaffolding on three of its flying buttresses (architectural structures that form an arch with the wall they support).
Édouard Baldus
Édouard Baldus French, b. Prussia, 1813 – 1889
The large and regal prints made by Édouard-Denis Baldus are widely agreed to be among the finest photographic images ever produced. After serving as an artillery officer in the Prussian army, Baldus left his native country for France during the 1830s to become a painter. He exhibited his paintings of religious subjects, portraits, and genre scenes in the Paris Salons from 1841 – 51 and was naturalized as a French citizen in 1849, the same year his interests turned to photography. Combining his training in painting with an inquisitive, inventive technical expertise, Baldus produced a body of work of exceptional quality and interest. His subjects included architecture, landscape, and engineering feats. In 1851 the Commission des monuments historiques selected him for the Missions héliographique – a government project that sponsored the photographing of endangered classical and medieval architecture in France. For this important series Baldus produced views of Burgundy, Provence, and the Dauphiné, and the following year he completed a commission for the Ministry of the Interior. In 1855 he began his photography of railroads, some of his most distinctive work. A copy of his album recording the line between Paris and Boulogne was presented to Queen Victoria. He also documented the flooding of the Rhone, as well as construction of the new Louvre and other Paris views. A founding member of the Société héliographique and a member of the Société française de photographie (1857), Baldus exhibited his photographs widely in London, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Brussels, and Paris and won numerous medals of award. A master printer, he produced combination prints in the early 1850s, frequently retouching his images with pencil and ink. His best work appears most often in specially assembled albums – such as Les principaux Monuments de la France reproduits en héliogravure par E. Baldus, published in 1875 from plates drawn from earlier negatives. Today, his work continues to be much sought after and to set a standard by which other photographers are judged. T.W.F.
Édouard Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Louvre, Façade rue de Rivoli, Paris 1855 Albumen print Image: 28 x 21.8cm (11 x 8 9/16 in.) Paper: 39.9 x 29.9cm (15 11/16 x 11 3/4 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of William and Margaret Lipscomb
Édouard Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris 1856-1857 Salted paper print, albumenised, from wet collodion negative Image: 44.5 x 34.3cm (17 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.) Matted: 61 x 50.8cm (24 x 20 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
In 1854, Édouard Baldus and two other artists were commissioned to record construction of the New Louvre. New wings joined the Louvre Palace, started in the late 1100s, to the Tuileries Palace, begun in 1564. The Pavilion Richelieu, completed shortly before this photograph was taken, originally housed governmental offices and only became part of the Louvre Museum in 1993.
Opening this weekend at the Cleveland Museum of Art, France in the Time of Manet and Morisot offers visitors a vivid view of the people, places, and defining moments that shaped 19th-century France. With approximately 50 photographs from CMA’s rich holdings, visitors will get a firsthand glimpse of the rapid industrial growth and political upheaval in this tumultuous, yet fertile, period of time.
This CMA-organised companion exhibition was designed to complement Manet & Morisot, the first ever major exhibition dedicated to the artistic exchange between Édouard Manet often referred to as the father of modern painting, and Berthe Morisot, the only woman among the founding members of the Impressionist movement. While Manet & Morisot travels nationally, this companion exhibition is uniquely presented at CMA, offering visitors an experience available only in Cleveland. Visitors to the CMA will have the opportunity to experience both exhibitions now through July 5, 2026.
“It’s truly a pleasure to share our rich holdings of 19th-century French photography alongside Manet & Morisot,” said Barbara Tannenbaum, curator of photography and chair of prints, drawings, and photographs. “In the mid-1800s, when the two painters were living in Paris, it became the largest city in continental Europe and the arts capital of the world. However, France also endured war and the loss of territory; experienced modernisation and the rise of industry; and saw a shift from rural to urban living. These events coincided with the birth of a new art form – photography – which was used to record these social, political, and cultural changes.”
In the 19th century, masters of the newfound photography medium, such as Charles Marville and Édouard Baldus, were commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III, the Louvre museum, and the railroads to document both historic monuments and the construction of new architectural and engineering marvels throughout the country.
This era also saw the rise of celebrity portraiture and of the public as patron. Actresses such as Sarah Bernhardt and popular authors Charles Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas, and others sat for photographers such as Nadar, André Adolphe-Eugene Disderi, and Étienne Carjat. The resulting portraits were printed – and sold – in large quantities to meet a soaring public demand for portraits of the luminaries of the time. When the rising urban middle class sought to have their own likenesses recorded, they flocked to the same studios.
France in the Time of Manet and Morisot, a free exhibition, will be on view in the Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Galleries from May 10, 2026, through August 23, 2026. Manet & Morisot, a ticketed exhibition, is on view in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Gallery through July 5, 2026.
“Together, these exhibitions offer a compelling portrait of a society in transition – one that visitors can now experience firsthand at the Cleveland Museum of Art,” said Tannenbaum.
Press release for The Cleveland Museum of Art
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Opéra (Rostral Column) c. 1875 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 37.7 x 26.7cm (14 13/16 x 10 1/2 in.) Mounted: 35.4 x 26.7cm (13 15/16 x 10 1/2 in.) Matted: 71.1 x 55.9cm (28 x 22 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Purchase from the Karl B. Goldfield Trust
In the 1800s, gas lamps replaced the oil lights. When Napoleon III commissioned a new opera house in Paris in 1860, it was surrounded by a “Ring of Light,” including this column with three gas streetlights. The opera house became the setting for Gaston LeRoux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, which inspired the 1976 musical and 2004 film.
Charles Marville
Charles Marville French, 1813-1879
At the invitation of the city of Paris, photographer Charles Marville was among the first to document the ancient quarters of his birthplace. His views, taken in the late 1850s, were intended to record the many buildings and neighborhoods ultimately destroyed by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s urban planning project that would create the boulevards and open spaces of modern Paris. While Marville’s survey of the city, extensive and thorough in scope, prefigured other important efforts of its kind, it is distinguished by its emotional accessibility. His work beautifully reveals a Paris that has long disappeared. Originally trained as a painter and illustrator, Marville worked with both calotype and glass plate negatives. He photographed in France, Italy, Germany, and Algeria, becoming most well known for his architectural imagery but also producing acclaimed landscapes and studies of trees. Many of Marville’s early views, often considered his best, were included in the albums of Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Évrard before the printer’s establishment in Lille closed in 1855. Named official photographer of Paris in 1862, Marville also served as photographer to the Imperial Museum of the Louvre and to King Vittorio Emmanuelle of Italy. T.W.F.
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Sky Study, Paris 1856-1857 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 15.3 x 21.4cm (6 x 8 7/16 in.) Matted: 40.6 x 50.8cm (16 x 20 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
Thirty years before the construction of the Eiffel Tower, Charles Marville made a series of views of the skies over Paris, some from various rooftops and others from his apartment window. This view frames the city so that the dome of the chapel of Les Invalides – a retirement home and hospital for military veterans – dominates the skyline. In the 1850s, the light-sensitive coatings for photographic plates were incapable of properly exposing both earth and the sky in a single shot. Marville here set his camera to capture the dramatic sky and clouds, which meant that the city below, for the most part, became a dark mass of undifferentiated buildings. The scale, drama, and majesty of this natural spectacle overwhelm human achievements.
Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) Rue de la Ferronnerie c. 1865 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 28 x 27cm (11 x 10 5/8 in.) Matted: 61 x 50.8cm (24 x 20 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Charles Marville preferred photographing on overcast, rainy days when diffused light and glistening cobblestones yielded an image with the maximum tonal range and detail. In 1865, the ground floor spaces on the Rue de la Ferronnerie or “street of ironwork” (named in 1229) were occupied by businesses including a café, a hotel, and a men’s clothing store. Apartments on the upper floors housed some of the many people who moved from the country into the city during the Second Empire.
Attributed to Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) La Belle Jardinère: le magasin de la rue de la Cité pendant sa demolition, Paris 1864-1866 Albumen print from collodion negative Image: 22.9 x 34.6cm (9 x 13 5/8 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
Founded in 1824, La Belle Jardinière (The Beautiful Gardener) department store pioneered the sale of ready-to-wear clothing for those of modest means.
The department store was located on the Ile de la Cité in the Seine in the middle of Paris. In 1864, as part of the renovation of the city, the government ordered that the store be replaced with a new building for the country’s oldest hospital. While there are numerous photographs of new structures and broad streets that resulted from Baron Haussmann’s urban renewal plan, views of the demolition of the old structures are rare.
Étienne Carjat (French, 1828–1906) Sarah Bernhardt in “Zaire” by Voltaire 1874 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 27.3 x 21.3cm (10 3/4 x 8 3/8 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 40.6cm (20 x 16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
Photographer Étienne Carjat established his reputation through celebrity portraiture. Famed French actress Sarah Bernhardt is seen here as the star of Zaire, a play by the French author Voltaire first performed in 1732. The actress, who studied sculpture, exhibited work in the Paris Salon for the first time in 1874. She just missed being in the same show as Morisot, who exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1864 to 1873, but in 1874 decided instead to show in the first Impressionist exhibition. Édouard Manet produced many portraits of actresses and performers.
Étienne Carjat
Étienne Carjat French, 1828-1906
Born in Fareins, Étienne Carjat and his friend and contemporary Nadar are considered the masters of 19th-century French portrait photography. Like Nadar, whose immense reputation tended to overshadow his own, Carjat was a caricaturist and journalist, and much involved in politics and the arts. In style, however, he was more straightforward and less overtly dramatic than Nadar, frequently portraying his subjects in simple settings and showing close attention to expression, pose, detail, and line. After study with Pierre Petit in 1858, Carjat first took up photography to produce his series Le Panthéon Parisien in the early 1860s. He had several studios in Paris, from which he conducted a portrait business and contributed to the important series Galeries des célébrités contemporaines. Among his sitters were Émile Zola, Antonio Rossini, Charles Baudelaire, and Gustave Courbet. Carjat was a founder of the satirical journal Diogène (1856), as well as an author, actor, poet, and playwright. He became less active in photography after 1867 and reportedly ceased altogether after 1875. In 1878 he and Nadar are believed to have been the only mourners at the burial of their fellow caricaturist, the acerbic Honoré Daumier. T.W.F.
Guglielmo Marconi (French, 1842 – after 1885) Male Nude c. 1870-1875 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 27.2 x 18.8cm (10 11/16 x 7 3/8 in.) Matted: 55.9 x 45.7cm (22 x 18 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
Guglielmo Marconi specialised in nude studies for use by painters and sculptors. Using children, women, and men as models, he photographed a variety of poses traditionally employed by models in academic studios. Artists purchased them because working from a photograph was much cheaper than hiring a live model.
Unknown photographer and maker Untitled (Case with portraits of a man and woman and hair ornaments) c. 1870s Photographs: photographs on enamel, framed in copper alloy metal frames; hair lockets: hair with pen and black and ink on cream-coloured backing; case: leather with metal push-clasp and velvet-lined interior Image: 3.5 x 3cm (1 3/8 x 1 3/16 in.) Case: 9 x 5 x 1cm (3 9/16 x 1 15/16 x 3/8 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John Cook Memorial Fund
The photographs of this man and woman, presumably husband and wife, are juxtaposed with clippings of their hair arranged to form their initials, A and M. In the late 1800s, photographic portraits and hair clippings combined in jewellery or frames served as mementos or memorials for loved ones. For permanence, the portraits here were vitrified on enamel, a process now used primarily for funerary monuments.
Camille Dolard (French, 1810-1884) Self-Portrait in Painting Studio c. 1843 Daguerreotype (full-plate) Platemark: 20.5 x 15cm (8 1/16 x 5 7/8 in.) Matted: 55.9 x 45.7cm (22 x 18 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Dolard, a portrait painter, may have offered photographs to prospective clients of lesser means. In this image, possibly made as an advertisement for his studio, he identifies himself as a painter, surrounded by the tools of the trade. The coat and the hookah suggest an interest in orientalism, a fashion that occupied many mid-19th-century artists. A remarkable technical achievement, this whole-plate image required Dolard to remain motionless for well over a minute, at least 30 times longer than the exposure for the smaller plates in the case below.
Camille Silvy (French, 1834-1910) The d’Orléans Family during a Fête Champêtre at Orléans House 1864 Enamelist: Lafon de Camarsac (French, 1821-1905) Enamelled photograph in original metal frame Plate: 11.5 x 15.5cm (4 1/2 x 6 1/8 in.) Framed: 27 x 29cm (10 5/8 x 11 7/16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Jo Hershey Selden Fund
The image celebrates the d’Orléans family, who abdicated the French throne during the Revolution of 1848 and settled in England. The setting for this group portrait is d’Orléans House in Twickenham, where the d’Orléans hosted numerous grand social events such as the garden party that occasioned this sitting. Many of these events raised money to support monarchist and other activities in France.
Camille Silvy (French, 1834-1910) The d’Orléans Family during a Fête Champêtre at Orléans House (detail) 1864 Enamelist: Lafon de Camarsac (French, 1821-1905) Enamelled photograph in original metal frame Plate: 11.5 x 15.5cm (4 1/2 x 6 1/8 in.) Framed: 27 x 29cm (10 5/8 x 11 7/16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Jo Hershey Selden Fund
Félix Thiollier (French, 1842-1914) Vue prise du Couvent des Dominicains, Chalais (Isère), France c. 1865 Albumen print from collodion negative Image: 13.1 x 20cm (5 3/16 x 7 7/8 in.) Paper: 13.1 x 20cm (5 3/16 x 7 7/8 in.) Mounted: 31.7 x 49.1cm (12 1/2 x 19 5/16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
Félix Thiollier brought to landscape photography the emotional power and mystery of the Barbizon and naturalist painters whom he collected and befriended. This dramatic view provides a deep vista more commonly found in photographs of the Western United States at the time. Underlying it, however, are a geometric structure of overlapping triangles, curved top border, and atmospheric clouds and mist that relate directly to precedents in painting.
Auguste-Rosalie Bisson (French, 1826–1900) and Louis-Auguste Bisson (French, 1814–1876) Mount Maudit, Savoy 1860 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 23.2 x 39.2cm (9 1/8 x 15 7/16 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 61cm (20 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art James Parmelee Fund
The Bisson brothers’ photograph of Mount Maudit – which translates as “cursed mountain” – makes the 14,649-foot peak seem inaccessible. In fact, it was not summited until 1878. Photographing at high altitudes necessitated climbing while carrying heavy equipment, including large glass plates and a portable darkroom, and required extraordinary technical prowess and speed in working with the chemicals at low temperatures.
Bisson Frères – consisting of brothers Louis-Auguste and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson, also known as the Bissons âiné and jeune (older and younger) – was one of the most celebrated and widely known French photographic studios and publishing houses of the 19th century. Begun by their father, a heraldic painter, the Bissons’ first studio opened in Paris in 1841, shortly after the invention of the daguerreotype. Louis-Auguste, a student of architecture and chemistry, learned photography directly from Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and went on to advance the medium through a number of inventions and techniques, contributions for which the brothers received considerable praise. He retired from the business in 1865. Auguste-Rosalie, perhaps the better known of the two, was responsible for some of their more spectacular photographic successes, including the first closeup views of the peaks of Mt. Blanc (1861). Among the Bissons’ many accomplishments and honors were a set of 900 daguerreotypes of the members of the French National Assembly, which were later published in lithographic copies; their appointment as official photographers to Napoléon III and Pope Pius IX; their role as founding members of the Société française de photographie; and their numerous and much-admired series of landscape, architectural, and portrait photographs. After his brother’s retirement, Auguste-Rosalie continued to work in photography, including a voyage to Egypt in 1869 and views of the Siege of Paris in 1871. As late as 1900, the year of his death, he patented a heliochrome process for the printing of photographs in color with ink. T.W.F.
Auguste Giraudon’s Artist (French) Man with Walking Stick Late 1870’s Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 17.1 x 11.2cm (6 3/4 x 4 7/16 in.) Paper: 17.1 x 11.2cm (6 3/4 x 4 7/16 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
During the 1870s, Giraudon commissioned one or more artists – probably a French painter who wished to remain anonymous – to create photographs of peasants. Now called Giraudon’s Artist, this photographer was one of the few in the 1800s specialising in rural figure studies created for use by artists. The images were likely taken near Barbizon, a destination popular with artists who wanted to work from nature. The artistry of these images derives from their skilful use of light, ability to render a subject in the landscape, and a perceptive depiction of human dignity.
Auguste Giraudon’s Artist (French) Female Peasant Carrying a Basket and Hay c. 1870 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 17.2 x 11.1cm (6 3/4 x 4 3/8 in.) Mounted: 20.7 x 15.8cm (8 1/8 x 6 1/4 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
Jules DuClos (French, 1824-1879) Pont-de-Buis, on the Doufine, France c. 1865 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 33.8 x 30.1cm (13 5/16 x 11 7/8 in.) Matted: 61 x 50.8cm (24 x 20 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
The extension of railroad service from Paris across Brittany in northern France occurred in stages between 1840 and 1865. Extending railway service required the construction of railway bridges such as this masonry viaduct which crosses the Doufine River near Pont-de-Buis. Jules DuClos shows it under construction, with timbers supporting the arches and a man standing in the river below.
Adolphe Braun (French, 1812-1877) Untitled (Farm Animals) 1850s Albumen print from wet collodion negative Image: 28 x 39.4cm (11 x 15 1/2 in.) Framed: 53.7 x 63.8cm (21 1/8 x 25 1/8 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 61cm (20 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
While the animals and farmers are in sharp focus in Adolphe Braun’s photograph, the buildings are blurred, suggesting that perhaps Braun intended to market these photographs to visual artists as models rather than intending them to be hung on people’s walls as a substitute for a painting.
Adolphe Braun
Adolphe Braun French, 1812-1877
Adolphe Braun, a French textile designer born in Besançon and trained in Paris, opened his own studio in Dornach, Alsace, before becoming involved in photography in the early 1850s. He produced several early floral textile designs that were published as lithographs. In 1853 Braun began work on a large album of some 300 photographic still-life studies of flowers, intended as aids for artists in the field of decorative arts. The work met with such success at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris that he left the field of design for photography. Braun’s carefully executed still lifes are considered to be among the finest ever done. From the mid-1850s on, Braun’s firm, Adolphe Braun et Cie., later headed by his son Gaston (1845-1928), became one of the world’s largest studios and publishers of topographical views and of reproductions of works of art. In the latter effort, their importance was in part due to Gaston’s success with the orthochromatic process, in which photographic reproductions retained a tonal range very close to that of the original work of art. Braun et Cie. were the official photographers to Napoléon III and Pope Pius IX. Their reproductions of works in the Louvre, the Sistine Chapel, and many other subjects in architecture, sculpture, painting, and drawing, sometimes using the more permanent carbon or Woodburytype processes, were offered in all sizes and formats, and became the standard in their field. The number of negatives taken by the Brauns or their operators was variously estimated in 1870 to be between 4,000 and 8,000. The Brauns were members of the Société française de photographie. Both were awarded the French Legion of Honor-Adolphe in 1860, and Gaston in 1892. T.W.F.
Adolphe Braun (French, 1812-1877) Young Alsacienne Woman c. 1871 Carbon print on a ruled mount Image: 40 x 30.5cm (15 3/4 x 12 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg
This woman wears a regional folk costume from the French region of Alsace, recalling traditions that were disappearing under the impact of industrialisation and modernisation.
At the end of the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia seized much of the regions of Alsace and Lorraine. That inspired Adolphe Braun to produce a series of images of women meant to personify those lost territories. The images proved so popular that they were reproduced on souvenir items including postcards and ceramic plates.
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884) The Bridge of Palalda (near Amelieles-Bains) 1851-1852 Salted paper print from waxed-paper negative Image: 23.8 x 32.7cm (9 3/8 x 12 7/8 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 61cm (20 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
In 1851, Gustave Le Gray and his friend, photographer Auguste Mestral, travelled throughout southwestern France for the Commission of Historic French Monuments to document sites of historical importance, especially those in urgent need of, or undergoing, restoration. This image was taken from the left bank of the Tech River, situated below the old town of Palalda, four miles from the Spanish border. Le Gray stressed the rugged landscape over a close-up rendering of the ancient bridge, which was not on his list of assigned sites.
Gustave Le Gray
Gustave Le Gray French, 1820-1884
A master both technically and aesthetically, Gustave Le Gray (born in Villiers-le-Bel) was one of the most important figures in 19th-century French photography, bringing to the medium artistic integrity and visual imagination. Le Gray, trained as a painter, was exhibiting his work in the Paris Salons in the late 1840s and early 1850s when he became interested in photography. Along with Henri Le Secq and Charles Nègre, he was a student of Paul Delaroche, a painter of considerable reputation and ability who was one of the first to grasp the importance of photography. In 1851 Le Gray announced his invention of a waxed paper negative, a significant improvement over earlier paper methods that was later adopted by Louis de Clercq, Dr. August Jakob Lorent, and others. That same year the Commission des Monuments historiques named him as one of five photographers of the Mission héliographique, for which he produced well-known studies of army manoeuvres at Chalons. Le Gray also worked with François Arago, the scientist and champion of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, and later proposed a new method of toning prints, among other innovations. Le Gray was perhaps most admired for the effects he achieved with water and sky. To capture the subtle qualities of cloud patterns in some of his seascapes, he employed two negatives to produce the final image. His commissioned studies of historic monuments are classic examples of early architectural photography. In the early 1850s he worked in the Barbizon tradition at Fontainebleau and, in 1860, documented the uprising against François II in Palermo. He was a founding member of the Société héliographique and the Société française de photographie. Despite his influence and artistic success, Le Gray left Paris in 1865 to become a professor of design at the École Polytechnique in Cairo. He died in Egypt. T.W.F.
Charles Soulier (French, 1840-1875) Notre Dame de Paris early 1860s Albumen print from glass negative Image: 38 x 30.6cm (14 15/16 x 12 1/16 in.) Matted: 71.1 x 61cm (28 x 24 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
When the popularity of Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame drew attention to the church, the state hired architect and preservationist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to restore it. His renovation, which lasted from 1844 to 1864, modified the cathedral: he added the spire, gargoyles, and griffins. Charles Soulier shows us the church’s front and some of the surrounding neighbourhood, bustling with carriages and new construction.
Charles Soulier
Charles Soulier French, 1840-1875
Charles Soulier operated in partnerships, first with A. Clouzard (1854-59) and later with Claude-Marie Ferrier and his son A. Ferrier (1860-64). Soulier was among the first to take naturalistic, snapshot-like views of Paris. His city street scenes were represented in an extensive set of glass stereographs, a medium preferred by Soulier for the delicacy of its reproductive range. Panoramas of the city were considered his specialty. In 1859 Soulier photographed Napoléon III on his campaign in Austria; he was later named photographer to the emperor. He became a member of the Société française de photographie in 1867 and in 1871 documented activities of the Paris Commune. His work includes topographical, urban, and landscape views, among them images of Mt. Blanc and other European scenery, as well as photographic reproductions of artwork. T.W.F.
Edmond Bacot (French, 1814-1875) Young Girl Seated on Straw, Leaning on a Basket 1862 Albumen print from wet collodion negative Paper: 22.7 x 18.2cm (8 15/16 x 7 3/16 in.) Matted: 50.8 x 40.6cm (20 x 16 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
While Impressionist painters were depicting women outdoors in gardens and parks, scenes of rural labor were popular subjects for many other painters. Those painters sometimes turned to photographs as models for the figures in those paintings. Another print of this photograph and several other images of the same girl were owned by the novelist Victor Hugo, a champion of the working classes. Edmond Bacot took them while visiting Hugo.
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève 1898 Albumen print, gold toned Image: 22 x 17.4cm (8 11/16 x 6 7/8 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art John L. Severance Fund
This narrow street, the site of the founding of the University of Paris in 1112, ends in a church built in the 1600s. Atget sold his photographs not as art but as “documents for artists,” similar in purpose to the nude studies other photographers made for use by painters. That may be why he photographed early in the morning, when a normally bustling street like this one was empty.
Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget French, 1857-1927
Relatively unknown to the public during his lifetime, Eugène Atget is today an icon – one of the most celebrated and influential photographers of the 20th century. Born near Bordeaux, Atget first directed his efforts to painting and the stage before turning to photography shortly before 1890. He is best known for his documentary scenes of Paris and Versailles, but he photographed a number of other sites as well. Atget viewed his work as a historical and aesthetic record, regarding it as documentation for use by artists. Indeed, several artists are known to have painted from his images. Using relatively unsophisticated, even outdated equipment, Atget achieved a view of French architecture and culture that is both personal and factual. Along with the rediscovery of the images of Mathew Brady in the early 20th century, the recognition of Atget’s artistic accomplishments shortly before his death by Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and others helped turn photographers away from the mannered style of Pictorialism toward the visual and technical clarity of modernism. Marked by a selective and highly individual method, his is among the most widely shown, published, and recognised work in photography today. T.W.F.
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927) Rue du Regard 1899 Albumen print, gold toned Image: 21.9 x 18.1cm (8 5/8 x 7 1/8 in.) Matted: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14 in.) The Cleveland Museum of Art Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
This entrance, which looks similar today, led into the courtyard for the “petit hôtel de Guiche,” built in the 1700s, which adjoined the larger “hôtel de Guiche.” Fragments of those buildings have been incorporated into the modern structures that now occupy the land behind the portal. The houses were named for the de Guiche family, aristocrats that occupied them in the mid-1700s. Their son was guillotined in 1794 following the French Revolution.
Cleveland Museum of Art 11150 East Boulevard Cleveland, Ohio 44106
Framing within a square or rectangle, Pflaum’s situational, observational photographs of everyday life in post-war Vienna are full of humans pictured singly or in groups against the urban backdrop.
The figures are rarely photographed front and centre with the photographer using the near-far compositional technique – placing a prominent object very close to the camera lens while capturing a distant figure or background for context – to create a strong three-dimensional depth within the image which enables the artist to enact a compelling visual story. Figures are also placed asymmetrically within the picture. Silhouetting is used to great effect as is the use of low depth of field.
There is a sense of “caught on the fly” abstraction in Pflaum’s personal work, even as her street photographs, her personal not commercial work, are eloquently structured, visualised and resolved, demonstrating “not only her extraordinary powers of observation, her humor, and her phenomenal sense of form, but also a profound social awareness.”
Part Henri Cartier-Bresson, part Edith Tudor-Hart, Pflaum’s enduring street photographs are strong and engaging and entirely her own vision. I just wish I had more of them to show you … but please enlarge the installation views of the exhibition in the posting to gain a greater appreciation of their presence.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to MAK Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Pflaum’s style was marked by poised restraint and subordination of the photographer to the motif, prioritising observation and patience over aggressive intervention, which lent her images an unconventional, artistic edge amid the era’s photojournalistic hustle. Influences from her graphic training extended to lighting and post-processing, where she favoured natural illumination and minimal alterations to preserve raw authenticity, while exchanging ideas with contemporaries like Franz Hubmann, Erich Lessing, and Harry Weber shaped her approach to dynamic yet empathetic framing. This method resulted in a oeuvre of standalone, motif-driven photographs that engaged viewers through subtle interpretive layers rather than overt narratives. …
Barbara Pflaum’s photography served as a visual chronicle of post-war Vienna and Austria during the Second Republic, capturing the city’s social and cultural revival from the 1950s to the 1970s through street scenes, urban portraits, and everyday vignettes. Her images documented the reconstruction era’s vibrancy, including spontaneous moments like pedestrians jumping over puddles on Heldenplatz (c. 1960) and leisure activities at the Prater amusement park with the Giant Ferris Wheel in the background (1961), highlighting the resilience of Viennese daily life amid lingering post-war recovery. These works portrayed ordinary figures – such as market women, newspaper sellers, and coal delivery workers – as typological subjects, emphasising authentic urban interactions without ideological overlay, as seen in her depiction of a motorcycle race on Wiener Höhenstraße (1956).”
Anonymous. “Barbara Pflaum,” on the Grokipedia website Nd [Online] Cited 31/07/2026
Barbara Pflaum (1912-2002) was one of the few women who worked as photojournalists for pictorial magazines in the 1950s.
Men dominated this profession in the first two postwar decades, while women in Europe and the United States returned to domestic life. This was not the case for Pflaum, who came across photography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she had taken up studies as a 40-year-old divorcée with three children.
Her photographs garnered the attention of several people. In 1954 she published her first reports – about Venice and about an experimental school in Sweden – in the Wiener Illustrierte newspaper. A short time later, she was hired as a photographer for the Wochenpresse weekly, where she worked for over 20 years. She and her classic Rolleiflex medium format camera could be found at most theatre and opera openings, vernissages, and most of all at political events.
Her portraits of heads of state, party leaders, and famous artists often adorned the cover pages of the weekly magazine. As the proud photographer of these images, she showed them in exhibitions throughout her life. The presentation at the MAK will show a different, less well-known side of her work – one that nowadays especially has the capacity to delight.
Between vernissages, conferences, and premieres, Barbara Pflaum tirelessly roamed the streets of Vienna and observed its inhabitants. Situational photographs and masterful portraits not only bring to light her extraordinary powers of observation, her sense of humour, and her phenomenal flair for form, but also reveal an encompassing social sensibility. Taken for herself, in passing – these photographs are the subject of the exhibition.
Some found their way into a Vienna photo book published by Pflaum in 1961, but many have never been released. The images show the city’s inhabitants going about their daily lives, as well as street protests, condemned neighbourhoods, and scenes from the annual Christmas markets.
From 15 April, the MAK dedicates a solo exhibition to Barbara Pflaum (1912–2002), a pioneer of Austrian press photography, in the MAK Works on Paper Room. With her extraordinary powers of observation and outstanding sense of form, Pflaum counts among the trailblazers of Austrian photojournalism in the 1950s. For over two decades, she helped shape the visual style of the Austrian weekly magazine Wochenpresse. Aged 40, divorced and a mother of three, Pflaum began studying at Vienna’s Academy of Applied Arts (now the University of Applied Arts Vienna) where she discovered photography and devoted herself to it with passion from then on. The exhibition at the MAK shows more than 100 photographs from the late 1950s and early 1960s, revealing an aspect of her work as yet little known: thoughtful, often humorous observations of everyday life in Vienna.
Pflaum received her first camera from her then-partner, the traveler, writer, and photographer Herbert Tichy in the early 1950s. At first, she mainly photographed her children and friends. These portraits caught the attention of the photo lab owner where she had her films developed. He encouraged her to submit her work to a magazine. As a result, Pflaum worked for the Wiener Illustrierte between 1954 and 1958. At the same time, she met the renowned Japanese-American photographer Yoichi Okamoto, head of the photo department at the US Information Service. Okamoto trained young photographers in modern photojournalism. Pflaum’s collaboration with Okamoto had a decisive influence on her style and led to her first publications in the Wiener Kurier.
Equipped with her classic medium-format camera, Pflaum had been photographing for the Wochenpresse since the mid-1950s, and was a regular presence at theatre and opera premieres, art exhibitions, political gatherings, and social events. She captured heads of state, party leaders, and international artists, and documented parliamentary debates, receptions, conferences, and cultural highlights. Many of her portraits of prominent figures appeared on the weekly magazine’s front cover – photographs of which she was particularly proud and which she repeatedly exhibited during her lifetime.
She consolidated her position as a photographer through her work in the press and exhibitions at Vienna’s Konzerthaus, as well as through her own publications. In addition to official commissions, she tirelessly documented everyday life in Vienna: people in coffee houses, at markets, in parks or at parades, passers-by, street vendors, children at play or people in public spaces. Of especial fascination for her was the city’s transformation: old neighborhoods undergoing renovation, demolition, new construction, or the beginning of gentrification.
Many of these photographs were taken, as it were, en passant – personal observations, some of which found their way into her 1961 picture volume, wie ist Wien? Most, however, remained unpublished, lying in the photographer’s archive for years. Today, these photographs offer a view of the city and its inhabitants that is as lively as it is humorous. They depict scenes of everyday life, as well as street protests, Christmas markets, and neighborhoods about to be demolished. At the same time, they document an urban atmosphere undergoing gradual change in post-war Vienna.
Most of the prints on display in the exhibition come directly from Pflaum’s own archive, which is now held by brandstaetter images. These are prints she made herself, some of which bear clear signs of wear – revealing their use as working materials.
A key element of Pflaum’s photographic style has to do with her camera of choice. She worked with a Rolleiflex, a large twin-lens camera for 6 x 6cm film. This technique required a deliberate and considered approach: the film had to be changed after every twelve exposures, and the image was composed in a square format. For publication in the press, which usually required rectangular image formats, the photographs had to be cropped later during enlargement. The Rolleiflex was held at hip height as the image was projected onto a ground glass screen on the top of the camera, meaning it could only be viewed from above.
Many of Pflaum’s photographs are characterised by their strong, multi-layered composition: often, a blurred foreground area structures the image, with the spatial context of the scene unfolding behind it. Only on a third level does the actual action take centre stage – a fleeting moment, an encounter, a gesture. This pictorial structure imbues the photographs with a sense of dynamism, steering the viewer’s gaze towards the essence of the image.
Pflaum’s gift for observation, her ability to “lie in wait” and capture the right moment, are remarkable, as is the originality of many of her compositions. Whether dealing with common photographic subjects such as markets or leisure activities, or with current events such as demonstrations, Pflaum always took care to draw attention to the people, ensure a dynamic energy in the image, and evoke associations. In this way, she was able to create a sense of narrative.
What emerges is a multi-layered photographic portrait of Vienna from more than half a century ago. Barbara Pflaum’s photographs also demonstrate the wealth of possibilities contained within even a fleeting moment on the street – provided it is observed with attentiveness, patience, and artistic sensitivity.
Karolina Ziębińska is a curator and art historian specializing in photography. From 2021 to 2025, she was director of the Museum of Warsaw. Prior to that, she was a curator at the Centre Pompidou in Paris from 2014 to 2020; Ziębińska also worked for ten years at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. In 2008, she co-founded the Archaeology of Photography Foundation. Karolina Ziębińska has curated over 50 exhibitions and edited numerous publications on photographers of note.
I read a comment about the exhibition On the Street Where I Live: Viva Gibb at the City Gallery, Melbourne on Instagram the other day. It described the exhibition as “charming”.
What does that mean? charming… it’s almost as bad as calling an artist’s work “nice”. I’m sure if someone called my work “charming” I would take a turn and I think that Viva Gibb would be rolling in her grave if she heard the comment.
Let us be clear. Viva Gibb’s 1970s-1980s social documentary portraits of the people of inner city Melbourne (specifically North and West Melbourne) centred around her studio in Capel Street are direct, tough, intimate, compassionate, empathetic, feminist, political (in a socialist sense) and strongly humanist photographs of the people of her neighbourhoods and the working class suburbs in which they lived. Everyday people, human dignity, and social connection.
Through “mid or long shots, with the subject captured in relation to their environment,” Gibb’s photographs picture the day-to-day lives of the people that surrounded her, people that she had a connection with and wanted to photograph. As she said, “I only ask them for a photograph if I am interested in that person, if there is something in the whole story about them.”
Gibb photographed the people of these suburbs, people who formed countercultural communities of artists and intellectuals, cafe owners and customers, butchers and bakers, the old, the young, punks, dating couples and the homeless. She photographed facets of their life revealing within the images their innate dignity (every person has high value and deep worth simply because they are human), often using a multi-image convention to capture their essence, returning to photograph them over an extended time period. She built a relationship with people for however short or long a time in order to tell their story.
“The people in my photographs are those who have survived at all odds – socially, racially, and economically – in our essentially bourgeois society; the lonely man next door, the old people who have lived in the area all their lives and are threatened with eviction, the homeless man whose only dream is to have a room of his own.”
Through her photographs we can feel the transformation of a moment into a story unfolded by observation.
As Walker Evans observed, “Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt.”
The defining of observation full and felt. There goes Viva…
In one sense the hang of the exhibition, in photo cloud form, emphasises the interconnectedness of all people and all things within these communities, but conversely the viewer can become overwhelmed by the amount of photographs. Collectively, they become more of a sociological project rather than photographs with an individual aura. It is only when one stops and slows down and contemplates the individual portraits does one begin to admire the majesty of Gibb’s achievement.
Using a Rolleiflex medium-format camera for most of her portraiture so that she could look down into the camera while having a direct relationship to the person being photographed (not a camera held to the eye) one can see how, as James McArdle observes, she built the trust of the person being photographed. “… one can see how Viva is standing above her camera or beside it, in eye contact with her subject, perhaps talking to them, calmly or animatedly depending on the reaction desired, as she presses the shutter.”
Much like Diane Arbus using a Rolleiflex in New York, here in Gibb’s photographs there is a direct engagement with the reality of the world. This is never more evident than in my favourite part of the exhibition, her personal photo albums: The Street Where I Live 1974-1978; Boppin’ in West Melbourne; West Melb. 1980-1985; Those were the days my friend (below).
In the small photographs stuck into personal photo albums we can viscerally feel the power and intimacy of Gibb’s passion project. We can observe in the sequencing of images of the city, houses, streets, businesses and people, how she created stories about the people and places for which she cared dearly. And her love of dogs! Always people with dogs – Amelia and the new puppy; Betty and her dogs, Stanley St. Here, no overblown gigantic photographs that have no need to be that big, that have no presence, instead powerful, intimate photographs of a Melbourne now vanished from our sight through gentrification.
I remember coming to live in Melbourne in the mid-1980s from England and these suburbs, these characters, were still alive and present. No longer. While community groups tried to protect their suburbs and ways of life at the time, and the heritage buildings survived, council auctioned off the properties it had accumulated. “Most residents, unable to afford their properties, were forced to move on.” Caring communities built up over decades were destroyed.
Much the same is happening in contemporary Melbourne suburbs with the destruction of long standing community housing throughout the city. Under the guise of modernisation and money, and the increase in high density living in the city, communities are being torn apart with little or no recourse for low income human beings or their wishes. Public housing blocks are being torn down all over the city, the land given by the government to private developers for “mixed housing development” which combines private market-rate homes with affordable or social housing. Except social housing only ever makes up about 20% of the project. As usual it’s all about the money, ignoring the fact that it is destroying communities that have been there for decades. Shame on councils, supposed community housing associations and unscrupulous developers (please see Marcus Bunyan. “Frederick Oswald Barnett (Australian, 1883-1972),” on the Art Blart website, 23rd February, 2024; and Rachael Dexter. “Developer quietly guts ‘affordable’ housing promise in northern suburbs,” on The Age website, March 3, 2026 [Online] both cited 24/07/2026).
This brings me to the title of this piece of text taken from the front of Gibb’s photo album West Melb. 1980-1985: “Please handle with care -” followed by the admonishment “these photos are delicate”. These words can serve as metaphor for the de/generations of society that Gibb photographed and the subsequent loss of culture and community … a process that is only increasing today. While Gibb was “deeply aware, socially engaged and heartfelt” in her interactions with community and the stories she was telling – and this passion is embodied, embedded in her images – her photos are, still, delicate as she states, much like the lives of the people and communities depicted in them. Human beings need nature and nurture surrounding them, not huge four wheel drives, grand designs and high density living where you don’t even know your neighbour.
Caring for the counterculture, caring for the people around you, is a sign of a robust, flourishing society. Gibb’s tangible photographs convince us that such a proposition is true.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. If you would like to know about the history, cultural and political background of this inspirational artist please read my friend James McArdle’s in depth research on Viva Gibb in the text “Stance,” on the On This Date In Photography website, March 19, 2026.
PPS. I love how people are smiling in the photographs!
Many thankx to the City Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I don’t really deal with people I don’t know… I only ask them for a photograph if I am interested in that person, if there is something in the whole story about them.”
Viva Gibb
“The people in my photographs are those who have survived at all odds – socially, racially, and economically – in our essentially bourgeois society; the lonely man next door, the old people who have lived in the area all their lives and are threatened with eviction, the homeless man whose only dream is to have a room of his own. In photographing the commonplace of the apparently trivial event of a woman holding her baby or a man standing in front of his home, I can see the transformation of a moment into a story unfolded by observation; the little dog by her side, the tender way the man puts his hand on her shoulder, the expression in her eyes, the garden, the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the city skyscrapers in the background and the traffic zooming past. The details fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, presenting a story of a lifetime and a constant reminder of the fragility of life itself. As an individual and an artist I can only hope to present a reality other than that presented by TV and the media. I believe that with humanity, compassion, and a re-examination of past values we can counter the destructive forces that threaten the very existence of a living environment on this earth.”
Viva Gibb, “In the Land of the Living (1981),” in Virginia Coventry (ed.), The Critical Distance: work with photography, politics, writing, exh. cat., Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1986, p. 92 quoted in Smith, Savannah; Garner, Helen; Maddison, Ruth (2026). On the streets where I live : Viva Gibb’s portrait of North and West Melbourne. Melbourne, Vic.: City of Melbourne, p. 15. Exhibition catalogue
“Gibb’s sympathetic representation of the urban environment was undergirded by her socio-political beliefs and compassionate worldview. She was alive to the forces of change impacting the lives of those around her and fiercely critical of one social class or race dominating another. Gibb was increasingly angered by wealth and expansion being valued at the expense of all else. She was troubled by environmental degradation and was an animal welfare advocate – a vegetarian from the age of 16 and a vegan later in life. She was also deeply concerned about the treatment and deprivations of First Nations people and the plight of those establishing new lives in Australia.”
Smith, Savannah; Garner, Helen; Maddison, Ruth (2026). On the streets where I live : Viva Gibb’s portrait of North and West Melbourne. Melbourne, Vic.: City of Melbourne, p. 14. Exhibition catalogue
Gibb’s portrait of North and West Melbourne is an important record of an inner urban area during a transformative moment in Melbourne’s history. On the city’s streets, radical countercultural ideals for a progressive society flourished through the activism of young people, while at the same time another chapter of the city’s history would close. In the 1970s and 1980s, amid the gentrification of the inner suburbs, West Melbourne flew under the radar for longer than most. It provided a countercultural community, which included artists and intellectuals, with low-cost space in which to live and work. Gibb’s house and studio were central to this community, a ‘social hub’ for ‘artists of all kinds, from the Pram Factory or the nascent Circus Oz’.10 For a period, they lived alongside longtime residents of the semi-industrial suburb. West Melbourne’s proximity to the railway, the docks and CBD meant it had been home to many working-class and migrant people who laboured in nearby industries or at Queen Victoria Market. Gibb’s photographs capture this amalgamated community – old and new – at this precise moment in time.
Capel Street was a focal point in this story of inner-suburban transformation. Many dilapidated properties in the area were leased out by Melbourne City Council following their acquisition ahead of the proposed redevelopment of the Queen Victoria Market. Gibb herself had moved to Capel Street as a council tenant. When the market redevelopment was abandoned in 1976, council’s continued property acquisition caused alarm among residents and business owners alike regarding the undisclosed intentions for the area. In response, the Capel Street and Peel Street Action Group was formed, of which Gibb was an active member. The group’s two concerns were the conservation of the Victorian-era terraces and cottages and compulsory eviction of long-term residents. Many of the heritage buildings survived, but the group was ultimately unsuccessful in protecting the community. Council began auctioning off the properties in December 1990. Most residents, unable to afford their properties, were forced to move on. …
Viva Gibb’s photographs express the sophisticated practice of an artist who cared deeply for her community and the world at large. Through her work we come to know a vibrant group of individuals, captured in their day-to-day lives. Her photographs are an important historical and cultural record that reminds us of the importance of people in our city’s history and future. But these images also offer a glimpse of Viva herself and her unique perspective on the world: her genuine compassion and affection for people, for animals and for the environment. Viva’s portrait of North and West Melbourne is distinctively hers – deeply aware, socially engaged and heartfelt.
10/ Niels Hutchison, ‘Appendix Five: Interview with Niels Hutchison, 13 February 2019’, in Jean Ely (ed.), Preserving Melbourne’s Colonial Past: Capel Street West Melbourne, 2019, p. 60
Smith, Savannah; Garner, Helen; Maddison, Ruth (2026). On the streets where I live : Viva Gibb’s portrait of North and West Melbourne. Melbourne, Vic.: City of Melbourne, pp. 16-17. Exhibition catalogue
Viva Gibb was a part of the group of ‘northside’ social documentary photographers of the 1970s and 1980s (Ruth Maddison, Ponch Hawkes, Micky Allan, Helen Grace). She documented the suburbs of North and West Melbourne – where she lived – creating a distinctive, sympathetic portrait of her community during a transformative period in Melbourne’s history.
The exhibition has come about following a major donation of over 200 of Gibb’s photographs made to the Melbourne Art Trust in 2025, and will be the largest display of her work in over 30 years. The show features more than 250 images, including the artist’s photo albums. We have also published a small catalogue for the exhibition, which includes reflections written by Ruth Maddison and Helen Garner.
Text from the City Gallery website
“[Gibb] worked with a Rolleiflex medium-format camera for most of her portraiture, and a large-format 4 x 5-inch Graflex Speed Graphic press camera, tools that supported her patience and purpose, and built the trust of the person being photographed. The use of both offsets that sense of being scrutinised directly by the photographer that is imposed by an eye-level viewfinder or reflex camera, and one can see how Viva is standing above her camera or beside it, in eye contact with her subject, perhaps talking to them, calmly or animatedly depending on the reaction desired, as she presses the shutter.”
Associate Professor James McArdle. “Stance,” on the On This Date In Photography website, March 19, 2026 [Online] Cited 06/07/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
In 2025, Melbourne Art Trust acquired a major donation by artist and social-documentary photographer Viva Jillian Gibb (1945-2017). Generously made by the artist’s children, Sybil Gibb and Rupert Duffy, it comprises more than 200 silver gelatin photographs taken between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. On the street where I live showcases works from this donation, alongside several prints and photo albums loaned from the artist’s family. Taking its title from one of these albums, the exhibition re-examines this period of Gibb’s practice, reintroducing an artist whose vast body of work has largely lain dormant for three decades.
Born in Bobinawarrah, Victoria, Gibb was first and foremost an artist. She was unwavering in her pursuit of this. She undertook a diploma of art at Wangaratta Technical College (1961-65); moved to Melbourne to study painting at the National Gallery Art School (1965-68); and studied printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA; 1973-74). Photography became the focus of her practice only after her postgraduate study.
Moving to West Melbourne in 1975, Gibb quickly established her first dedicated darkroom at 72 Capel Street. Her technical printmaking skills carried over to photography’s hands-on processes. She had an array of photographic papers, often shooting to print on a particular paper. Her son Rupert recalls, “she knew exactly how black she wanted her blacks to be and how bright her highlights were and knew her exposures so well that she was rarely wasteful with film’.1 She worked with a Rolleiflex medium-format camera and a large-format 4 x 5” Graflex Speed Graphic press camera.
The community of North and West Melbourne was Gibb’s foremost subject between the mid-1970s and early 1990s. Her sustained documentation of those living and working in this area remains unmatched. The prolific nature of her practice is evident in the number of photographs – more than 250 – on display in this exhibition, a small fraction of the work she produced.
In the late 1980s, Gibb’s commitment to social justice led her to South Africa, where she documented people’s lives in towns and villages under apartheid. She also travelled to Hong Kong and China, photographing markets and sacred sites for a series titled Of Gods and Animals, which commented on the contrast between spiritual traditions and lived realities.
Returning to Australia, Gibb noted the lack of photographic training opportunities for Aboriginal women. In response, she approached the Victorian Women’s Trust for funding to facilitate a photography cadetship program. The first recipients of these funded cadetships were Maree Clarke and Kim Kruger.
Gibb began what would become her last photographic series in the 1990s. The Way: Religious Ceremonies in Victoria documented the ceremonies and events of multicultural communities. She wanted to draw attention to the historical significance of these events, especially for migrants, who she saw as having managed, against great odds, to maintain their cultural practices in Australia.
The premature end of Gibb’s practice, around 2000, was likely brought about by the digital turn in photography, changes to which she never adapted. She kept photographically documenting her friends and family but returned to painting until she passed away in 2017.
From her first solo exhibition in 1978, Gibb’s work was exhibited throughout the 1980s, including at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and National Gallery of Australia. Today, her photographs are held in significant public collections across the country. In 2019, the Museum of Australian Photography was the first public gallery to show her work in more than 30 years. On the street where I live builds on this, situating Gibb’s work in relation to her contemporaries and the broader social, political and cultural context of the time.
Text from Smith, Savannah; Garner, Helen; Maddison, Ruth (2026). On the streets where I live: Viva Gibb’s portrait of North and West Melbourne. Melbourne, Vic.: City of Melbourne, pp. 6-7. Exhibition catalogue
Work and Life
At the Studio
North Melbourne
Hawke Street
Victoria Street
Installation views of the exhibition On the Street Where I Live: Viva Gibb at the City Gallery, Melbourne, March – August, 2026 Photos: Tobias Titz
The rehabilitation of Gibb’s reputation has come in two stages, each through a different institutional imperative. The first was the 2019 donation by her children, Sybil Gibb and Rupert Duffy, of a significant body of work to the Monash Gallery of Art (now the Museum of Australian Photography, or MAPh). This gift – silver gelatin prints from the West and North Melbourne years – led directly to A Place in Time: Photographs by Viva Gibb, which opened at MAPh in July 2019. It was, as the institution noted, the first public gallery showing of her work in more than thirty years. MAPh’s interest was in photography’s history: Gibb as a figure in Australian documentary practice, her technical mastery of the silver gelatin print, her place in the feminist photography network of the 1970s and ’80s.
The second act of institutional recognition came in 2025, when Sybil and Rupert donated over 200 silver gelatin prints to the Melbourne Art Trust – managed by the City of Melbourne’s Art and Heritage Collection. This donation, which came about through a stroke of chance (a separate donor mentioned Sybil Gibb to curator Savannah Smith, who then made contact), led to On the Street Where I Live: Viva Gibb’s Portrait of North and West Melbourne, which opened at City Gallery in Melbourne Town Hall on 12 March 2026 and runs until 7 August.
The City of Melbourne’s interest is civic and historical: Gibb’s photographs are a record of what West Melbourne was before gentrification arrived, before council auctioned off the properties it had accumulated, before the working-class and migrant community was priced out and dispersed. The exhibition is partly an act of municipal memory – an acknowledgement of what was lost when, in Gibb’s own words, “all those interesting faces which told a story” were gone.
These are not contradictory interests, but distinct, and reveal how photographic reputations may be restored: through the convergence of estate generosity, curatorial initiative, and institutional need. The photographs remain the same; what changed was who needed them, and why.
Associate Professor James McArdle. “Stance,” on the On This Date In Photography website, March 19, 2026 [Online] Cited 06/07/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Viva Gibb albums
Installation view of the exhibition On the Street Where I Live: Viva Gibb at the City Gallery, Melbourne, March – August, 2026 showing Viva Gibb’s photo albums in a display case Photos: Tobias Titz
The Street Where I Live 1974-1978 photo album
The Street Where I Live photo album
Boppin’ in West Melbourne photo album
West Melb. 1980-1985 photo album
Those were the days my friend photo album
City Gallery Enter via Customer Service City Gallery 110 Swanston St Melbourne 3000
“This is where I think that Siskind was less than happy with the results of his documentary photographs – that they weren’t giving him what he wanted out of his art: that interface of the image and imagination.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
July 2026
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Boys in Empty Tenement c. 1935 Gelatin silver print
Image and imagination
I always find it fascinating to view the first few years of an artist’s journey, the golden path they take, for it more than likely informs all that is to come.
In the greatest abstract expressionist photographer the world has known, Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991), his starting point was as a straight documentary photographer, a member of the New York Photo League, a “left-leaning documentary collective, which prioritised using photography to advocate for social change.”
Using a large format camera and tripod Siskind, for his photo project Harlem Document, captured “the vibrancy, harsh realities, and daily life of the Black community in Harlem” – images which had their roots in American social documentary photography of the period and photographers such as Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and the photographers of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) government program (1935-1944) which documented the struggles of rural Americans during the Great Depression.
As I have written in a 2023 text titled “Transcending reality”, “To my mind American photographers of the 1930s took photographs not only to document but also to honor what was greater and more interesting than they were. Not as a melding of reality-dream … but as an exploration of what is possible through the interface of the image and imagination, the interface as Ansel Adams put it “between the reality of the world and the reality of yourself”.”
This is where I think that Siskind was less than happy with the results of his documentary photographs – that they weren’t giving him what he wanted out of his art: that interface of the image and imagination.
“In working from the documentary approach, I had always tried to find what kind of meaning you could get in a picture of that kind, and was beginning to feel that I was not getting it. I felt I wasn’t getting anything really personal, really powerful and special…. My documentary pictures were very quiet and very formal.”1
Moving into the 1940s Siskind began experimenting with more abstract compositions (with their link to Abstract Expressionist painting). Evidence of this reorientation in his image making can already be seen in some of the documentary photographs in this posting. For example, the photographs Facades (1938, below) and Harlem (1938, below) both propose the flattening of the photographic surface with an interest in the geometry and abstraction of form – circle, oblong, square, diagonal, curve, line – within the pictorial plane, but with an attendant emphasis on light, texture and tone.
“Though he did not create the lines, shapes, rhythms and patterns in his images, he nonetheless expressed the lyricism of their relationships by harmoniously arriving at the perfect composition. And though his abstract photographs possessed undeniable content, he subverted that content by offering new interpretive possibilities based on the feelings the images conveyed.”2
Image and imagination.
Thus, Siskind was intelligent enough, was aware and informed enough, of his feelings towards the world and the cultural developments around him to approach a crossroads in his development as an artist, to recognise, that is the key word, to recognise the path he needed, he wanted to take.
And so we are forever grateful to have his abstract expressionist photographs that his spirit guided him towards, photographs that may also light our own path.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. I have added relevant information on Siskind’s art practice, theatres, and ballrooms where possible and I have also included an extract from Gordon Parks’ forward to Siskind’s book Harlem Document.
1/ Jaromir Stephany unpublished interview with Aaron Siskind, February 1963. This interview is in the private papers of Jaormir Stephany quoted in Marcia Battle. “Harlem: A Document,” in Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, pp. 4-6
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Photography has tremendous social value. Upon the photographer rests the responsibility and duty of recording a true image of the world as it is today. Moreover, he must not only show us how we live, but indicate the logical development of our lives.”
Photo Notes, newsletter of the Photo League, August 1938
Aaron Siskind’s photographs from 1935-1940 form the core of the Harlem Document, a landmark sociological and visual study commissioned by the New York Photo League. Siskind headed the Feature Group of this radical, left-leaning documentary collective, which prioritised using photography to advocate for social change. The images capture the vibrancy, harsh realities, and daily life of the Black community in Harlem during the Great Depression.
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Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Kitchen Scene 1937 Gelatin silver print
From 1937 to 1944, Siskind took pictures in and around Harlem – of its businesses, domestic interiors, religious and social organisations, and nightlife. He did so as a member of the New York Photo League – a documentary photography collective with roots in radical leftist politics – and in collaboration with journalist and sociologist Michael Carter and other photographers as part of a cultural study of Harlem. In 1981 fifty-two of Siskind’s images were published in the book Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940 alongside first-person interviews conducted in the late 1930s by writers employed by the Federal Writers Project, including novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison.
MoMA Gallery label from 2024
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Apollo Theater 1937 Gelatin silver print
Apollo Theater
Since opening its doors in 1914 and introducing the first Amateur Night contests in 1934, The Apollo has played a major role in the emergence of jazz, swing, bebop, R&B, gospel, blues, and soul – all quintessentially American music genres. Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Sammy Davis Jr., James Brown, Gladys Knight, Luther Vandross, D’Angelo, Lauryn Hill, and countless others began their road to stardom on the Apollo stage. Today, The Apollo is a respected nonprofit presenting concerts, theatrical and dance performances, film screenings, educational programs, and community outreach programs.
The neoclassical theater known today as The Apollo’s Historic Theater was designed by George Keister and first owned by Sidney Cohen. In 1914, Benjamin Hurtig and Harry Seamon obtained a thirty-year lease on the newly constructed theater, calling it Hurtig and Seamon’s New Burlesque Theater. Like many American theaters during this time, African-Americans were not allowed to attend as patrons or to perform.
In 1933, Fiorello La Guardia, who would later become New York City’s Mayor, began a campaign against burlesque, and Hurtig & Seamon’s was one of many theaters that would close down. Cohen reopened the building as the 125th Street Apollo Theatre in 1934 with his partner, Morris Sussman, serving as manager. Cohen and Sussman changed the format of the shows from burlesque to variety revues and redirected their marketing attention to the growing African-American community in Harlem.
Frank Schiffman and Leo Brecher took over The Apollo in 1935. The Schiffman and Brecher families would operate the Theater until the late 1970s. The Apollo reopened briefly in 1978 under new management then closed again in November 1979. In 1981, it was purchased by Percy Sutton, a prominent lawyer, politician, media and technology executive, and a group of private investors. Under Sutton’s ownership, the Theater was equipped with a recording and television studio.
Text from the Apollo Theater website. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Lady In Kitchen 1937 Gelatin silver print
Aaron Siskind’s artistic trajectory parallels broader shifts within mid-20th-century American photography. In the 1930s he cut his teeth as a documentary photographer affiliated with the Workers Film and Photo League, an artists’ cooperative that strove to advance progressive political causes. The following decade saw him turn away from studies of society. For the remainder of his career, he created still lifes that aimed to articulate interior states through near-abstract visual fields. Of this dramatic shift in his practice, the artist said, “For some reason or other there was in me the desire to see the world clean and fresh and alive.”1
Siskind’s documentary work was carefully planned and researched in advance. He honed this approach at the Film and Photo League, which he joined in 1933, only three years after receiving his first camera as a honeymoon gift. Among this community of photographers and filmmakers – many of them, like Siskind, the New York-born children of Jewish immigrants – he found technical guidance and critical feedback. When the League’s photographers broke from its filmmakers to establish the standalone Photo League in 1936, Siskind helped form its Feature Group, a unit dedicated to creating photo essays like those appearing in LIFE magazine and being produced by the Farm Security Administration. Collaborative at its core, the Feature Group prioritised the free exchange of ideas: each project began with a discussion of how to approach photographing its subject and ended with the group assessing their effort collectively. “We discovered a relationship between the clarity of one’s thought and feeling and the clarity of picture-making,” Siskind recalled of these formative dialogues.2
Of the many projects the Feature Group completed during Siskind’s four years of leadership, its most extended and ambitious was Harlem Document. This expansive cultural study of Harlem, undertaken between 1937 and 1940 in close consultation with the sociologist Michael Carter, originally aimed to produce a photographically illustrated book authored by Carter. Although the publication never materialised, Siskind’s photographs for Harlem Document indicate the project’s ambitious scope, depicting street life, domestic interiors, and gathering spots ranging from churches to dance halls to theaters.
Samuel Allen, Curatorial Assistant, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography, 2025 on the MoMA website [Online] Cited 14/07/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
1/ Aaron Siskind, “The Drama of Objects,” Minicam Photography 8, no. 9 (June 1945), 23.
The Lafayette Theatre (1912–1951), known locally as “the House Beautiful”, was one of the most famous theaters in the Harlem neighbourhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was an entertainment venue located at 132nd Street and 7th Avenue. The first major theatre in New York to desegregate, in its early history the theatre was home to the African American repertory theatre company the Lafayette Players. This group was originally founded by Anita Bush as Anita Bush Stock Company in 1914 and became a part of the Lafayette Theatre in 1916 when the theatre bought the stock company. The Lafayette Players was a successful company from the 1910s through the 1930s; after which the company floundered. In 1951 the theatre closed and was sold to the Williams Institutional Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. The structure was demolished in 2013.
Aaron Siskind’s Harlem document, a mirror of my own past, speaks explicitly for itself. It is an ongoing memory of black people living in crowded kitchenettes; suffering the loneliness of rented bedrooms; prating in leftover churches, and grasping a patch of happiness whenever and wherever they could find it. It is a nostalgic look at a kind of past that threatens to hang around Harlem for a long time to come – to doom it to further frustration and unrest. Those same tenements that once imprisoned me are still there, refusing to crumble, holding other restless black boys for sentence without trial.
I remember swarms of slow-moving people, moving close together up on Lenox Avenue – past child shacks, rib joints, funeral parlours and storefront churches- knowing one another but seldom bothering to speak. A city of blackness crammed inside a white city where, when you walked our the door, you became a stranger. …
Harlem has meant a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, in those days, it meant hunger, cultural devastation, unrequited longing and disillusionment. To others it was the swinging, exciting capitol of the entire Black world, the exotic Mecca of melting music, good times and dancing feet. Yet, for some, it was a sanctuary where loftier dreams were fostered; where now and then some of those dreams were realised, but where mostly they were hopelessly spent. To just about everyone who has worked in the vital processes of its survival, whose life has been textured by its tradition, Harlem is a place that won’t give up. Wobbly now under the impact of the past decades, its history mirror those problems its mother country once endured.
Extract from Gordon Parks. “Foreword,” in Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Street Scene 1937 Gelatin silver print
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Wishing Tree 1937 Gelatin silver print
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Church Interior 1938 Gelatin silver print
Aaron Siskind’s interest in photography developed after his experiences with both music and poetry when he was an English teacher in the New York public school system. His early pictures were said to have been attempts at transferring musical and poetic concepts into images.2 Later, as a young adult, Siskind did everything from making political speeches on soapboxes in Manhattan to becoming a member of the Junior Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL).3
A friend gave Siskind his first camera in 1930. He soon discovered his attraction for the instrument, and almost simultaneously he discovered and joined the Photo league. At the League he found people who shared his political and social concerns and who were capable and willing to discuss technical information about photography. Many of the members were children of Jewish immigrants and most, like Siskind, were well educated. Their exhibited images documented illiteracy, discrimination, and poverty and called for social reforms on behalf of the working classes. Before joining the League, Siskind had already photographed some of the poverty-stricken areas of Manhattan and was searching for reaction and criticism to these pictures. …
As a photographer Siskind explored symbols and metaphors to create a visual relationship that balanced aesthetic concerns with social documents. Throughout his career the contrast of subject and symbol have dominated. …
With his work in Harlem Siskind’s style may have been changing. “In working from the documentary approach, I had always tried to find what kind of meaning you could get in a picture of that kind, and was beginning to feel that I was not getting it. I felt I wasn’t getting anything really personal, really powerful and special…. My documentary picture were very quiet and very formal.”4
Extract from Marcia Battle. “Harlem: A Document,” in Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, pp. 4-6. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
2/ Carl Chiarenza, Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors (Little, Brown and Co.,), 6.
3/ Carl Chiarenza, “Form and Content in the Early Work of Aaron Siskind,” The Massachusetts Review 19:4 (Winter 1978): 810.
4/ Jaromir Stephany unpublished interview with Aaron Siskind, February 1963. This interview is in the private papers of Jaormir Stephany.
The “Savoy Dancers” refer to the pioneering African American dancers who developed the Lindy Hop and other swing dances at the legendary Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, New York. Open from 1926 to 1958, the integrated ballroom housed iconic performers like Frankie Manning and Norma Miller who defined the “home of happy feet”.
These legendary dancers revolutionised social dancing by bringing athleticism, airborne aerials, and improvisational jazz styling to the Lindy Hop. Their legacy continues to thrive through modern swing dance communities and archival footage preserved in documentaries like The Spirit Moves.
About the Savoy Ballroom
From 1926 to 1958, the Savoy Ballroom stood at 596 Lenox Avenue as one of the first racially integrated public spaces in the United States. Its 10,000-square-foot, spring-loaded dance floor welcomed thousands nightly and launched a global dance phenomenon. The Savoy hosted legendary artists including Chick Webb, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie, cementing its place at the heart of Harlem’s cultural history.
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) St. Joseph’s House – The Catholic Worker Movement c. 1939 Gelatin silver print
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Grocery Store 1940 Gelatin silver print
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Lady and Lamp 1940 Gelatin silver print
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Street Scene 1940 Gelatin silver print
Aaron Siskind (American, 1902-1991) Watermelon Man 1940 Gelatin silver print
“Evans took photographs worth taking – unadorned, clearly seen, focused, descriptive photographs (of ordinary things) of the utmost beauty and honesty.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
In the medium of photography the work of the American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975) is rightly exalted, subject to the highest praise. “His work directly inspired photographers like Robert Frank, Helen Levitt, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Bernd and Hilla Becher.” Some of the most important photographers of the 20th century.
In the near 18 year history of Art Blart his importance can be gauged by the number of exhibition postings he has accumulated over the journey, this being the 8th posting on the artist, joining a select few at the top of the tree: Julia Margaret Cameron, August Sander, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol.
I have written extensively on Evans’s work in previous postings links to which can be found below. Suffice to say that, through awareness, his personal journey of conscious choice and deliberate self-creation has led to his photographs entering the American vernacular – through a direct pointing to a photographic reality that reflects the time in which they were taken. Which transcend the time in which they were taken.
Evans took photographs worth taking – unadorned, clearly seen, focused, descriptive photographs (of ordinary things) of the utmost beauty and honesty. He was a passionate photographer. You can feel that passion in his images. Today with a world full of AI images, fragmentation, and conceptual hoo-hah, it might do us all well to ponder the stare of this great artist so that we, in our own way, can die knowing something.
To transform your own destiny into awareness!
“When I first looked at Walker Evans’ photographs, I thought of something Malraux wrote: ‘To transform destiny into awareness.’ One is embarrassed to want so much for oneself. But, how else are you going to justify your failure and your effort?” ~ Robert Frank
Many thankx to Fundación Mapfre for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“I was a passionate photographer and, for a time, I carried a certain feeling of guilt. I thought photography was replacing something else: writing. I wanted to write. But I felt deeply committed to everything that could come out of a camera, and I became a compulsive photographer. I was responding to a genuine impulse.”
“Stare. It is the way to educate the eye, and something more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
Walker Evans
“Walker Evans is serious and smart and purposeful. He is trying to show you very clearly what he is seeing. It is very unadorned, as if nobody had taken the photograph. He conveys what is in front of him as clearly as possible.”
Interview with Chris Killip about his exhibition Work at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Renia Sofia, October 2013 [Online] Cited 11/02/2021
”Good clothes and good conversation, wit and erudition, originality and inventiveness, the charms of smart and pretty women – Walker took pleasure in being alive… He photographed objects as if they were people and people as if they were souls. All the while, he never forgot Blind Joe Death. The annihilations of the First War, the extinctions of the epidemic that followed it, the pyres and the pits – these he never forgot. The still silence of his images was, to the very last, transcendental, and always he remembered the skull beneath the skin.”
Michael Levy. Walker Evans: Last Photographs & Life Stories. New York: Blast Books, 2022
Walker Evans. Now and Then offers a renewed look at the career of one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. In a broad anthology bringing together images made over more than fifty years, the exhibition invites viewers to rediscover the direct, restrained, and analytical gaze with which Evans documented everyday life in the United States. Far from the theatrical, the artist championed precise and honest photography, always attentive to the cultural and social context.
The exhibition is structured around several essential threads of his work: his interest in the signs of the city (shop signs, storefronts, billboards, etc.), through which Evans captured a compelling reflection of the collective identity of his era; anonymous individuals (pedestrians, subway riders, workers), whom he portrayed with a spontaneity that blends formal precision and deep respect for his subjects; and his fascination with modest environments and small towns, where he found an authenticity that large cities tended to obscure. Alongside these major axes of his oeuvre, the exhibition also presents his late experiments with the Polaroid camera, which reveal a more intimate shift without losing the clarity of his vision.
The photographer Walker Evans (St. Louis, Missouri, 1903 – New Haven, Connecticut, 1975) is an essential figure of modern photography and one of the great visual chroniclers of the United States during the twentieth‑century. His images, seemingly simple yet profoundly complex, lucidly portray everyday life, urban landscapes, and the anonymous faces of a country in transformation. Rooted in the documentary style, Evans combined a direct, austere gaze with an inexhaustible curiosity for the signs of popular culture, which led him to define an era even as he questioned it.
Walker Evans began his work in photography in the 1920s, after a stay in Paris; and over the course of his extensive career, which spanned more than fifty years, he produced some of the most recognized photographs in the medium. He explored a wide range of subjects, from street snapshots taken surreptitiously to meticulous and precise architectural studies, although his best‑known photographs remain those he made in the American South beginning in the 1930s. Evans also embraced new artistic and technical developments, and toward the end of his life he explored the possibilities offered by the Polaroid camera. What unified his entire body of work was a deep interest in and affection for the appearance and essence of everyday life in a society increasingly obsessed with the new and the immediate.
Evans remains, even today, one of the most important and influential photographers of the twentieth century. With a style that is both simple and analytical, his deeply careful way of photographing, resulting in elegant compositions that are free of rigidity, has attracted countless followers. In addition to being an extraordinary photographer, Evans was also an editor, writer, and designer, and he took great care in how his work reached the public through magazines, books, and exhibitions, personally involving himself in the process.
In 2009 Fundación Mapfre launched its photography program with a retrospective dedicated to Walker Evans. Seventeen years later, the institution is pleased to present a new exhibition curated by David Campany, creative director of the International Center of Photography in New York. The show offers an extensive review of his work and of his lasting influence on generations of artists. It brings together key photographs and projects spanning his entire career – from his self‑portraits of the 1920s to his Polaroid experiments in the 1970s – alongside books and publications that reflect his inexhaustible capacity for observation. Through these works, the exhibition reveals a creator who not only documented the world around him, but also invited viewers to question the role of photography.
Key Themes
Signs of the city
Walker Evans stood out for deliberately and systematically incorporating all kinds of urban signage into his photographs – from sophisticated commercial signs to handmade notices, billboards, and shop windows – unlike other photographers of his generation, who often excluded them in pursuit of a supposed aesthetic purity. Evans believed these signs were reflections of society and its values; in this sense, his work resonates with artistic movements such as Pop Art and Postmodernism. His images of signs not only explore the relationship between word and image, but also question the role of photography as art, document, and commercial tool, underscoring the need for dialogue between photography and popular culture.
Anonymous people, anonymous places
Walker Evans showed no interest in portraying celebrities; on the contrary, he was always drawn to the anonymous individuals he encountered on the street or in the subway. He created portraits with a lightweight camera, privileging the spontaneity of isolated figures, crowds, beach scenes, or laborers at work. In this way, the simplicity of what he believed photography should be was reflected in the subjects he chose: a detached, direct, and unadorned kind of photography with carefully composed images that were nonetheless profoundly lyrical.
Tradition and the urban
One of Walker Evans’s core convictions was that the true character of any society was revealed more clearly in small towns than in large cities, which tended to blur individual particularities and traits. This emphasis on the popular and the vernacular set against the standardisation produced by major industries in big cities and metropolitan centers lies at the heart of American culture. Some of Evans’s finest and most celebrated photographs emerged from this belief, resulting in images of small‑town train stations and railcars, wooden buildings, traditional grocery stores and gas stations, as well as quintessential objects such as old pliers, rocking chairs, and fire hydrants.
Walker Evans information and keys from Fundación Mapfre
Sometimes a great photograph is a gift of time and space. Main Street, Saratoga Springs, New York, was taken from the United States Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1931. Had Evans asked for a room with a picture perfect view? Or did the view only look perfect in Evans’s picture taken on that day, at the moment? The scene has something of the proportioned urban vistas he would have seen on his European trip in 1926. There is something Parisian here.
Recent rain has presented a dreamy shimmer. The light is coming from the clearing weather in the distance. The slick road looks almost like a canal and blends into the sky. In neat rows the shiny automobiles are all black. The filigree of tree branches doodles across the frame.
Although this is one of Evans’s best known and cherished images, the vision of pictorial and social harmony is unusual. No screeching billboards or shop signs. No tension on the street. Sometimes the modern world does offer a rare moment of equanimity.
The town of Ossining, where Walker Evans lived for a short time, lies up the Hudson River from Manhattan. He made many photographs there. His views of its hillside communities and single building were shot with a large format camera, but he also made a number of snapshots on the street with a 35 mm Leica. He was experimenting, figuring out what could be done with such lightweight and versatile equipment. It was around this time that Henri Cartier-Bresson began to work with a Leica in Europe. Evans took two photographs of this couple in their parked car. In the other exposure the woman is smelling, but Evans preferred the more wary expression he caught here (the stern gaze of women recurs in his work). This photograph was included in his book American Photographs and because a source of inspiration for younger photographers such as Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand.
Of all the celebrated photographers of the last century, the one who remains the most relevant today, and the one with the widest influence, is Walker Evans (St. Louis, Missouri 1903 – New Haven, Connecticut, 1975). His images, made in what he called the “documentary style”, are among the best known in the history of the medium. Direct and generous, analytical yet lyrical, carefully composed but unforced, his ways of photographing left the door open for countless others.
For a while, Evans’ reputation rested on the photographs he had made in the southern parts of the USA in the 1930s, but his achievement was wider than that. He worked with every camera format and photographed many subjects in different ways, from surreptitious street shots, to meticulous and exacting studies of architecture. He embraced new artistic and technical developments, and at the end of his life he explored what could be done with a Polaroid camera. What united it all was a deep interest in, and affection for, the look and feel of everyday life. In a culture increasingly obsessed with the new, Evans cherished things that were standing the test of time, be it a face or the facade of a warehouse.
Evans was also concerned with the ways photographic meaning is related to context, text, and relations between images, whether on the gallery wall, or on the pages of books and magazines. To be in control of one’s photographs means being in control how they are presented and circulated in the world. So, as well as being a remarkable image-maker, Evans was also an editor, writer and designer, shaping the way his work met its public. In this exhibition we see the range of Evans’ themes and approaches, and his understated resistance to the excesses and shallowness of so much American culture becomes clear.
A Young Modernist
Walker Evans spent most of 1926 in Paris, studying at the Sorbonne but struggling to become a writer. Charles Baudelaire and Gustave Flaubert were his models, while he paid attention to contemporaries such as James Joyce and Blaise Cendrars. He made a handful photographs with a pocket camera, notably a series of self-portraits.
Returning to New York, Evans began to take photography seriously. He knew the city photographs of Ralph Steiner, Charles Sheeler, and especially Paul Strand. Their bold compositions presented Manhattan as a quintessentially modern metropolis. Evans was also aware of the ‘New Vision’ in European photography, with its enthusiastic embrace of modernist form, especially in architecture. He published a portfolio in the journal Architectural Record, and supplied three photographs from around the Brooklyn Bridge for a deluxe publication of Hart Crane’s epic poem The Bridge (1930).
The economic crash of October 1929 and the ensuing cultural turmoil sharpened the creative and political minds of all the ambitious artists of Evans’ generation. He soon stepped back from the celebration of the city to look hard at the lives of those who inhabited it.
A Past Without Nostalgia: Nineteenth Century Architecture
In 1931 Evans was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein, a wealthy friend and supporter of the arts, to photograph Victorian houses in and around Boston. Two years later, the pictures were presented in the architecture room of the recently established Museum of Modern Art, New York. While Evans was credited, the context and display clearly put the emphasis on the architecture rather than Evans’ authorship. Nevertheless, in the press release for the exhibition, Kirstein noted:
Walker Evans’ photographs are perfect. They have been taken during the last four years and form the beginning of a photographic history of American domestic building during its most fantastic, imaginative, and impermanent period. Many of the houses, neglected and despised, have disappeared in the short period since these photographs were made. Evans worked in bright sunlight, forcing the details into utmost clarity. The focus was so sharpened that some of the houses seem to exist in an airless atmosphere such as Edward Hopper suggests in his painting of similar subjects. These houses were photographed in New England and New York.
Cultural artefacts endangered by contemporary tastes were already a key subject matter for Evans, one he would return to at various points.
Signs of Images, Images of Signs
Slick commercial signs, hand-made vernacular signs, street wayfinding signs, billboards, posters and shop fronts: if anything defines the time and place of an urban situation it is signage. While most photographers of Evans’ generation avoided or limited its presence in their images (searching for some kind of ‘purity’), he embraced it whole-heartedly. His fascination with signage, and his conviction that it has much to say about a society and its values, chimed with everything from the Pop Art that emerged at the end of the 1950s to the postmodern arts of quotation and appropriation that were emerging just as Evans was reaching the end of his life in 1975.
Evans’ photographs of signs seem highly reflexive, bringing photography itself into question as a medium of representation, while blurring the distinction between word and image. Photography may be a fine art, but it is also a means to make functional documents, and a vital tool of commerce. Whatever its aesthetic ambitions, Evans understood that serious photography would have to contend with its place in common culture.
Cuba
In 1933 Evans was on commission to photograph Havana and its environs for Carleton Beals’ book The Crime of Cuba. Beals was a journalist committed to exposing the corruption of Gerardo Machado’s brutal rule and America’s complicity with it. Cuba had gained independence back in 1902 but America reserved the right to interfere in its affairs, overseeing its finances and foreign relations.
Evans was not politically naïve. His street shots are a counterpoint to Beals’ high rhetoric of abstract political force and faceless conspiracy. And yet, his wary self-consciousness makes his pictures of people difficult to assess. His Cuba work continues to challenge critics and historians. Should we read it as the snaps of a curious tourist with a great eye for composition and social detail? Or might they register the slight tremors, the “mood on the street” of a tense society watching its back? Evans rarely presented his Cuban pictures after their moment had passed.
Anonymous & Incognito
Evans came into photography just as anonymity was becoming a touchstone of the modern era. Laborers on production lines. Isolated figures in the street. The crowd through which a wanderer might move unnoticed, or subject to the suspicious gaze of others. His early street portraits had much in common with those made by Eugène Atget in France and August Sander in Germany in the 1920s. Lightweight cameras soon made more candid portraits possible and Evans began to experiment, making serial photographs of New York subway passengers, and people on streets in various cities.
Evans worked through a period marked by increasing surveillance, and increasing presence of photography and photographers in daily life. It made him wary of the idea that people could be judged quickly by their appearance. His texts for ‘Labor Anonymous’ (Fortune, October 1946), and ‘The Unposed Portrait’ (Harper’s Bazaar, March 1962) push the reader to think again about the limits of photography.
Car Culture
In 1903 (the year Walker Evans was born) there were 4,000 cars in America. By 1930 there were 26.7 million: one for every 4.5 people. The transformation was breathless. Roadsides were redefined by billboards, gas stations, and motels. Towns and cities were designed or adapted for car use.
Evans enjoyed driving, and much of his photography beyond New York required a car. However, the rapid changes that cars were bringing to the appearance and the functioning of society left him feeling ambivalent. In the mass media at least, cars were the embodiment of optimism and mobility. Waste and despoilment were kept out of site, on the stage wings of progress. Evans’ view of rusting cars in a field (Joe’s Auto Graveyard, 1936) is a glimpse behind the scenes. This theme stayed with him for life. In 1962 he published a photo-essay in Fortune titled ‘The Auto Junkyard’, and in the 1970s, he also made many Polaroid photographs of cars and trucks rusting in fields.
Three Tenant Farmer Families
In the summer of 1936, the writer James Agee was commissioned to make a report on cotton farm tenancy in the American south. He chose Evans as his photographer. They committed to the project with great energy but while at work they barely overlapped. Evans recalled: “We lived with [the three families] for three weeks, as I remember it. We told them exactly what we were doing, and we worked intensely and separately. I didn’t see Agee. He was working all day interviewing and taking notes, and I was photographing.”
When Agee’s text was ten times longer than planned, Fortune dropped the project leaving him and Evans to pursue it as a book. Evans assembled a discrete sequence of thirty-one photos that would be set apart from the text, with no captions. Such radical separation of word and image stood against the tide of more conventional documentary practices. The resulting book, Let us now Praise Famous Men, finally appeared in 1941. Evans’ sequence shows him perfecting a way of seeing that was stoic and inscrutable, associative yet anti narrative, with images that eventually became some of the most famous of the era, and of his career.
Chicago
In late 1946, Evans opened a major solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. In February 1947, Fortune published his ambitious photo-essay ‘Chicago: a camera exploration’. Across ten pages he avoided the city’s “prized and remarkable postcard colossi” to show “sights that meet a leisured and untethered eye,” as he put it in his text for the piece. The layout looked celebratory but its tone was not: “Chicago decays as it does everything else – spectacularly and speedily.” The fourth spread is the most remarkable, showing citizens at the corner of State and Randolph Streets. These are post-war consumers, Caucasian, Asian and African-American. Evans places himself directly in their path. Trapped anxiously in bright sunlight the faces hint at the unrest beneath middle-class decorum.
Beyond street portraits, Evans made a comprehensive study of Chicago’s remarkably mixed architecture, allowing him to resume his ongoing interest in buildings as a kind of indirect portrait of a society. The Chicago photo-essay for Fortune was by far his most significant magazine work to date, giving him the confidence to develop and refine what he wanted to do with the printed page in the coming years.
Small Towns & Neighbourhoods
Although Evans’ photography began in New York and he made a substantial photographic portrait of Chicago, he remained convinced that it was the smaller towns that offered a more accurate sense of the nation. The major cities of the USA are always exceptional, and tend to think of themselves as such. Evans concerned himself with the typical, and with the pragmatic ways small towns work and grow. Away from intense modern progress, artefacts of the past persist until they no longer function, rather than being replaced for the sake of it. Some of Evans’ most loved and complex photographs came out of this commitment to typical places.
Message from the Interior
Evans’ deep interest in rooms was long-lasting, and it suited his slow and careful pace of observation. With no people present, an interior scene can become a portrait of an individual, a family, or a community. Moreover, the way a camera records will allow everything that is present to become significant, as in a still life composition. Details of décor. Treasured objects. Casual objects. Furniture. Fabrics. Even the atmosphere of a room can be communicated.
African Sculpture: an Art of Documentation
In 1935 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, commissioned Evans to document nearly five hundred sculptures gathered for an exhibition of African art. In the museum itself each object was shot separately (with a few objects documented in pairs) in long exposure, during which lights were sometimes moved around to produce an all-over, hyper-factual clarity. Prints were made for extensive teaching folios, and a travelling exhibition. The catalogue for MoMA’s exhibition African Negro Art (in which Evans is not credited) was a serious attempt to look at the origin and complexity of these objects beyond the crude reductions and exoticism of the attitudes of European surrealists and modernist artists of the time. Although it was a free-standing commission, we can view this work in the context of Evans’ earlier commission from the Museum of Modern Art to photograph Victorian architecture, as well commissions to document folk art at New York’s Downtown Gallery, and Diego Rivera’s political murals for the Workers’ School of New York.
Vernacular Designs, Common Objects
Evans took the forces of modernity and modernisation – economic, political, social, aesthetic – as a subject matter to be considered carefully. These forces could be sensed most acutely through objects that had somehow survived the onslaught of modernisation or were about to succumb to it. Even the titles of Evans’ Fortune magazine photo-essays signalled his suspicion of the new: ‘The Wreckers’, ‘These Dark Satanic Mills’, ‘Downtown: A Last Look Backward’, ‘Before they Disappear’, ‘The Last of Railroad Steam’, ‘The Auto-Junkyard’.
Nevertheless, it would be hasty to dismiss this as nostalgia, or a sentimental looking back in the knowledge that the juggernaut of progress could not be stopped. In 1956 Evans observed: “[N]ostalgia has become debased to mean a kind of syrup savoured by self-pitying people conjuring better days, funny hats and an innocence nobody ever had.” In a caption for a series of photographs of antique store window displays he declared: “Nostalgia I disdain: pray keep me forever separated from an atmosphere of moist elderly eyes just about to spill over at the sight of grandmother’s tea set. Design just a little dated will interest any artist. Design current is always terrible. Anyone who has tried to find a good contemporary lamp or clock will know what I mean.”
Walker Evans, ‘Before They Disappear’, Fortune, March 1957
The familiar insignia of the freight cars are like old ditties beating in the back of our heads. Once we knew them all by heart, they were with us like the weather, like the backs of books we collected, and like the streets we walked in.
Brought into focus by selection, you almost expect these brave and naïve emblems to emit the very sound of railroading – the iron whines, the Steely screechers, and the attenuated nocturnal moans of steam transportation.
They don’t quite do that. But they are worth examining, not only for the commemorative thoughts they carry, but because they are going to disappear from the US landscape one day you have only to notice the new, exceedingly distinguished lettering of the New Haven’s car sides, or the redesigned Boston & Maine signature, to see that the fell hand of the contemporary commercial designer is lurking near, T-square poised.
When we can no longer catch sight of the great Chinese red and black double tadpole of the Northern Pacific, or the simple old cross of the Santa Fe, then will a whole world of cherished association have been destroyed. Impiety could go no further.
Walker Evans, ‘The Auto Junkyard’, Fortune, April 1962
The nadir of landscape scenery is the great American auto-junk scrap pile. With the effect of some evil prank, these obscene perversities leer out of the countryside almost anywhere, often in the middle of idyllic rural spots … Pictorially speaking, the result is chaos abstracted, and this has considerable curious interest in itself. There is a secret imp in almost every civilized man that bids him delight in the surprises and in the mockery in the forms of destruction. At times, nothing could be gayer than the complete collapse of our fanciest contrivances. Scenes like these are rich in tragicomic suggestions of the fall of man from his high ride.
Walker Evans, ‘The U.S. Depot’‚ Fortune, February 1953
He who travels by rail over the lesser lines of the USA clangs and shunts straight into his own childhood. Most of the smalltown railroad stations up and down the country are now about fifty years old. Looked at collectively they seem more and more toylike – as model railroad toys grow more and more like the real thing. With only a slight effort of the imagination, these encrusted little buildings turn into miniature stage sets, and the people in them correctly costumed dolls. You feel an old affection for the way a station agent throws the block-signal lever there in his coal-heated office. And what in that green-paper note handed up on its looped stick to the engineer as the 3:52 breaks to a stop? Does it say “Train five Engine eight four nine six delayed at Millerton hot journal box,” or does it say “Tell Jeanie I’ll get pork chops?”
Walker Evans, ‘Beauties of the Common Tool’, Fortune, July 1955
Among the low-priced, factory-produced goods, none is so appealing to the senses as the ordinary hand tool. Hence, a hardware store is a kind of offbeat museum show for the man who responds to good, clear “undesigned” forms. The Swedish steel pliers pictured above, with their somehow swanlike flow, and the objects on the following pages, in all their tough simplicity, illustrate this. Aside from their functions – though they are exclusively wedded to function – each of these tools lures the eye to follow its curves and angles, and invites the hand to test its balance.
Who would sully the lines of the tin-cutting shears on page 105 with a single added bend or whorl? Or clothe in any way the fine naked impression of heft and bite in the crescent wrench on page 107? To be sure, some design-happy manufacturers have tampered with certain tool classics; the beautiful plumb bob, which used to come naively and solemnly shaped like a child’s top, now looks suspiciously like a toy space ship, and is no longer brassy. But not much can be done to spoil a crate opener, that nobly ferocious statement in black steel as may be seen on page 104. In fact, almost all the basic small tools stand, aesthetically speaking, for elegance, candour and purity.
Labor Anonymous is a 1946 photo series by Walker Evans, commissioned by Fortune magazine, documenting 50+ candid, close-up street portraits of Detroit workers. Capturing diverse, unposed facial expressions and postures, the project created a “physiognomy of a nation,” exploring modern anonymity and the dignity of laborers.
Shot on assignment for Fortune magazine in 1946, this Walker Evans photograph of an unknown Detroit office worker is reproduced from Labor Anonymous, just out from D.A.P. Publishing and Walther König. “When I knew him, Evans was beset by troubles of all kinds,” Jerry L Thompson writes, “money troubles, tax troubles, marriage troubles (he divorced a second time in 1972), health troubles, advancing age, declining strength: the full catastrophe that flesh is heir to. As he approached 70, most onlookers would have taken him (even by the standards of that time) to be at least a decade older. Yet every time he walked out to start his day he was ready to be an artist. Every day had some work in it – for Evans, work meant being an artist – and the work got done even if every practical concern – what ordinary people call work – fell by the wayside.”
Evans was in poor health when he began to work with the Polaroid SX-70 in 1973; he was attracted to the camera’s small, elegant design and the instant color prints it generated that required no tedious lab or darkroom work. Like the developing Polaroid print itself, with its miraculous and immediate image, Evans came to life and worked feverishly with the new camera. At the age of seventy, he returned to many of his lifelong themes, including vernacular architecture, domestic interiors, portraiture, and roadside signage.
Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website
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“Aesthetically (both pictorially and in exhibition design) there is a wonderful frisson to the grouping of the photographs in these darker, enclosed, tightly curated gallery spaces that is so intoxicating to the senses.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 28th November, 2025 – 3rd May, 2026
Curator: Maggie Finch, Curator of Photography at the NGV
After being introduced to Pablo Picasso in 1935, Dora Maar became his lover, model and muse until their tumultuous liaison ended in 1943. During their time together, Maar famously documented the creation of the monumental painting Guernica in Picasso’s Paris studio. This portrait captures the artist at ease, bathed in an endlessly echoing lineation of shadows from the above reed screen. The portrait Maar took of Picasso a year later, displayed nearby, shows him seated outside, his eyes glinting with intensity. Both images were taken in Mougins, near Cannes, an area that Picasso returned to every summer.
Wall text from the exhibition
The interface of light
For much of its running length this exhibition of cinematic scope at the National Gallery of Victoria curated by the dependable Maggie Finch is a stimulating ride.
The early galleries in particular are a joy to behold, mixing as they do international and Australian female photographers mainly from the period between the two world wars. This placement of Australian photography in an international context (or vice versa) is something I have desired to see for a very long time in an Australian photographic exhibition. One informing the other. And it works so well!
Aesthetically (both pictorially and in exhibition design) there is a wonderful frisson to the grouping of the photographs in these darker, enclosed, tightly curated gallery spaces that is so intoxicating to the senses. Ruth Hollick meets Madame d’Ora, Florence Henri meets Yamawaki Michiko, and Olive Cotton meets Dora Maar on the gallery walls, interwoven into an intertextual conversation on photography that spans identities, countries and continents. Perhaps not a legacy of light rather the interface of light, a shared connection, one nexus to another. I could have breathed in these photographs for hours!
That energy starts to dissipate as the gallery spaces open out in the second half of the exhibition, especially in the section ‘People and Place’ (see below). Poor Farm Security Administration prints of now famous photographs printed very flatly in the mid-1970s and purchased for the gallery in the same time period don’t help the cause – they need to be replaced in the collection with more appropriate prints of these images.
By the time of the final section, ‘New Ways Of Seeing: Portraits, Intimacy, Liberation’ (see below), the international representation has disappeared altogether and all the intoxicating energy has gone. In this section we find strong, eloquent and important Australian photographs from the period – conceptual, feminist, and on liberation – but it would have been great to have seen them paired with photographs from international photographers such as Cindy Sherman, Mary Ellen Mark, and VALIE EXPORT for example.
On reflection I can say that this is a strong exhibition from the NGV coherently and intelligently curated by Maggie Finch. It is fantastic to see that the gallery has been “splashing the cash” in recent years – supported by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and the Bowness family – with over 170 new acquisitions for the photographic collection.
However for a public gallery, with most of the photographs already in the collection, to charge $25 entry price is really beyond the pale. I went twice to see the exhibition and $50 is a fair whack of money out of anyone’s budget.
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Lee Miller Nimet Eloui Bey (c. 1930, below); Lee Miller Man Ray (1931, below); Gisele Freund’s Simone de Beauvoir (1952 printed c. 1975, below), Jean-Paul Satre (1939 printed c. 1975, below), Vita Sackville-West (1938 printed c. 1975, below) and Virginia Woolfe (1939 printed c. 1975, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light celebrates the wide-ranging photographic practices of more than eighty women artists working between 1900 and 1975. Featuring prints, postcards, photobooks and magazines, the exhibition explores the role of photographers as image-makers, and the ways in which women artists create an image of themselves, of others, of the times – from images of the women’s suffrage movement at the turn of the twentieth century, through to the women’s liberation movement and beyond. From Melbourne to Tokyo, Paris to Buenos Aires, the exhibition showcases the works of trailblazing artists such as Berenice Abbott, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Imogen Cunningham, Mikki Ferrill, Sue Ford, Christine Godden, Ponch Hawkes, Annemarie Heinrich, Ruth Hollick, Florence Henri, Kati Horna, Germaine Krull, Tina Modotti, Lucia Moholy, Toyoko Tokiwa, Yamazawa Eiko and many more.
The exhibition reflects a recent collecting focus on celebrating the contributions of women artists of the early twentieth century in the NGV Photography Collection. Featuring portraiture, photojournalism, landscape photography, photomontage, experimental avant-garde imagery and more, Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light presents the diverse work of women photographers against the backdrop of significant social, political and cultural events.
Text from the NGV website
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Lee Miller Nimet Eloui Bey (c. 1930, below) and Lee Miller Man Ray (1931, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
At her Paris studio, Lee Miller photographed this self-assured portrait of Egyptian model Nimet Eloui Bey. The model’s direct, inescapable gaze grips the viewer, perhaps foreshadowing the conflict to come. In the years after Miller took this portrait, she and her subject’s businessman husband, Aziz Eloui Bey, would pursue a passionate affair, resulting in divorce and the explosive end to Miller’s relationship with artist Man Ray. After leaving Paris, Miller set up a successful new studio in New York in 1932, before marrying Aziz and moving with him to Cairo.
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Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977) Man Ray (installation view) 1931 Gelatin silver photograph 23.1 x 17.5cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by Joy And
Following a successful modelling career, Lee Miller moved to Paris in 1929. Intending to study under the Surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray, she soon became his assistant, model and lover. This portrait of Man Ray was taken in 1931, when Miller was working out of her small Montparnasse home studio. The artist appears to be lost in thought, his dilated pupils and furrowed brow suggesting an idea revealing itself. While the image shows reverence for the contemplative artist, it also hints at the couple’s domestic ease, with Man Ray appearing comfortable in the presence of Miller’s camera.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Gisèle Freund’s Simone de Beauvoir (1952 printed c. 1975) and Jean-Paul Satre (1939 printed c. 1975) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Gisèle Freund’s Vita Sackville-West (1938 printed c. 1975) and Virginia Woolfe (1939 printed c. 1975) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
In 1933 Gisèle Freund fled Frankfurt for Paris, where she studied photographic portraiture at the Sorbonne. Uniquely for the time, she used Kodachrome and Agfacolor positive film for her colour portraits of writers and artists in Paris – her portrait of James Joyce was selected as the first colour cover of Time magazine in 1939. That same year she photographed Virginia Woolf at her home in Tavistock Square, London. Freund later recalled of her encounter with Woolf, ‘frail, luminous, she was the very incarnation of her prose’.
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In Exchange: Social Milieu and Collaboration
The intertwined lives of avant-garde artists working in the interwar period often played out in works of art depicting friendship and love. Photographers captured these relationships, often revealing both the affection and the complex relations between themselves and their artistic collaborators, muses and subjects.
Paris in the interwar period was a hotbed for artistic exchange. Between 1935 and 1936, Dora Maar photographed her then partner Pablo Picasso in her Paris studio. She also created collaborative images with fellow Surrealists such as Léonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba and André Breton. Lee Miller, also working in Paris during this period, photographed her lover and artistic partner Man Ray. Miller, in turn, was the subject of many of Man Ray’s own works.
In Mexico, Kati Horna frequently photographed her close friend, British-born painter and writer Leonora Carrington. Lola Álvarez Bravo’s image of the Spanish Surrealist artist Remedios Varo is another example of the playful and experimental collaborations between artists at the time. Such photographs demonstrate the mutual influence between women artists.
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing photographs by Dora Maar including at second right, photographs of Picasso (1935-1936, below) and at right, Self-portrait at the window (c. 1935, below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
(clockwise from bottom left)
Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) No title (Pablo Picasso facing left) No title (Pablo Picasso facing right, holding a cigarette) No title (Profile of Pablo Picasso facing left) No title (Pablo Picasso facing left, with left hand to mouth) (installation view) 1935-1936 Gelatin silver photographs National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2022 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) Self-portrait at the window (installation view) c. 1935 Gelatin silver print Private collection, Melbourne Promised gift Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) Dawn (installation view) 1935 Reproduced in Minotaure No. 8, 1936 Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text Shaw Research Library Photos: Marcus Bunyan
The framing of Dora Maar’s Self-portrait at the window, Paris, c. 1935, is mired in this portrait taken by Maar of her friend Jacqueline Lamba, published in the Surrealist magazine Minotaure in June 1936. As art historian and theorist
Abigail Solomon-Godeau writes, ‘Lambda might be viewed as contained or imprisoned by the stone wall behind which she stands … Alternately, the photograph might be seen as the space of domesticity, overcome by time and brambles’. For Solomon-Godeau, it is also, importantly, an ‘exchange between two women artists’.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Dora Maar’s Pablo Picasso (1938, below); Pablo Picasso standing under reed screening. Mougins, summer, 1937 (1937, top of posting) and Aperitif in the garden of the Hotel Vaste Horizon with Andre Breton, Jacqueline lamb, Paul and Nusch Eluard. Mougins, 1936-1937 (1936-1937) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) Pablo Picasso (installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver print 11.9 x 17.9cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2022 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) Pablo Picasso standing under reed screening, Mougins, summer, 1937 (Pablo Picasso debout sous les cannisses, Mougins, été, 1937) (installation view) 1937 22.0 x 17.2cm (image) 23.1 x 18.2cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2022 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Berenice Abbott Eugène Atget (1927, printed c. 1970-1978) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Janet Flanner 1927 Gelatin silver photograph Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
While living in Paris in the 1920s, Berenice Abbott produced an extraordinary body of images featuring the artists, writers and performers in her social circle, such as Eugène Atget, Jean Cocteau and James Joyce. This portrait of American writer Janet Flanner was also captured by Abbott during this time. A journalist who wrote under the pen name ‘Genêt’, Flanner was a long-term contributor to The New Yorker and a prominent member of the expatriate community living in Paris during the interwar period. In this portrait, Flanner is photographed wearing a suit with striped pants and a top hat, upon which are stacked two masks, adding a Surrealist edge to the image.
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Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000) Leonora Carrington (installation view) 1957 Gelatin silver photograph 24.2 x 18.2cm (image) 25.3 x 20.2cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Born to a Jewish family in Hungary, Kati Horna was forced to leave Europe following the rise of Nazism. She belonged to the circle of Surrealist expatriate artists in Mexico producing experimental images. In this photocollage, Horna has superimposed an image of British-born painter and writer Leonora Carrington – a close friend of hers – onto a reproduction of Hans Holbein the Younger’s 1518 painting Portrait of an unknown young man. Created on the occasion of Carrington’s birthday, the humorous merging of the photograph with the painted reproduction, coupled with the clash of genders and time periods, gives the scene a Surrealist tone.
Lola Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1903-1993) No title (Remedios Varo) (installation view) c. 1950 Gelatin silver photograph 23.4 x 18.9cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lola Álvarez Bravo was one of the first artists to produce photomontages in Mexico. At the forefront of artistic experimentation, Álvarez Bravo created this image by layering multiple negatives. The subject is believed to be Remedios Varo, a Spanish Surrealist artist who arrived in Mexico in 1941. Alongside Álvarez Bravo, Kati Horna and Leonora Carrington, Varo was part of a community of expatriate artists and intellectuals active in Mexico during the mid twentieth century. Drawing inspiration from the Surrealist movement, Álvarez Bravo overlaid the portrait with an image of rippling water, creating a tranquil scene in which the subject appears to be floating.
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Unlike in many other countries, in Mexico artists had opportunities to work as long as they did not threaten the locals’ career prospects. Thus, many Spanish-speaking immigrants started teaching in universities, raising a new generation of Mexican creatives and academics. Apart from their jobs, the majority of Europeans did not interact closely with the locals, preferring to keep the company of their fellow refugees. The reason was not the rejection of local customs but the shared experience of war, tragedy, and dramatic flight across ravaged Europe.
The house of the artist Remedios Varo was the central meeting point for the whole community. Anyone in need could find company, shelter, and money raised by all group members. Varo hosted dinners and parties. She also sent party invitations to random addresses taken from a phone book.
Claude Cahun (French, 1894-1854) and Marcel Moore (French, 1892-1872) Disavowals, or Cancelled Confessions (Aveux non avenus) (installation views) 1930 Published by Éditions du Carrefour, Paris Illustrated book: photogravure, letterpress text, 237 pages, 10 heliographs, paper cover, stitched binding Shaw Research Library, acquired through the Friends of the Gallery library Endowment, 2017 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Born Lucy Schwob, Claude Cahun was a celebrated French artist associated with the Surrealist movement. Aveux non avenus, loosely translated as Cancelled Confessions or Disavowals, is the second book Cajun created with her stepsister, lifelong partner and artistic collaborator, graphic artist Marcel Moore. This subversive semi-autobiographical work couples poems, recollections and aphorisms with dreamlike photomontages. The photomontages include many of Cahun’s performative self-portraits, images that challenge established notions of gender identity.
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Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right in the bottom image, Francesca Woodman Untitled (Providence, Rhode Island) (c. 1975-1978 printed after 1981, below); Ellen Auerbach R. Schottelius in New York (1953 printed 1992, below); Barbara Morgan Martha Graham – Letter to the world (1940, below); Lotti Jacobi Dancer #16, Pauline Koner, New York (c. 1937, printed 1992); and two Photogenic drawing (c. 1940 and c. 1950) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981) Untitled (Providence, Rhode Island) (installation view) c. 1975-1978, printed after 1981 Gelatin silver photograph 13.7 x 13.8cm (image) 25.3 x 20.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2025 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Francesca Woodman is known for her intimate black-and-white self-portraits and photographs featuring other women sitters. The bodies are often blurred, with faces hidden and appearing to blend into the background. In this self-portrait, Woodman crouches down in the corner of a decrepit room, her patterned gown somehow reflecting – or merging with – the floral wallpaper that peels down in rough remnants behind her. The photograph was created while Woodman was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, where she studied from 1975 to 1978 and which produced the majority of her extant photographs following her untimely death in 1981.
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Ellen Auerbach (German 1906-2004) R. Schottelius in New York (installation view) 1953, printed 1992 Gelatin silver photograph 23.2 x 18.5cm (image) 25.0 x 27.5cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2023 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
A constant innovator throughout her life, Ellen Auerbach received her first camera in 1928 as a tool to aid her studies in sculpture. The following year, she met her professional and romantic partner Grete Stern in Berlin, where they formed studio ringl+pit. After escaping fascist Germany, Auerbach eventually relocated to the United States and continued her photographic practice, settling among New York’s avant-garde. In this rooftop scene, she captures German dancer Renate Schottelius leaping into the air. In contrast with the surrounding static, imposing skyscrapers, the liberated body in joyous motion serves as a symbol for freedom.
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Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992) Martha Graham – Letter to the world (installation view) 1940 Gelatin silver photograph 38.9 x 48.2cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Barbara Morgan met the pioneering American choreographer and dancer Martha Graham in 1935, and their working relationship lasted over six decades. Graham later reflected in 1980: “It is rare that even an inspired photographer possesses the demonic eye which can capture the instant of dance and transform it into timeless gesture. In Barbara Morgan I found that person. In looking at these photographs today, I feel, as I felt when I first saw them, privileged to have been a part of this collaboration. For to me, Barbara Morgan through her art reveals the inner landscape that is a dancer’s world.”
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bodies, Rhythm and Movement
From the very beginnings of photography, the female nude genre remained primarily the domain of the male photographer. However, twentieth-century women artists, particularly those working within the avant-garde scene of the interwar period, reclaimed the male gaze, creatively experimenting with the representation of women’s bodies.
Artists such as Laure Albin Guillot and Germaine Krull produced nudes ranging from the intimate and sensual to the contained and stark. Such experimental compositions were also a vital aspect of the work of Florence Henri, whose images allowed for new readings of the body. In the 1970s artists such as Sue Ford continued this legacy of experimentation, combining depictions of women’s bodies with scenes from nature.
Representations of women’s bodies in motion were another means of artistic and physical liberation. The collaborations between dancers and artists, for example Barbara Morgan and Martha Graham, and Ellen Auerbach and Renate Schottelius, allowed for experimentation and dynamic image-making. These creative partnerships were shaped by movement and a shared response between artist and subject.
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Germaine Krull Daretha (Dorothea) Albu (c. 1925, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Germaine Krull Daretha (Dorothea) Albu (c. 1925, below); Florence Henri Nude composition (c. 1930, below); Florence Henri Line Viala (Nude study), Paris (1934); and Laure Albin Guillot Nude Study (1943) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Germaine Krull (European, 1897-1985) Daretha (Dorothea) Albu (installation view) c. 1925 Gelatin silver photograph 19.7 x 11.7cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2020 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
This intimate portrait shows the German dancer Dorothea Albu elegantly draped in a feather boa – possibly a reference to her life in show business. The soft focus of the image, along with Albu’s gently closed eyes, creates a serene scene. The work is believed to be from a series of female nudes that Germaine Krull photographed in her Berlin studio between 1922 and 1925.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Florence Henri Nude composition (c. 1930, below) and Florence Henri Line Viala (Nude study), Paris (1934, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Florence Henri (European born USA, 1893-1982) Nude composition (Nu composition) (installation view) c. 1930 Gelatin silver photograph 22.9 x 17.0cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2021 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Florence Henri (European born USA, 1893-1982) Line Viala (Nude study), Paris (installation view) 1934 Gelatin silver photograph 22.9 x 17.2cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2023 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In the 1930s Florence Henri made numerous photographs of female nudes. These works often feature modern women who appear bold, confident and at ease in their own skin and sexuality. In this photograph, Henri uses dramatic lighting to create deep shadows that contour and highlight the form of actress Line Viala’s body. Henri’s use of a blank canvas as a plain backdrop further accentuates the model as the sole focus of the image. Perhaps Henri’s choice of a blank canvas backdrop is also a subtle reference to the traditionally male-dominated realm of nude female painting.
Another vital aspect of her practice was her nude female compositions, such as Nude composition (Nu composition), 1930. Created in the year after establishing her studio in Paris, it employs her characteristically unique, elevated vantage point and raking lighting to disrupt a sense of visual order and perspective. Henri constructs a scene in which the upper half of a woman’s naked body (her chest, breasts, arms, head and hair) creates an asymmetrical focal point at the top of the photograph. Lying next to the woman, and, seemingly, the subject of her gaze, is a large shell, while plants at the base of the image echo the woman’s flowing hair. While appearing to be set on a bed of sand, on closer inspection the textured base is revealed as a coarse sheet.
The dreamlike image, confident and controlled, which merges the female body with the symbolic shell and forms from nature, creates a scene of sensuousness and self-empowerment that is erotic and modern. Henri’s nude compositions, along with those of peers working in France such as Dora Maar and Nora Dumas, claimed the female body as a subject of their own – a trend that emerged among a number of female photographers, in the interwar period.
Laure Albin Guillot (French, 1879-1962) Nude study (Étude de nu) (installation view) 1943 Gelatin silver photograph 29.5 x 17.9cm (image) 29.5 x 23.1cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2023 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Spanning fashion and portraiture to advertising and landscapes, Laure Albin Guillot’s images were published regularly in magazines and featured in the first independent Salon of Photography in Paris in 1928. Albin Guillot collaborated with French poet Paul Valéry in the 1930s to create male nude images to accompany his poem ‘La Cantate du Narcisse’ (‘The Song of Narcissus’). She continued to produce numerous nude studies of women throughout the 1930s–40s, such as this closely cropped portrait that enhances the angular lines and features of the sitter’s body.
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Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Laure Albin Guillot Nude study (Étude de nu) (1943, above); Anne Brigman Quest (1931); Olive Cotton Max after surfing (1939, printed 1998); and Louise Dahl-Wolfe Nude in water (1941) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing Germaine Krull Nude studies (Études de nu) (1930) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
One of the most experimental artists of the 1920s and 30s, Germaine Krull photographed a diverse range of subjects, and her images were published widely in magazines and journals. With publications such Nude Studies, created two years after Metal,she is recognised as a pioneer in the single-author photobook format. Nude Studies consists of twenty-four photogravures of female nudes, published with an accompanying introductory text by the artist Jean Cocteau. Created in Krull’s Paris studio, the intimate studies, in which the faces of the women are often obscured, emphasise the sculptural forms of their bodies.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher Coal tipple, Goodspring, Pennsylvania (1975, below); Ilse Bing Self-portrait (1931 printed c. 1993, below); and two Sue Ford photographs, No title (Photogram of two hands and garden path) (c. 1970, below) and No title (Nude montage) (1960s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher (German, 1931-2007/1934-2015) Coal tipple, Goodspring, Pennsylvania (installation view) 1975 From the Artists and photographs folio 1975 Gelatin silver photographs 24.0 x 33.9cm (image and sheet) 40.7 x 49.6cm (support) ed. 9/60 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1976 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In 1959 married artists Bernd and Hilla Becher started photographing industrial architecture, a practice that would continue for over four decades. While predominantly documenting structures throughout Germany’s Ruhr region, they occasionally worked overseas – this work was made on their first trip to the United States. The Bechers created a system for comparing structures: photographing them from a consistent angle, under virtually identical lighting conditions, printing images at the same size and often displaying them in grids. According to Hilla Becher, their archive allows for narratives to naturally emerge: “Structural patterns and their transformations … can be proved to exist in the case of such relatively exhaustive comparative series.”
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Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Self-portrait (Autoportrait) (installation view) 1931, printed 1993 Gelatin silver photograph 26.7 x 29.4cm (image) 27.9 x 35.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2023 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ilse Bing began making photographs in the late 1920s, when she purchased one of the first 35 mm cameras produced by the German company Leica. She made use of the camera’s portability, capturing motion, dizzying angles and contrasts of light, shade and shadow – compositional elements that characterised the New Photography movement. Inspired by Florence Henri, Bing used her camera to disrupt the picture plane. In this famed self-portrait, Bing uses mirrors as a fracturing tool. The self-portrait shows Bing’s reflection holding a camera, accompanied by her side profile in another angled mirror. She controls the various gazes: her own, the viewer’s, the camera’s.
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Time and Mirrors
Photography has long been associated with mirrors and time – as a way of remembering, reflecting and retrieving information. As early as 1859, American writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr described photography, specifically the daguerreotype, as ‘the mirror with a memory’.
Many artists use the camera to explore identity through portraits and self-portraits. In Ilse Bing’s 1931 self-portrait, captured with her Leica camera, a mirror disrupts the image, disorienting the viewer. Four decades later, Joan Jonas extended this idea, using a video monitor as a mirror to explore reflection, perception and the self.
By the 1970s, repetition and seriality became central to photographic practice. Through sequences of images, artists such as Eve Sonneman, Sue Ford and Bernd and Hilla Becher explored how photography could record and interpret change – both immediate and long-term. Their images reveal the camera’s dual role as an objective instrument and a conceptual recorder of the world.
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, two Sue Ford photographs, No title (Photogram of two hands and garden path) (c. 1970, below) and No title (Nude montage) (1960s, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) No title (Photogram of two hands and garden path) (installation view) c. 1970 Gelatin silver photograph 27.6 x 34.7cm irreg. (image and sheet) 38.5 x 44.8cm (support) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gerstl Bequest, 2000 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In the late 1960s and early 70s, Sue Ford created several bodies of highly experimental work. These works involved complex montages, photograms and layered negatives, revealing hours of darkroom experimentation in her Eltham studio in Melbourne’s north-east. Such experiments coincided with Ford’s burgeoning interest in left-wing politics, and her exposure via the media to world events such as the NASA moon landings and the Vietnam War. Ford incorporated imagery and ideas relating to these events, as well as her interest in environmentalism, into these abstracted, Surrealism-inspired works.
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Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) No title (Nude montage) (installation view) 1960s Gelatin silver photograph 25.6 x 19.9cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gerstl Bequest, 2000 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Real Time is composed of paired photographs taken seconds apart, separated by a black-line border. The ordered presentation allows the viewer to consider the relationship between the images, and the small changes and passing of time between them. Eve Sonneman first showed the photographs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, before publishing them as a book. In 1976 she saw an advertisement in Artforum from newly established press Printed Matter, which was seeking artists’ books to publish. “So I sent [my photographs] in and that work became my first published book, Real Time,” Sonneman recalled. “I was as thrilled as could be!”
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Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) Ross, 1964; Ross, 1974 (installation view) 1964-1974, printed 1974 From the Time series (1962-1974) Gelatin silver photograph 11.1 × 20.1cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with the assistance of the Visual Arts Board and the KODAK (Australasia) PTY LTD Fund, 1974 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) Jim, 1964; Jim, 1974 (installation view) 1964-1974, printed 1974 From the Time series (1962-1974) Gelatin silver photograph 11.1 × 20.1cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with the assistance of the Visual Arts Board and the KODAK (Australasia) PTY LTD Fund, 1974 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
“For some time I have been thinking about the camera itself. Trying to explore its particular UNIQUENESS, coming to terms with the fact that I had been trying to ignore for some years, that the camera is actually a MACHINE. … In “Time Series” I tried to use the camera as objectively as possible. It was a time machine. For me it was an amazing experience. It wasn’t until I placed the photograph of the younger face beside the recent photograph that I could fully appreciate the change. The camera showed me with absolute clarity, something I could only just perceive with my naked eye.”
~ Sue Ford, Time Series: An Exhibition of Photographs, Melbourne, 1974
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Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image a video still of Imogen Cunningham Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image from left to right three photographs by Alice Mills, Hilaire Syme dressed for the Kismit Ball (1912-1915, below); Hilaire Syme (c. 1910, below); and Joan Margaret Syme (c. 1918, below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
People and Place
Depictions of children, mothers and acts of caregiving have traditionally been recurring subjects in photographs taken by women. According to art historian Naomi Rosenblum, in the early 1900s the photographing of children, particularly children with their mothers, was deemed by commentators at the time to be ‘an especially appropriate assignment for women’.
While stereotyping and gender bias remained significant obstacles for women photographers in the early twentieth century, many still innovated through their image-making, while studio work provided women artists with the opportunity for financial independence. Subjects were portrayed in intensely intimate portraits, making visible the people in domestic settings who were often overlooked in photographs and society more broadly.
In Australia, artists such as Olive Cotton produced landscape photography in the dominant Pictorialist style of nostalgic, softly focused images. Everyday, non-professional photography, or vernacular photography, was also widely produced by women photographers of the period. As shown by Inez McPhee’s photo albums depicting the outdoor adventures of the Melbourne Walking Club and Edna Walling’s albums filled with pictures of friends, animals and plants, photography became an increasingly popular way of documenting daily life.
Alice Mills (attributed to) (Australian, 1870-1929) Hilaire Syme dressed for the Kismit Ball 1912-1915 gelatin silver photograph, coloured dyes 70.5 x 43.3cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Dr Veronica Condon, 2005 Public domain
Alice Mills (attributed to) (Australian, 1870-1929) Broothorn Studios, Melbourne Hilaire Syme c. 1910 Gelatin silver photograph, watercolour 185.5 x 74.4cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Dr Veronica Condon, Geoffrey Haggard and Jennifer Smyth, descendants of Sir Geoffrey Syme K.B.E., Managing Editor of the Age newspaper (1908-1942), 2004
An almost opaque layer of paint has been applied to this portrait. The paint obscures some of the details while enhancing others, such as the child’s shiny shoes and the satin sash of her dress. Alice Mills’s portrait of the subject’s younger sister, Joan, has a more conventional treatment in the application of translucent pigments. It remains unclear whether Mills did the hand-colouring. However, having trained in the studio of leading Melbourne photographer Johnstone O’Shaughnessy, she would almost certainly have known about the technique of applying oil-based pigments to photographs to create the illusion of naturalistic colour.
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Alice Mills (attributed to) (Australian, 1870-1929) Broothorn Studios, Melbourne Joan Margaret Syme (installation view) c. 1918 Gelatin silver photograph, coloured dyes 243.85 x 91.45cm (approx) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through the NGV Foundation by Michael Hayne, 2005 Public domain Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Alice Mills (attributed to) (Australian, 1870-1929) Broothorn Studios, Melbourne Joan Margaret Syme c. 1918 Gelatin silver photograph, coloured dyes 243.85 x 91.45cm (approx) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through the NGV Foundation by Michael Hayne, 2005 Public domain
Alice Mills, with help from her husband, Tom Humphreys, set up her first photography studio in 1900. Soon after that she was working under her own name in the Centreway Arcade at 259-263 Collins Street, Melbourne. Mills’s portraits were often published in magazines and newspapers, which brought her to the attention of a large audience of prospective clients. Around 1915 she produced a number of large-scale portraits of Hilaire and Joan Syme, the daughters of then managing editor and co-owner of The Age newspaper Geoffrey Syme. The photographs were made in conjunction with Broothorn Studios, which art historians suggest made the extreme enlargements.
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Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right in the bottom image two Imogen Cunningham photographs, My mother peeling apples (1910, printed 1979) and My father (1906, printed 1979) and six 1920s photographs by the Australian photographer Ruth Hollick (1883-1977): No title (Seated girl looking over shoulder) (c. 1926); No title (Little girl holding small book) (1920s); No title (Young girl holding a doll) (1920s); No title (Laughing child) (c. 1926); Miss Pamela Ann McKewan (c. 1929); and No title (Laughing girl in cap) (1920s) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left four photographs by Ruth Hollick: Bobby (1927); No title (Baby in striped dress) (1920s); No title (Three children seated on grass) (1920s); and No title (Mother and two children) (1920s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing four photographs by Ruth Hollick: Bobby (1927); No title (Baby in striped dress) (1920s); No title (Three children seated on grass) (1920s); and No title (Mother and two children) (1920s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ruth Hollick (Australian, 1883-1977) Bobby 1927 Gelatin silver photograph 18.8 x 21.4cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Lucy Crosbie Morrison, 1992 Public domain
Ruth Hollick (Australian, 1883-1977) No title (Mother and two children) 1920s Gelatin silver photograph 19.0 x 23.9cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Lucy Crosbie Morrison, 1992 Public domain
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right three photographs by Ruth Hollick: No title (Young woman in plaid shawl) (1920s); No title (Mother and child) (c. 1926); and Janet Armstrong, Woodbury Estate, Deniliquin, New South Wales (c. 1939) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ruth Hollick (Australian, 1883-1977) No title (Young girl holding a doll) 1920s Gelatin silver photograph 23.9 x 14.6cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Lucy Crosbie Morrison, 1992
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing clippings, press releases, brochures, reviews, invitations and other ephemeral material relating to Ruth Hollick and the Ruth Hollick studio Photos: Marcus Bunyan
In 1928 Ruth Hollick and her partner, fellow photographer Dorothy Izard, held an exhibition at their Collins Street studio of more than 150 portraits of children. Lady Eleanor Mary Latham, wife of then attorney-general Sir John Greig Latham, opened the exhibition, encouraging the audience to consider the possibility of career for women, with Hollick as a role model: ‘Everyone has a right to try and make a living for herself in any profession she likes to take up.’ The period in which Hollick and Izard operated the studio in Collins Street was extremely productive and successful. In 1929 Hollick was the only woman to participate in the Melbourne Exhibition of Pictorial Photography.
Ruth Hollick was widely recognised for her skill in photographing children. In an interview published in 1927, Hollick said: ‘I have always found the work well within a woman’s intellectual grasp, and not too hard a strain from the physical point of view. Although one does not, at this period of women’s freedom, talk of any particular work as being her sphere, there is no doubt but that feminine intuition with children may be particularly helpful … After all the big thing is to catch the real child – show him as he is – no wonderful massing of shadow, no illuminating light is worth a lot if it does not reveal the real Pat or Mollie.’ These materials were collected by Hollick and gifted to the NGV’s Shaw Research Library by her niece Lucy Crosbie Morrison.
Vitrine text from the exhibition
Inez McPhee (Australian, 1908-1999) No title (Inez McPhee’s album of ADA river trip) (installation view) 1936 28.1 x 22.4cm (page) 28.5 x 23.0 x 3.1cm (closed) 28.5 x 46.0 x 1.5cm (open) Album: gelatin silver photographs, newspaper, pencil and pen and ink, 62 pages, cardboard and leather cover, stitched binding Presented through the NGV Foundation by John McPhee, Member and Ann Luck, 2004 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Inez McPhee (Australian, 1908-1999) No title (Inez McPhee’s album of a trip to New Zealand) (installation view) 1953 Album: gelatin silver photographs, collage, pencil, 40 pages, cardboard cover, stitched binding 31.0 x 24.1cm (page) 31.1 x 24.8 x 1.4cm (closed) 31.1 x 49.0 x 1.0cm (open) Presented through the NGV Foundation by John McPhee, Member and Ann Luck, 2004 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Inez McPhee was an active member of the Melbourne Women’s Walking Club, founded in 1922. McPhee took her camera on bushwalks with the group and, typical of amateur photographers of the period, compiled albums of the prints. Her albums are filled with images of women engaging in outdoor activities.
Vitrine text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left three photographs by Edna Walling: Doris Oak-Rhind, Edna’s Walling’s sister (1920s); Estelle Thompson (1950s-1960s); and No title (Young woman preparing picnic) (1940s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left to right, three photographs by Edna Walling (Australian born England, 1895-1973) Doris Oak-Rhind, Edna’s Walling’s sister (1920s); Estelle Thompson (1950s-1960s); and No title (Young woman preparing picnic) (1940s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Edna Walling (Australian born England, 1895-1973) Estelle Thompson (installation view) 1950s-1960s Gelatin silver photograph 25.4 x 20.6cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Barbara Barnes, 1983 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Many-sided Indeed: Women In Business
“There is more, much more in the photo question than the mere ability to make a technically perfect photo or picture,” wrote New Zealand photographer May Moore in a 1916 essay. “And when it comes to successfully managing a studio of one’s own, one wants to be many-sided indeed … The woman who is to succeed … must make up her mind to equip on all points just as the men do.”
Women-run photography studios emerged as early as the 1850s in places such as England, Japan, Germany and the United States. However, women faced many barriers to operating their own studios well into the twentieth century, and many had to rely on family support. Photographers such as Ruth Hollick, Karimeh Abbud and Hedda Morrison persevered to successfully manage or independently run photography studios in the 1920s-40s. They produced a wide range of images, from those made for commercial and tourist purposes to documentary, artistic and personal photographs.
Edna Walling (Australian born England, 1895-1973) No title (Album) (installation view) 1950s-1960s Album: gelatin silver photographs, 48 pages, cardboard, leather and colour photo-lithograph cover, metal screw binding 24.6 x 32.0cm (page) 25.6 x 34.8 x 3.6cm (closed) 25.6 x 62.8cm (open) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Barbara Barnes, 1983 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Landscape designer Edna Walling kept a personal photo album to capture the creative effervescence of the community at her property at Bickleigh Vale Village in Mooroolbark, Victoria. Nicknamed ‘Trouser Lane’, the property was designed by Walling to be a ‘community of connected gardens and cottages. Many people, including many women, shared in Walling’s unique vision for the space, visiting and residing at Trouser lane over the years. Walling’s album features, among others, images of writer Estelle Thompson, landscape designer Daphne Pearson, builder Esme Johnson, violinist Perry Hart and ballet dancers Harcourt Algernoff and Graham Smith. Also interspersed throughout the album are photographic flower studies.
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Edna Walling (Australian born United Kingdom, 1895-1973) No title (Album) 1950s-1960s Album; gelatin silver photographs, 48 pages, cardboard, leather and colour photo-lithograph cover, metal screw binding 24.6 x 32.0cm (page) 25.6 x 34.8 x 3.6cm (closed) 25.6 x 62.8cm (open) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Barbara Barnes, 1983
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the display cases in the lower two images, photographs by Hedda Morrison (Australian born Germany, 1908-1991) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing three photographs by Dorothy Izard (Australian born England, 1882-1972): Ti-trees (1920s); No title (Dappled tree) (1920s); and No title (Tree in paddock) (1920s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Dorothy Izard (Australian born England, 1882-1972) Ti-trees 1920s Gelatin silver photograph 22.8 × 18.4cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Lucy Crosbie Morrison, 1992
Dorothy Izard met fellow photographer Ruth Hollick when they were students at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, and they formed both a romantic and a professional partnership. They travelled extensively around regional Victoria in the 1920s and 1930s. Izard was a landscape photographer and, at Hollick’s home studio, was responsible for printing the orders for Hollick’s photographs.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing Ruth Hollick’s artist book Australian flowers (1950s, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ruth Hollick (Australian, 1883-1977) Australian wildflowers 1950s Artist’s book: hand-coloured gelatin silver photographs on buff paper on brown paper mounts, pen and ink, pencil, (other materials), [5] leaves, brown paper cover, cotton cord binding 33.2 x 25.5cm (page) 34.3 x 26.3 x 1.0cm irreg. (closed) 34.3 x 53.1 x 1.1cm irreg. (open) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Pamela Jane Green, 2021 Public domain
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, four photographs by Hedda Morrison (Australian born Germany, 1908-1991): No title (Hua Shan mountain face) (1935, printed 1970s); No title (The Chessboard Pavilion) (1935, printed 1970s); No title (Step ladder to the nothingness peak ) (1935, printed 1970s); and No title (Lone pine against sunlit cliff face) (1935 printed 1970s, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Hedda Morrison (Australian born Germany, 1908-1991) No title (Lone pine against sunlit cliff face) (installation view) 1935 Gelatin silver photograph 22.8 x 30.3cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1976 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
These photographs were taken in 1935, when Morrison journeyed by train to the Hua Shan mountains in eastern China. She photographed the deep chasms and textures of the mountain ranges, and the Taoist monasteries and monks who assisted the travellers on their journeys.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing photographs by Hedda Morrison (Australian born Germany, 1908-1991) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, six photographs by Hedda Morrison: No title (Morning clouds) (1935, printed 1970s); No title (Fairy palm cliff) (1935, printed 1970s); No title (The stone balustrade) (1935, printed 1970s); No title (Three gnarled pines) (1935, printed 1970s); No title (Two Taoist priests below the fiery palm cliff) (1935, printed 1970s); and No title (Pine tree above the Yellow River plain) (1935, printed 1970s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Hedda Morrison (Australian born Germany, 1908-1991) No title (Pine tree above the Yellow River plain) (installation view) 1935, printed 1970s Gelatin silver photograph 30.3 x 22.7cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1976 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, three photographs by Hedda Morrison: No title (Taoist priest) (1935, printed 1970s); No title (Taoist novice) (1935, printed 1970s); and No title (Taoist priest) (1935, printed 1970s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Tina Modotti (Italian, 1896-1942) Girls in shawls 1924-1929 Gelatin silver photograph 13.2 x 16.9cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Tina Modotti is known for her socially and politically charged photographs documenting Mexican working life. For Modotti, art, life and politics were inextricably linked. Her photographs show the artist’s commitment to documenting the lives of women and working people. This image is believed to be from a project exploring the popular arts of Mexico, specifically the shawl-like rebozo, and exemplifies Modotti’s humanist style of documentary photography. It is one of the photographs anthropologist Frances Toor commissioned from Modotti and Edward Weston for the magazine Mexican Folkways, published between 1925 and 1937.
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Dora Maar (French 1907-1997) Vendors laughing behind their charcuterie stall, Barcelona (Vendeuses et vendeur riant derrière leur étal de charcuterie, Barcelone) 1933 Gelatin silver photograph 27.2 x 24.0cm (image) 30.3 x 24.0cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2021 Public domain
In 1933 Dora Maar travelled to Spain, where she documented the extreme poverty of the country’s cities through people she met on the streets. Aligning with her left-wing politics and opposition to fascism, her photographs honour working-class citizens rather than buildings or monuments. Maar was fascinated by the characters she encountered in La Boqueria, the market in the heart of Barcelona. In this image, she captures a joyful moment as the women vendors playfully turn away from her, hiding their gaze, while a man smiles directly into Maar’s lens.
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The Document
The primary aim of social documentary photography is to draw attention to social issues, often to promote social or political change. This style of photography blossomed during the tumultuous period of the 1930s, when photographers were commissioned by the United States government to document the effects of the Great Depression. The increased popularity of illustrated mass media such as newspapers and magazines also allowed for the broad dissemination of social documentary images and texts.
The ability of social documentary photography to present a purely objective representation of people or places continues to be fertile ground for debate today.
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing Farm Security Administration photographs by Dorothea Lange Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing clockwise from bottom left, four photographs by Dorothea Lange: Drought-stricken farmers on the shady side of town street while their crops burn up in the fields, Sallisaw, Oklahoma (1936 printed c. 1975, below); Drought refugees from Oklahoma, Blythe, California (1936, printed c. 1975); Real Estate sign along highway, Riverside County, California (1937, printed c. 1975); and Child living in Oklahoma City, Shacktown (1936 printed c. 1975, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Drought-stricken farmers on the shady side of town street while their crops burn up in the fields, Sallisaw, Oklahoma 1936, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 26.4 x 25.4cm (image) 28.0 x 35.4cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Child living in Oklahoma City, Shacktown 1936, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 26.9 x 25.5cm (image) 28.0 x 35.4cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain
During the Great Depression, many migrants travelling in search of economic opportunity were forced to create temporary camps along roadsides. For Dorothea Lange, who photographed many such experiences over several years, images like this one were part of a greater project to spark public awareness of the difficulties people were facing. As Lange later said, ‘I had begun to talk to the people I photographed … In the migrant camps, there were always talkers. It gave us a chance to meet on common ground.’
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In Focus: Farm Security Administration Project
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was established in 1937 as part of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal economic reforms, which provided relief to farmers left impoverished by the hardships of the Great Depression. Led by Roy Stryker, the FSA’s photography program was to be one of the most influential social documentary projects ever developed. Many images were reproduced in newspapers and periodicals to show the harsh realities of life for those living in poverty, with the aim of encouraging public support for the government’s economic policies.
The program ran as part of several government agencies, including the Resettlement Administration (1935-37), then the Farm Security Administration (1937-42) and the Office of War Information (1942-44). Stryker hired a range of photographers for the project and, despite their being given comparable briefs, the unique eye of each photographer is apparent in the over 175,000 pictures produced by the project.
As well as forming a comprehensive pictorial record of American life from 1935 to 1944, the FSA photography program generated some of the most recognisable documentary photographs of the twentieth century, including images by women such as Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott and Marjory Collins.
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Woman of the high plains, near Childress, Texas (installation view) 1938, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 49.4 x 39.3cm (image) 50.5 x 40.6cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Woman of the high plains, near Childress, Texas 1938, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 49.4 x 39.3cm (image) 50.5 x 40.6cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain
‘We’ve had no work since March. The worst thing we did was when we sold the car, but we had to sell it to eat, and now we can’t get away from here … This county’s a hard county. They won’t help bury you here. If you die, you’re dead, that’s all.’
~ The subject of this photograph, Nettie Featherston, to Dorothea Lange
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Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Towards Los Angeles, California 1936, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 39.6 x 39.1cm (image) 40.8 x 50.5cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975
During the Great Depression, the Great Plains of North America became known as the Dust Bowl. A severe drought turned the soil to dust, leading to the migration of thousands of small-scale farmers who could no longer work the land. Dorothea Lange made many road trips to document the plight of migrants heading west in search of work and opportunities. Many of Lange’s photographs, such as this one, show workers travelling in difficult conditions, on foot and by car. This photograph was also used as the basis for a scene in the 1939 film Of Mice and Men, based on John Steinbeck’s story of two migrant ranch workers.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from top to bottom, two photographs by Dorothea Lange: Plantation Overseer, Mississippi Delta, near Clarksdale, Mississippi (1936, printed c. 1975) and Born a slave, resettled after the Civil War, Carrizo Springs, Texas (1936 printed c. 1975, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Born a slave, resettled after the Civil War, Carrizo Springs, Texas 1936, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 26.5 x 25.4cm (image) 28.0 x 35.4cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain
Dorothea Lange witnessed racial segregation in the Southern states and often photographed individuals affected by the resulting social and economic inequalities. This work is also known by an alternate title: ‘Bob Lemmons, Carrizo Springs, Texas. Born a slave about 1850, south of San Antonio. Came to Carrizo Springs during the Civil War with white cattlemen seeking new range. In 1865, with his master was one of the first settlers. Knew Billy the Kid, King Fisher, and other noted bad men of the border.’
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Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) Shenandoah Valley, Virginia (installation view) 1941, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 25.6 x 34.1cm (image) 28.0 x 35.4cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) Shenandoah Valley, Virginia 1941, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 25.6 x 34.1cm (image) 28.0 x 35.4cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain
Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) One of the judges at the horse races, Warrenton, Virginia (installation view) 1941, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 39.6 x 39.1cm (image) 40.8 x 50.5cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) Transportation for hep cats Louisville, Kentucky (installation view) 1940, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 25.7 x 34.1cm (image) 36.1 x 44.6cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) Transportation for hep cats Louisville, Kentucky 1940, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 25.7 x 34.1cm (image) 36.1 x 44.6cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from third left to right, three photographs by Marion Post Wolcott: Near Wadesboro, North Carolina (1938 printed c. 1975, below); Baptismal service, Morehead, Kentucky (1940 printed c. 1975, below); and Jitterbugging in a juke joint on Saturday night, Clarksdale, Mississippi (1939 printed c. 1975, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) Near Wadesboro, North Carolina (installation view) 1938, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 26.4 × 26.5cm (image) 28.0 × 35.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975 Public domain Photo: Marcus Bunyan
The people in this photograph are the children of tenant farmers. The older child holds the hand of the younger, whose legs are bowed likely due to rickets, a medical condition caused by malnourishment. This is a vivid image that captures both the intimacy between children and the effects of environmental and economic devastation.
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Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) Haircutting in front of plantation store after being paid off on Saturday, Mileston Plantation, Mississippi Delta (installation view) 1939, printed c. 1939 Gelatin silver photograph 27.0 x 34.6cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1980 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) Haircutting in front of plantation store after being paid off on Saturday, Mileston Plantation, Mississippi Delta 1939, printed c. 1939 Gelatin silver photograph 27.0 x 34.6cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1980
Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) Baptismal service, Morehead, Kentucky 1940, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 36.3 X 49.3cm (image) 40.7 X 50.5cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975
Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910-1990) Jitterbugging in a juke joint on Saturday night, Clarksdale, Mississippi 1939, printed c. 1975 gelatin silver photograph 36.7 x 49.3cm (image) 40.7 x 50.5cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1975
Marion Post Wolcott had a keen sense of social justice, having lived in Austria in the early 1930s, where she witnessed firsthand the rise of Nazism. On her return home to New York in 1933, she was determined to use her photography to raise awareness of social inequalities. While working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in the segregated American South, Wolcott witnessed the bleak economic situation endured by African Americans, which was exacerbated by the Great Depression. With an ‘open eye’, Wolcott captured both the positive effects of the FSA and the difficult realities of daily life. Her candid images of African American communities in the South – such as this joyful shot of people dancing – countered the dominant images of Black lives as they were commonly represented in mainstream media.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing three photographs by Heather George (Australia, 1907-1983): Rawhide bed, Wave Hill Station (1952, printed 1978); Stockyards, Wave Hill Station, Northern Territory (1952, printed 1978); and Stockyards, stockmen in distance. Wave Hill Station, Northern Territory (1952, printed 1978) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Heather George (Australia, 1907-1983) Stockyards, Wave Hill Station, Northern Territory 1952, printed 1978 From The Northern Territory series (1952) Gelatin silver photograph 24.0 x 28.8cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1980 Public domain
In the 1950s and 1960s Heather George worked as a freelance photographer and photojournalist. In 1952 Walkabout magazine published a series of photographs George made in the Northern Territory outback, including images of Wave Hill Station, a vast pastoral lease on the lands of the Gurindji people. Fourteen years later, it was to go down in history as the location of a turning point in the recognition of land rights for Australia’s First Nations peoples.
Consuelo Kanaga worked at the San Francisco Chronicle from 1915, later joining the California Camera Club, where she met photographers Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange and Edward Weston. Kanaga’s image-making was informed by her involvement in liberal politics and the nascent civil rights movement. In 1950 she stayed in an artists’ colony in Maitland, Florida, and documented the lives of Black field workers living there. This refined portrait of a mother with her children became well known around the world after its inclusion in the touring exhibition The Family of Man, curated by pioneering photographer Edward Steichen.
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Ruth Orkin (American, 1921-1985) American girl in Italy, Florence (installation view) 1951, printed 1980 Gelatin silver photograph 30.2 x 46.9cm (image) 40.3 x 50.6cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2022 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In 1950 freelance photographer Ruth Orkin was included in the Young Photographers exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and in 1951 Life magazine sent her on assignment to Israel. Before returning to America, she spent time in Italy, where she met a young American painter, Jinx Allen. The women collaborated on a series of photographs commissioned from Orkin by Cosmopolitan magazine for an article titled ‘Don’t Be Afraid to Travel Alone’. Standing in a Florence intersection, Orkin captured her friend as she manoeuvred through a crowd of men. The resulting image is reminiscent of a movie still – Orkin would go on to co-direct two feature films with her husband in the 1950s.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Maggie Diaz 3AW mobile studio, Elwood Beach (1960s printed 2014, below); Maggie Diaz Ladies at the bar, Tavern Club, Chicago (1957, printed 2014); three photographs by Diane Arbus: Girl with a cigar in Washington Square Park, N.Y.C. (1965, printed later); Blaze Starr in her living room, Baltimore, Md. (1964, printed later); A Couple at a Dance, N.Y.C. (1960, printed later); and Lisette Model Woman with veil, San Francisco (1949, printed c. 1960) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Maggie Diaz (American, 1925-2016, Australia 1961-2016) 3AW mobile studio, Elwood Beach (installation view) 1960s, printed 2014 Pigment print 27.9 x 30.0cm (image) 48.2 x 33.0cm (sheet) ed. 2/25 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2015 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Moving to Australia in 1961, American photographer Maggie Diaz established her Melbourne studio specialising in advertising, portraiture and social documentary photography. Among her commercial clients was the local radio station 3AW, which displayed her photographs in its new CBD studio. A 1964 article in Melbourne newspaper The Age described the headquarters, noting with apparent surprise that the commissioned photographs are ‘the work of a woman’.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
BOTH
Mikki Ferrill (American, b. 1937) Untitled (installation view) 1970s Gelatin silver photograph 20.7 x 13.6cm (image) 25.5 x 20.2cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Valeria ‘Mikki’ Ferrill is an African American photographer known for her documentation of the Black community in Chicago’s South Side during the 1960s and 70s. Ferrill studied advertising design and illustration at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She eventually became a photojournalist, joining a group of Black photographers from the area who shot for local periodicals and newspapers. Ferrill worked on assignments in Mexico in the late 1960s, returning to Chicago in 1970.
Throughout
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Collaboration and Change
Many postwar street photographers captured their subjects in the ‘instant’. By embracing close-looking, artists relied on chance to create spontaneous compositions, capturing candid, everyday moments. Photographers such as Diane Arbus worked on the streets of New York City, creating vivid portraits of contemporary American life. Arbus often collaborated with her subjects, producing striking images in the moment or curating compositions for magazine commissions.
Fashion photography was on the rise in the period, with American publications such as Harper’s Bazaar playing a pivotal role in amplifying the art form. Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Lillian Bassman and Toni Frissell were regular contributors to the magazine. Their photographs depicted the idealistic and aspirational modern woman.
Yamazawa Eiko and Tokiwa Toyoko were trailblazing women photographers working in Japan at the same time. Their works reflect the social changes of postwar Japan, expressed through the medium of the photobook.
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, three photographs by the photographer Lillian Bassman (American, 1917-2012): Black – with one white glove, Barbara Mullen, Christian Dior, Harper’s Bazaar, New York, 1958 (1958, printed (1994); Toreador and Barbara Mullen (for Harper’s Bazaar) (1950, printed 2006); and More fashion mileage per dress, Barbara Vaughn, Harper’s Bazaar, New York (1956, below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at right, three photographs by the photographer Lillian Bassman (American, 1917-2012): Black – with one white glove, Barbara Mullen, Christian Dior, Harper’s Bazaar, New York, 1958 (1958, printed (1994); Toreador and Barbara Mullen (for Harper’s Bazaar) (1950, printed 2006); and More fashion mileage per dress, Barbara Vaughn, Harper’s Bazaar, New York (1956, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lillian Bassman began her career as a painting assistant at the Works Progress Administration, and studied fashion illustration and textile design at Pratt Institute in the late 1930s. In 1940 the famed art director of Harper’s Bazaar magazine, Alexey Brodovitch, offered her a scholarship to study under him. This led to her role as art director of the magazine’s spinoff Junior Bazaar. There she worked with photographers such as Richard Avedon and Robert Frank, and in 1947 began working as a freelance photographer in fashion and advertising.
Wall text from the exhibition
New Ways Of Seeing: Portraits, Intimacy, Liberation
The 1960s and 1970s saw extraordinary social change around the world. Political activism was on the rise, stemming from the anti-Vietnam War movement. There was an increased consciousness around racial equality, feminism and LGBTQ rights. Photographers also documented the popularisation of alternative ways of living, such as shared housing and collective lifestyles, with images that sometimes appeared in counterculture publications.
Australian women photographers working during this period were among the first to gain access to tertiary photography education. Among the key ideas that emerged through the work of these artists was a focus on community, personal relationships and everyday life.
This exhibition culminates in 1975, a watershed year. It marked the first International Women’s Year, inaugurated through the first UN World Conference on Women, and the height of second-wave feminism. That year the NGV staged the exhibition Six Australian Women Photographers, sometimes referenced as Wimmin, featuring work by Marion Marrison, Melanie Nunn, Fiona Hall, Melanie Le Guay, Ingeborg Tyssen and Jacqueline Mitelman. Fifty years on, many of the images from that exhibition are included here, presented alongside work from the artists’ peers.
Text from the NGV website
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, six photographs by Christine Godden (Australian, b. 1947) Untitled 1973/1974 (below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, six photographs by Christine Godden (Australian, b. 1947) Untitled 1973/1974 (above); and four photographs by Marion Marrison (Australian, b. 1951) including at right No title (Lady) (1973) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at right, four 1974 photographs by Fiona Hall (Australian, b. 1953) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Fiona Hall began focusing on photography in the mid 1970s, following her time as an assistant to British landscape photographer Fay Godwin. Taken with a large-format camera, Hall’s early photographs were influenced by late modernism and formalism, the study of art focusing on the visual aspects of a work. In this image, Hall plays with forms and lines, capturing the elements of the room as if they have been layered, and she positions herself so that her reflection appears as though it is hovering in space. Curator and art historian Helen Ennis writes that while we often expect self-portraiture to reveal the artist, Hall’s photograph seems to conceal her.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at right, four 1974 photographs by Fiona Hall (Australian, b. 1953); and at right, four photographs by Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) (below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Sue Ford Carmel and Trish (1962, printed 1988) and Sue Ford Sue Pike (1963, printed 1988) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Carmel and Trish (1962, printed 1988) was taken early in Sue Ford’s artistic career, and features her friends Carmel and Trish posing in a paddock. Although Ford approached her photography seriously, her sense of humour comes through in this image, which has been described as both an experiment and a playful critique of photography. Throughout her career, Ford often turned the camera on herself, as well as on her family, friends and acquaintances, using the medium to explore social and political issues. Her work is aligned with the important wave of Australian feminist photographers active during the 1970s
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing pages from Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) and Virginia Fraser (Australian, 1947-2021) A book about Australian Women Melbourne, Outback Press, 1974 (below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980) and Virginia Fraser (Australian, 1947-2021) A book about Australian Women Melbourne, Outback Press, 1974 Shaw Research Library
This book features 131 photographs by the Melbourne-based photographer Carol Jerrems, interspersed with interviews and texts edited by Virginia Fraser. Published in 1974, the year before International Women’s Year, it captures a moment in time when many Australian women were deeply engaged in global feminist ideas. Described as a ‘collective portrait’, A Book About Australian Women has become an iconic reference in Australian feminist history. It highlights a diverse group of women involved in cultural life across Australia. Some of those featured include writer Anne Summers, painter Grace Cossington Smith, film director Jennie Boddington and the Wiradjuri tennis champion Evonne Goolagong Cawley.
Carol Jerrems studied photography at Prahran College in Melbourne, winning several student awards before first exhibiting her work in the early 1970s. Jerrems collaborated with Australian artist Virginia Fraser on the 1974 publication A Book About Australian Women, a suite of portraits featuring a diverse range of subjects. This portrait was taken as part of that project, and an edition is included in the book. The work features Oodgeroo Noonuccal, previously known as Kath Walker, who was an Aboriginal rights activist, poet, WWII veteran, environmentalist and educator. Noonuccal is photographed with her pen poised at the learning centre she established on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island, Queensland) to teach visitors to the island about Aboriginal culture and Country.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, two photographs by Ponch Hawkes (Australian, b. 1946): No title (Helen at Falconer Street) (c. 1975 printed 2018); and No title (In the backyard at Falconer Street) (c. 1975 printed 2018) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ponch Hawkes began to photograph while working as a journalist for the counterculture magazine The Digger in 1972. In 1973 she moved into a communal house in Melbourne with fellow Digger contributor Helen Garner. Together they produced stories for the broadsheet, documenting new ways of living emerging in inner-city Melbourne in the early 1970s.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at right, Ponch Hawkes No title (Summer night in the backyard at Falconer Street) (c. 1975 printed 2018, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image, top to bottom left to right, six photographs by Ponch Hawkes: No title (Women holding hands in front of graffiti, ‘Lesbians are lovely’) (1973, printed 2018); No title (Graffiti) (1975, printed 2018); No title (Women’s Theatre Group, performing outdoors beneath a Women’s Liberation banner in the City Square) (1975, printed 2018); No title (Two women embracing, ‘Glad to be gay’) (1973, printed 2018); No title (Fitzroy graffiti) (1973, printed 2018); No title (Graffiti, ‘Braddock… not mild, but sexist’) (1973, printed 2018) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ponch Hawkes captured powerful images of lesbian love and friendship during Melbourne’s early 1970s gay liberation movement. Hawkes worked for the counterculture magazine The Digger alongside Australian writer Helen Garner. The two often collaborated on projects, producing impassioned essays and imagery that platformed communities often excluded from mainstream media. The pride and solidarity shown in these images stand in stark contrast to the extreme discrimination queer people faced during the time.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Ann Newmarch We must risk unlearning (1975, below) and at second left, Ann Newmarch Two versions (1975, below) with at right, photographs by Ponch Hawkes Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Ann Newmarch We must risk unlearning (1975) and Ann Newmarch Two versions (1975) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Exhibition dates: 28th November, 2025 – 3rd May, 2026
Curator: Maggie Finch, Curator of Photography at the NGV
Mina Moore (New Zealand, 1882-1957) Nellie Stewart c. 1913-1916 Gelatin silver photograph 18.6 x 12.7cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of the Latrobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, 1992
Sisters May and Mina Moore operated their photography studio from 1913 in the newly completed Auditorium Building at 167 Collins Street, Melbourne. This building also housed a concert hall, where recitals, operas and music performances were presented. The location was particularly advantageous for the photographers as it provided a steady stream of performers and productions in need of promotional portraits.
Wall text from the exhibition
Nellie Stewart, born Eleanor Stewart Towzey (1858-1931) was an Australian actress and singer, known as “Our Nell” and “Sweet Nell”. Born into a theatrical family, Stewart began acting as a child. As a young woman, she built a career playing in operetta and Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
It’s great to have a record of this extensive photography exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
In this first part of the exhibition, Part 1 of a huge two-part posting on Art Blart (posting proceeds as in a walk through of the exhibition), highlights for me included:
~ Two photographs by the under appreciated Bahaus artist and self taught photographer Gertrud Arndt (German, 1903-2000) whose portraits of friends, still-lifes, and performative self-portrait images are rarely seen
~ Six small, intense, jewel-like photographs by Bauhaus student Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) of “new women” and street corners in Ginza, Japan which were a revelation for their beauty, pictorial composition, tonality, spatiality and physical presence of the image
~ The groundbreaking portfolio Métal by Germaine Krull (European, 1897-1985) which was magnificently laid out so that you could “appreciate its unique design as an object” and the “vitality of the photography”, allowing the viewer to begin to understand the complex relationships between images one to another and the flow of the whole folio. A joy to behold!
Entrance to the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Mina and May Moore’s Murial Starr (c. 1913-1916, below); at second left, May Moore’s Janina Korolewicz-Wayda (c. 1910-1920); at at third right, Mina Moore’s Nellie Stewart (c. 1913-1916, above) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light celebrates the wide-ranging photographic practices of more than eighty women artists working between 1900 and 1975. Featuring prints, postcards, photobooks and magazines, the exhibition explores the role of photographers as image-makers, and the ways in which women artists create an image of themselves, of others, of the times – from images of the women’s suffrage movement at the turn of the twentieth century, through to the women’s liberation movement and beyond. From Melbourne to Tokyo, Paris to Buenos Aires, the exhibition showcases the works of trailblazing artists such as Berenice Abbott, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Imogen Cunningham, Mikki Ferrill, Sue Ford, Christine Godden, Ponch Hawkes, Annemarie Heinrich, Ruth Hollick, Florence Henri, Kati Horna, Germaine Krull, Tina Modotti, Lucia Moholy, Toyoko Tokiwa, Yamazawa Eiko and many more.
The exhibition reflects a recent collecting focus on celebrating the contributions of women artists of the early twentieth century in the NGV Photography Collection. Featuring portraiture, photojournalism, landscape photography, photomontage, experimental avant-garde imagery and more, Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light presents the diverse work of women photographers against the backdrop of significant social, political and cultural events.
Text from the National Gallery of Victoria
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing May and Mina Moore’s Murial Starr (c. 1913-1916, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
May and Mina Moore (New Zealand, 1881-1931 and 1882-1957) Murial Starr c. 1913-1916 Gelatin silver photograph 19.6 x 12.5cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of the Latrobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, 1992
Sisters May and Mina Moore established their Wellington studio-portraiture business in around 1907. May, originally trained as a painter, learned to operate the camera while Mina, a schoolteacher, gained skills in printing. Expanding their business to Australia, May established a Sydney studio in 1911 while, two years later, Mina set up a Melbourne studio, which was later taken over by photographer Ruth Hollick. The pair became known for their studio portraits of actors, artists and musicians. Using only natural light, they created dramatic images marked by a striking chiaroscuro effect (a technique involving strong contrasts of light and shade) on the faces of their subjects.
Wall text from the exhibition
Muriel Starr (1888-1950) was a Canadian stage actress. She was particularly popular in Australia in the 1910s and 1920s. She appeared in one film, Within the Law (1916), an adaptation of her stage success. She was also known for the plays East of Suez, Birds of Paradise and Madame X.
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing May and Mina Moore’s No title (Woman) (c. 1914) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing Isabel Seymour (England, 1882-1963) The Seymour Album (c. 1907-1911). Recent acquisition Photos: Marcus Bunyan
The suffragette Isabel Seymour was employed by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in London in 1906. Fluent in English and German, she facilitated international speaking tours for the organisation. Assembled by Seymour for the WSPU, this personal scrapbook includes photographs, postcards, advertisements and newspaper articles detailing suffragette activities. The album provides a historical snapshot of the activities and people involved in the suffragette movement, through one of its key organisations.
Vitrine text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Woman’s Social and Political Union (distributor) Toye & Co. (manufacturer) Medal for Valour, awarded to Selina Martin, with original box (1909); Selina Martin (England, 1882-1972) No title (Photographic album containing images and handwritten text relating to Selina Martin) (c. 1910); Lizzie Casual Smith (England, 1870-1956) Miss Christabel Pankhurst (c. 1900s) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Woman’s Social and Political Union (distributor) Toye & Co. (manufacturer) Medal for Valour, awarded to Selina Martin, with original box (1909) and at right, Selina Martin (England, 1882-1972) No title (Photographic album containing images and handwritten text relating to Selina Martin) (c. 1910) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Woman’s Social and Political Union (distributor) Toye & Co. (manufacturer) Medal for Valour, awarded to Selina Martin, with original box (1909) and at right, Selina Martin (England, 1882-1972) No title (Photographic album containing images and handwritten text relating to Selina Martin) (c. 1910) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
New acquisition
The suffragette Selina Martin joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1908. She was imprisoned on several occasions due to her activism and was awarded a Hunger Strike Medal for valour by the WSPU. This album is Martin’s personal compilation of photographs, postcards and writings, many of which relate to the suffragette cause. It includes writing from notable acquaintances such as political activist and suffragette Mary Leigh, and human rights activist and feminist Ethel Snowden.
Vitrine text from the exhibition
Selina Martin (English, 1882-1972) was a member of the suffragette movement in the early 20th century. She was arrested several times. Her Hunger Strike Medal given ‘for Valour’ by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was sold at auction in Nottingham in 2019.
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Gertrude Kasebier The gargoyle (c. 1900, below); at third right, Ruth Hollick No title (Young woman in hunting costume, model Lucy Crosbie Morrison) (c. 1920, below); at second right, Ruth Hollick Thought (1921, below); and at right, Madame d’Ora Untitled (1931, below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Image-Makers: Women in Photography
By the start of the twentieth century, photography was becoming increasingly accessible to the public in many cities around the world. Previously, the medium was practised by an affluent minority of amateur artists and commercial studios. However, the production of lower-cost cameras gradually opened up photography to the broader public, particularly the expanding middle class. At the same time, women began to participate in photography as both creators and consumers. For many women, photography offered a means of income, a way to document daily life, and a powerful tool for communication and activism.
In England, suffragettes actively used photography to create and share images that were integral to their campaign for women’s right to vote. The suffragettes constructed their images in photographic studios and in the streets, merging style and fashionable dress with politics and self-assuredness. These photographs became crucial in shaping the public image of the suffrage movement.
In Australia, May and Mina Moore ran a successful photographic business. Known for their dramatically lit portraits of stage performers, they responded to the appetite for stylised portraiture as popularised by the suffragettes. At a time of shifting gender roles, May Moore also advocated publicly for women to work in photography.
Installation views of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing Gertrude Kasebier The gargoyle (c. 1900, below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Gertrude Kasebier (American, 1852-1934) The gargoyle c. 1900 Platinum photograph 20.6 x 13.5 cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of the Herald & Weekly Times Limited, Fellow, 1979
In the early twentieth century, leading Pictorialist photographer Gertrude Käsebier played a key role in establishing photography as a form of fine art. As a member of the Photo-Secession group alongside Alfred Stieglitz, Käsebier was dedicated to Pictorialism, a style that emphasised artistic expression over documentary accuracy. This photograph, taken in Paris, highlights the painterly, emotional qualities inherent in Pictorialism. Käsebier has created an evocative image using composition and light to transform the scene. After leaving the Photo-Secession group in 1912, Käsebier became a founder and active member of the Pictorial Photographers of America.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Ruth Hollick No title (Young woman in hunting costume, model Lucy Crosbie Morrison) (c. 1920, below); at second left, Ruth Hollick Thought (1921, below); and at right, Madame d’Ora Untitled (1931, below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Ruth Hollick (Australian, 1883-1977) No title (Young woman in hunting costume, model Lucy Crosbie Morrison) c. 1920 Gelatin silver photograph 20.0 x 14.6cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by Mrs Lucy Crosbie Morrison, Member, 1993 Public domain
Ruth Hollick attended the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902 to 1906 and began to photograph commercially around 1908. In 1918, along with her life and professional partner, fellow photographer Dorothy Izard, she took over the studio of May and Mina Moore at 167 Collins Street, Melbourne. Eventually Hollick expanded her studio into the newly completed Chartres House building next door at 165 Collins Street. From 1920 her photographs were regularly included in magazines as well as Australian and British Pictorialist exhibitions and salons. Hollick closed her city studio in the early 1930s but continued working from her home in the Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds into the 1960s.
Wall text from the exhibition
Ruth Hollick (Australian, 1883-1977) Thought 1921 Gelatin silver photograph 37.4 x 25.3cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by Mrs Lucy Crosbie Morrison, Member, 1993 Public domain
This sensitive portrait depicts the artist’s niece Lucy Crosbie Morrison. The pose of the subject, combined with the title, reveals the photographer’s careful direction and artistic ambition. The subject’s outfit, adorned with appliqué gum leaves and a gumnut belt, references native Australian plants. The work aligns with the style of Pictorialism, a popular international photographic trend at the time. Thought was recognised at the 1921 Colonial Exhibition in London, highlighting both its local significance and broader artistic appeal.
Wall text from the exhibition
Dora Kallmus (Madame d’Ora) (Austrian, 1881–1963) Untitled (installation view) 1931 Gelatin silver photograph 22.4 x 16.4cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2023 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Dora Kallmus, known professionally as Madame d’Ora, photographed high-profile figures associated with art, fashion and politics, including Josephine Baker and Coco Chanel. In 1907 Madame d’Ora opened her first studio in Vienna, Atelier d’Ora, one of the first photography studios in Vienna to be operated by a woman. She later moved to Paris, where her career flourished well into the 1930s – Atelier d’Ora was renowned for its glamorous, softly focused portraits – until she was forced to close her studio due to Nazi occupation.
Wall text from the exhibition
Dora Kallmus (1881-1963), better known as Madame d’Ora, was an unusual woman for her time with a spectacular career as one of the leading photographic portraitists of the early twentieth century. This exhibition, the largest museum retrospective on the Austrian photographer to date in the United States, presents the different periods of her life, from her early upbringing as the daughter of Jewish intellectuals in Vienna, to her days as a premier society photographer, through her survival during the Holocaust. Forging a path in a field that was dominated by men, d’Ora enjoyed an illustrious 50-year career, from 1907 until 1957. The show includes more than 100 examples of her work, which is distinguished for its extreme elegance, and utter depth and darkness.
Born into a privileged background and coming of age amidst the creative and intellectual atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Vienna, Kallmus was extremely well cultured. At age 23 while on a trip to the Côte d’Azur, she purchased her first camera, a Kodak box camera. She was the first woman photographer in Vienna to open her own studio and in May 1906, she was listed in the commercial register as a photographer for the first time. Self-styled simply as d’Ora, she initially took portraits of friends and members from her social circle. In the autumn of 1909, an exhibition of her work received a lively response from the press. Critics both praised the artistic style of her portraits and emphasized the prominent individuals who streamed in to view the show.
Over the course of her lifetime, d’Ora turned her lens on many artists, including Josephine Baker, Colette, Gustav Klimt, Tamara de Lempicka, and Pablo Picasso, among others. Alongside these commissions, she also photographed members of the Habsburg family and Viennese aristocracy, the Rothschild family, and other prominent cultural figures and politicians. D’Ora had close ties to avant-garde artistic circles and captured members of the Expressionist dance movement with her lens, including Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste. Fashion and glamor subjects were another important mainstay of her business. She regularly photographed Wiener Werkstätte fashion models and the designer Emilie Flöge of the Schwestern Flöge salon wearing artistic reform dresses. When d’Ora moved to Paris in 1925, she shifted her focus to fashion, covering the couture scene and leading lights of the period until 1940. She befriended key figures, such as the French milliner Madame Agnès and the Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga, as well as the top fashion magazine editors of the day. She also helped create and sustain glamorous images for a variety of celebrities, including Cecil Beaton, Maurice Chevalier, and Colette.
When the Nazis seized control of Paris in 1940, she was forced to close her studio and flee. She spent the war years in a semi-underground existence living in Ardèche in the southeast of France. Her sister Anna Kallmus, along with other family and friends, died in the Chełmno concentration camp. After World War II, d’Ora returned to Paris, profoundly affected by personal losses. While she lacked an elegant studio in Paris, d’Ora’s lasting connections to wealthy clients remained and many of them returned to her. While she accepted portrait commissions, mostly for financial stability, she also pushed into new, sometimes darker directions. Around 1948, she embarked on an astonishing series of photographs in displaced persons or refugee camps, which was commissioned by the United Nations. From around 1949 to 1958, d’Ora worked on a project, which she called “my big final work.” She visited numerous slaughterhouses in Paris, and amid the pools of blood and deathly screams, she stood in an elegant suit and a hat photographing the butchered animals hundreds of times.
Anonymous. “Madame d’Ora,” on the Neue Galerie website Nd [Online] Cited 30/03/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Madame D’Ora The Dolly Sisters (c. 1928, below); at second right, Trude Fleischmann The actress Sibylle Binder, Vienna (c. 1926, below); and at right, Trude Fleischmann View of Michaelerplatz, Vienna (1929, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Dora Kallmus (Madame d’Ora) (Austrian, 1881–1963) The Dolly sisters (installation views) c. 1928 Gelatin silver photograph 18.0 x 21.1cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Around 1928 Madame d’Ora photographed the Dolly Sisters, who were celebrated for their glamorous performances in the 1920s. Jenny and Rosie Dolly, Hungarian-American identical twins, were vaudeville and cabaret dancers adored in Britain, the United States and across Europe for their beauty and erotically charged performances. In d’Ora’s photograph they embody the ideal of the modern woman, with bobbed hair and short skirts, dressed in glittering couture costumes and adorned with pearls.
Wall text from the exhibition
Trude Fleischmann (American born Austria, 1895-1990) The actress Sibylle Binder, Vienna c. 1926 Gelatin silver photograph 21.9 x 16.2cm (image) 22.9 x 17.1cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Trude Fleischmann (American born Austria, 1895-1990) The actress Sibylle Binder, Vienna c. 1926 Gelatin silver photograph 21.9 x 16.2cm (image) 22.9 x 17.1cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022 Public domain
Trude Fleischmann studied photography in Paris and, after graduating from the Viennese visual arts college die Graphische, apprenticed in the studio of photographer Madame d’Ora. In 1920 Fleischmann opened her own studio, specialising in female nudes, celebrity and socialite portraits, and glamorous photographs of actors. In 1938 she fled Austria, eventually settling in New York, where she re-established her studio and continued to focus on portraits of high-profile figures. This portrait depicts the Viennese actress Sibylle Binder, who performed throughout Germany and Austria in the 1920s. Binder is photographed in glamorous dress and with the classic short, androgynous hairstyle of the New Woman.
Wall text from the exhibition
Sybille Binder (Austrian, 1895-1962)
Sybille Binder (5 January 1895 – 30 June 1962) was an Austrian actress of Jewish descent whose career of over 40 years was based variously in her home country, Germany and Britain, where she found success in films during the 1940s.
Career
Binder began her stage career in Berlin in 1915, then in 1918 moved to Munich, where she enjoyed success in classical drama. Between 1916 and 1918 she also appeared in a handful of silent films. In 1922, she returned to Berlin and received acclaim for her performance in Frank Wedekind’s Earth Spirit. Over the next few years she performed regularly in Germany and Austria then, in the mid-1930s as war approached and conditions in Germany became difficult, she made the decision to move to England.
Between 1942 and 1950 Binder featured in 13 British films, including several of superior quality. Her first screen appearance in Britain came auspiciously in the highly acclaimed supernatural drama Thunder Rock, playing opposite dramatic heavyweights including Michael Redgrave, James Mason and Frederick Valk. Other notable films in which Binder appeared were war drama Candlelight in Algeria (1944), hugely popular period melodrama Blanche Fury, espionage thriller Against the Wind and amnesia-themed romance Portrait from Life (all 1948).
Binder returned to Germany in 1950, settling in Düsseldorf, where she successfully picked up her stage career but did not attempt to break into the German film industry. She died on 30 June 1962, aged 67.
Trude Fleischmann (American born Austria, 1895-1990) View of Michaelerplatz, Vienna (Blick zum Michaelerplatz Wien) 1929 Gelatin silver photograph 18.4 x 16.6cm (image) 19.0 x 17.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image at third left, Kitty Hoffmann Posing dance group (Tanzgruppe Trude Goodwin) (1930, below); at third right, Lotte Jacobi Head of a dancer (1929, below); at second right, Gertrud Arndt Mask self-portrait No. 11 (1930, below); and at right, Gertrud Arndt Wera Waldek (1930, below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
New Women, New Visions
Photography studios flourished in the early twentieth century. In Vienna, Austria, numerous prominent women photographers ran successful businesses, including Madame d’Ora and later Trude Fleischmann and Kitty Hoffmann. While Madame d’Ora’s glamorous portraits retained the soft focus characteristic of turn-of-the-century photography, the women in Fleischmann’s and Hoffmann’s images of the 1920s and 1930s matched the mood of the modern city. With their chic dress and bobbed haircuts, they represented the famed ‘New Woman’, or Neue Frau, an archetype that came to symbolise female empowerment and the shift away from traditional gender roles.
Opening in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, the Bauhaus art school experienced an influx of women students due to changes in the country’s constitution that guaranteed women the right to vote and study. Photography, while not officially taught at the Bauhaus for some years, flourished: it was seen to be an essential means of expression appropriate for the modern age. Lucia Moholy and her husband, Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy, promoted the idea of ‘New Vision’ at the school. The camera was seen as the ultimate mirror of the everyday, while the camera-less images they produced allowed for great experimentation and abstraction.
Kitty Hoffmann (Austrian, 1900-1968) Posing dance group (Tanzgruppe Trude Goodwin) (installation view) 1930 Gelatin silver photograph 15.9 x 19.8cm (image) 16.8 x 20.7cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kitty Hoffmann (Austrian, 1900-1968) Posing dance group (Tanzgruppe Trude Goodwin) 1930 Gelatin silver photograph 15.9 x 19.8cm (image) 16.8 x 20.7cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
Kitty Hoffmann worked and studied at Vienna’s die Graphische visual arts college from 1922 to 1924. Three years later, upon completing her studies, she opened a photographic studio in the city, specialising in fashion and society portraiture. Hoffmann’s photographs were regularly published in popular lifestyle and theatre magazines of the time, including Die Dame von Heute (The Lady of Today)and Die Bühne (The Stage). This photograph depicts dancers from the Trude Goodwin dance group. The dancers form a graphic shape that echoes the oval stage-set behind them, encapsulating the Ausdruckstanz, or ‘expressive dance’ movement, which reached peak popularity in Vienna during the 1920s.
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Lotte Jacobi (German-American, 1896-1990) Head of a dancer 1929, printed c. 1970 Gelatin silver photograph 26.4 x 33.2cm (image) 27.7 x 35.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021 Public domain
Lotte Jacobi’s father and grandfather were also photographers, and her great-grandfather studied with Louis Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype. This modernist portrait features Russian dancer Niuta Norskaya. The dancer’s pale, oval-shaped face is encompassed by her wide-brimmed black hat, resulting in a striking study of modern beauty.
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Gertrud Arndt (German, 1903-2000) Mask self-portrait no. 11 (Maskenselbstbildnis Nr. 11) (installation views) 1930 Gelatin silver photograph 22.9 x 14.7cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Gertrud Arndt (born Gertrud Hantschk in Upper Silicia) set out to become an architect, beginning a three-year apprenticeship in 1919 at the architecture firm of Karl Meinhardt in Erfurt, where her family lived at the time. While there, she began teaching herself photography by taking pictures of buildings in town. She also attended courses in typography, drawing, and art history at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of design). Encouraged by Meinhardt, a friend of Walter Gropius, Arndt was awarded a scholarship to continue her studies at the Bauhaus in Weimar. Enrolled from 1923 to 1927, Arndt took the Vorkurs (foundation course) from László Moholy-Nagy, who was a chief proponent of the value of experimentation with photography. After her Vorkurs, Georg Muche, leader of the weaving workshop, persuaded her to join his course, which then became the formal focus of her studies. Upon graduation, in March 1927, she married fellow Bauhaus graduate and architect Alfred Arndt. The couple moved to Probstzella in Eastern Germany, where Arndt photographed buildings for her husband’s architecture firm.
In 1929, Hannes Meyer invited Alfred Arndt to teach at the Bauhaus, where Arndt focused her energy on photography, entering her period of greatest activity, featuring portraits of friends, still-lifes, and a series of performative self-portraits, as well as At the Masters’ Houses, which shows the influence of her studies with Moholy-Nagy as well as her keen eye for architecture. After the Bauhaus closed, in 1932, the couple left Dessau and moved back to Probstzella. Three years after the end of World War II the family moved to Darmstadt; Arndt almost completely stopped making photographs.
Mitra Abbaspour, Associate Curator, Department of Photography “Gertrud Arndt,” on the MoMA website 2014 [Online] Cited 31/03/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Gertrud Arndt (German, 1903-2000) Wera Waldek 1930, printed 1984 From the Bauhaus portfolio I (1919-1933) 1984 Gelatin silver photograph (19.0 x 22.5cm) irreg. (image) 27.0 x 35.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Galerie Kicken Berlin in memory of Rudolf Kicken (1947-2014), 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Originally wanting to study architecture, Gertrud Arndt enrolled at the Bauhaus school in 1923-1924, ultimately specialising in weaving. A self-taught photographer, she informally developed her skills while apprenticing at an architect’s office in Erfurt prior to her studies, later photographing buildings for her husband’s architecture firm. Printing this picture in its negative state, rather than turning it into a positive image, Arndt creates a striking dreamlike effect. The portrait depicts fellow Bauhaus architecture student Wera Waldek, who made designs for children’s play furniture and housing interiors. The image forms part of the Bauhaus Portfolio I 1919-1933, published by Rudolf Kicken Galerie in 1984.
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Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right in the bottom image, Florence Henri Still life (Nature morte) (1931 printed 1975, below); Elsa Thiemann (German, 1910-1981) Design for wallpaper (1930-1931); 1930s photographs by Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) see below; and two 1920s photographs by Lucia Moholy of the Bauhaus, Dessau, see below Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Elsa Thiemann trained in painting, graphic design and photography at the Bauhaus school. While there, she responded to an advertisement from school director Hannes Meyer for wallpaper designs to be considered for the new Bauhaus collection, planned for production by the wallpaper manufacturer Gebrüder Rasch. Thiemann’s designs used photograms of flowers and hand-coloured swirling patterns, which were meticulously cut, organised and pasted into repetitious symmetrical layouts. While her designs were not manufactured, likely due to their contrast with the brighter patterns ultimately selected for production, they remain as standalone works indicative of the experimental design being practised at the Bauhaus.
After studying music and painting, Florence Henri was introduced to photography in 1927 while attending the Bauhaus school. There, she met László Moholy-Nagy and Lucia Moholy, whose influence (especially Moholy’s) led Henri to focus solely on photography. In 1929 she established a studio in Paris, where she became renowned for her avant-garde and experimental practice. In addition to portraits of women, her work often features still-life compositions that combine everyday objects like envelopes and sheets of paper with natural elements such as flowers and leaves. Henri also frequently used mirrors as a means of fragmenting the pictorial space.
Wall text from the exhibition. New acquisition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing photographs by Yamawaki Michiko, top to bottom, left to right: Ginza (Street corner) (1932, below); Ginza (Women in matching kimonos and white parasols) (1932); Ginza (Woman walking with 1930s style dress, white, with white hat) (1932, below); Ginza (Two women crossing street, one with white hat) (1932, below); Ginza (Ginza Palace) (1932, below); Ginza (Pumps and sandals walking on sidewalk) (1932). New acquisitions Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Yamawaki Michiko and her husband spent two years studying at the Bauhaus art school in Dessau, Germany from 1930, returning to Japan in 1932. Taken in the summer of 1933, Yamawaki’s Tokyo street scenes show the influence of the Bauhaus vision, while highlighting the differing roles of women at a time of great social change. We see mothers carrying children, women in kimono holding parasols, and moga (modern girls) wearing knee-length dresses and Western-inspired clothes. Yamawaki used details from twenty-one of these photographs to create her bustling modernist photomontage Melted Tokyo, published in Asahi Camera magazine in 1933.
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Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) Ginza (Street corner) (installation view) 1932 Gelatin silver photograph 11.0 x 8.2 cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) Ginza (Woman walking with 1930s style dress, white, with white hat) (installation view) 1932 Gelatin silver photograph 11.2 x 8.3cm (image) 12.6 x 10.0cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) Ginza (Two women crossing street, one with white hat) (installation view) 1932 Gelatin silver photograph 11.2 x 8.2cm (image) 12.6 x 10.0cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Yamawaki Michiko (Japan, 1910-2000, worked in Germany 1930-1932) Ginza (Ginza Palace) (installation view) 1932 Gelatin silver photograph 11.2 x 8.3cm (image) 12.5 x 10.0cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at top, Lucia Moholy Bauhaus residences Dessau, kitchen – sideboard (1926, below); and at bottom, Lucia Moholy Berlin Architecture Exhibition (1928, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lucia Moholy (British born Czech, 1894-1989) Bauhaus residences Dessau, kitchen – sideboard (Bauhaussiedlung Dessau, küche – anrichte) 1926 Gelatin silver photograph 11.9 x 16.8cm (image) 13.0 x 17.9cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Lucia Moholy is best known for documenting the architecture, people and creative outputs of the Bauhaus school. Her work was often incorrectly attributed to famous men of the school, such as its founder, Walter Gropius, and Moholy’s then husband, László Moholy-Nagy. In this photograph, Moholy captures Gropius’s kitchen in the Masters’ House. The building and the design schools nearby, built between 1925 and 1926, are exemplars of European modern architecture and design. Sharp lines and dynamic angles emphasise the modular design, displaying the modernist principles of photography that Moholy applied to her images of architectural spaces.
“I suggest that Walter Gropius was most likely not interested in the ‘design’ of kitchens. These function rooms he would have not visited often nor did he cook. Gropius had a maid while in the Bauhaus as well as in later life. The kitchen at the Bauhaus was functional according to the times and the needs as seen by the employers of the maids who worked in them. Whereas the Frankfurt Kitchens were a result of attention to design as well as function and efficiency. …
Lucia had not enjoyed small town Dessau and intense campus life at the Bauhaus. She worked in Berlin but at in 1933 Moholy had to flee in fear of arrest for her communist association, leaving all her possessions behind including her negatives.
After time on Prague and Paris, Lucia Moholy settled In England in 1934 where she worked as a portrait photographer and teacher. …
After seeing her images as uncredited illustrations in the catalogue of a 1938 exhibition on the Bauhaus at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and many later publications, Lucia Moholy became aware that her negatives had survived. She found they had come into the possession of Walter Gropius who took them to his new teaching post America in 1937. He could easily have found Lucia post war. For years Lucia Moholy asked Gropius to give the plates back but he would not until her lawyers were able to force the return about half the original number in 1957. She complained that Gropius enjoyed the use and income from the photographs while she lived in want.”
Gael Newton AM. “Lucia Moholy: The Kitchen,” on the Photo-web website, March 2026 [Online] Cited 02/04/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
The question remains: what happened to the remaining negatives not returned by Walter Gropius to Lucia Moholy in the 1957 settlement? According to Moholy’s own card catalogue, which she used to keep track of her works, 330 negatives remained missing from her collection by the time of her death in 1989. Lost, damaged or stolen … the reputation of Gropius is forever sullied by his unseemly, grasping, patriarchal actions. MB
Lucia Moholy (British born Czech, 1894-1989) Berlin Architecture Exhibition (Exposition d’Architecture à Berlin en 1928) 1928 Gelatin silver photograph 16.3 x 22.4cm (image) 16.9 x 22.9 cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
In 1928 Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-Nagy left Dessau for a new life in Berlin. This image documents an innovative housing exhibition showcasing modern living. The display, designed by architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school, featured new housing concepts in Zehlendorf, a Berlin neighbourhood. The graphic lettering on the building translates to ‘Live in a green environment, ideal case: Zehlendorf’. Moholy-Nagy designed the interiors, and Moholy’s images, with their signature focus on starkly contrasting vertical and horizontal lines, highlight their modernist design principles.
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Like many women of her time, Lucia Moholy often found herself in the shadow cast by her more conspicuous male peers – one of whom happened to be her husband, the photographer László Moholy-Nagy. After marrying in 1921, the couple moved to Weimar, Germany, so that he could begin a professorship at the Bauhaus, the influential German school of architecture, design, and applied arts. While László taught, Lucia undertook photography training, serving as an apprentice in Otto Eckner’s Bauhaus photography studio. By 1926 she had mastered a wide range of techniques, installed a darkroom in their home, and begun collaborating with her husband on experimental forms of cameraless photography.
As part of her photographic practice, Lucia began documenting the people and architectural spaces of the Bauhaus. Many of her images focus on the women who either supported or participated in the school’s activities. Edith Tschichold (1926), for instance, depicts the wife of German typographer and frequent Bauhaus collaborator Jan Tschichold. Meanwhile, Florence Henri (1927) portrays the notable Surrealist artist at the outset of her career, when she came to the Bauhaus in 1927 as a visiting photography student. Both portraits are tightly cropped around the women’s faces, revealing expressions of wistfulness or self-assurance that pull viewers into a shared emotional space.
One of Lucia’s more iconic portraits is an untitled photograph of her husband, who, sporting a machinist’s coveralls over his shirt and tie, humorously attempts to block the camera lens with his hand. The candid shot hints at the playful nature of the couple’s working relationship; once circulated, it also helped to shape László’s persona as an artist-constructor. Despite happy appearances, their relationship began to deteriorate as László declined to credit Lucia for many of their collaborations, including the celebrated 1925 book Malerei, Photografie, Film (Painting, Photography, Film).
This was not the only – or even the most significant – erasure of Lucia’s career. Forced to flee Germany in 1933 due to the rise of the Nazi Party, she made the difficult decision to leave behind her collection of 560 glass-plate negatives, which she described as “my only tangible asset.”
Following World War II, in the midst of a revival of interest in the Bauhaus, she tried desperately to locate them with no success. It wasn’t until 1954 that Walter Gropius, founder and former head of the Bauhaus, acknowledged that the negatives were in his possession, that he had been reproducing them, and that he had no intention of returning them to her. Lucia Moholy’s precise visual records of the school’s architecture – such as Bauhaus Workshop Building from Below. Oblique View (1926) – had been circulated without attribution for years in order to promote Bauhaus aesthetics. In fact, 49 of her prints appeared uncredited in the catalogue accompanying MoMA’s exhibition Bauhaus, 1919–1928, which was mounted in 1938 with Gropius’s input.
As part of her legal efforts to reclaim the negatives, Lucia wrote, “Everybody, except myself, have used, and admit to having used my photographs […] and often also without mentioning my name. Everyone – except myself – have derived advantages from using my photographs, either directly, or indirectly, in a number of ways, be it in cash or prestige, or both.”
Her claim was ultimately successful, leading to the return of 230 extant negatives in 1957. However, the acknowledgement of her influence – both as a collaborator in László Moholy-Nagy’s photographic experiments, and as an agent in the construction of Bauhaus visual identity – remains an ongoing project.
Dana Ostrander, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography “Lucia Moholy,” on the MoMA website 2020 [Online] Cited 31/03/2026
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Olive Cotton Girl with mirror (1938, below); Teacup ballet (1935 printed 1992, below); Shasta daisies (1937 printed 1992, below); at second right, Dora Maar Fashion study (c. 1936, below); and at right, Untitled (Study of Beauty (1936, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing from left to right, Olive Cotton’s Girl with mirror (1938, below); Teacup ballet (1935 printed 1992, below); Shasta daisies (1937 printed 1992, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003) Girl with mirror (installation view) 1938 Gelatin silver photograph 31.8 x 29.9cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Olive Cotton created this image while assisting her colleague and then partner Max Dupain on location at beaches around Sydney. According to Cotton, when Dupain was shooting fashion photographs, she had the freedom to create her own images while the model was ‘waiting her turn to be photographed by Max’. Dupain’s camera tripod cast ‘long slanting lines of shadow’ against the sand. While its creation was incidental, this photograph demonstrates Cotton’s eye for composition and her mastery of light and shade, emphasising the graphic elements of the scene.
Olive Cotton (Australian, 1911-2003) Teacup ballet (installation view) 1935, printed 1992 Gelatin silver photograph 36.0 x 29.2cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Upon purchasing a set of inexpensive cups and saucers to replace the mugs in photographer Max Dupain’s Sydney studio, where she was a studio assistant, Olive Cotton recognised the potential for a dynamic composition. Later describing the handles of the cups as ‘arms akimbo’, Cotton, in her efforts ‘to express a dance theme’, used a spotlight to accentuate shadows, resulting in a ‘ballet-like composition’. Through her deft use of lighting and arrangement of objects, the teacups appear transformed, as if they are ballerinas performing onstage. The image was immediately successful both in Australia and abroad, being included in the London Salon of Photography from September 1935.
Olive Cotton (Australia 1911-2003) Shasta daisies 1937, printed 1992 Gelatin silver photograph 38.2 x 28.1cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased from Admission Funds, 1992 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
‘The camera can do more than merely record an unchanging picture of a subject … The lighting, the relation of the various objects to the shape of picture and many other factors can be changed by the individual, and this is where discernment and personality come into the picture as it were.’
Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) Fashion study (installation view) c. 1936 Gelatin silver photograph Proposed acquisition
Dora Maar (French 1907-1997) Untitled (Study of beauty) (installation view) 1936 Gelatin silver photograph 33.0 x 24.1cm Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021
Dora Maar, a French photographer, poet and painter, established her commercial studio in Paris in 1932, quickly gaining recognition as a portrait and fashion photographer. While known as one of Pablo Picasso’s muses and the inspiration for his Weeping woman paintings, Maar was an influential artist in her own right, painting well into her eighties. As a photographer, Maar developed an elegant and experimental style, drawing on her knowledge of avant-garde photography and the ideas underpinning Surrealism. In this work, an advertising commission for the haircare brand Dolfar, Maar explores the ideal of beauty, creating an image in which the subject appears like a classical statue come to life.
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Featuring some of the most iconic images from the twentieth century by the likes of Diane Arbus, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Dorothea Lange, Olive Cotton and many more, Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light celebrates the images, lives and stories of more than 70 influential artists working between 1900 to 1975. Opening 28 November 2025 at NGV International, the exhibition features more than 300 rare and innovative photographs, prints, postcards, photobooks and magazines from the NGV Collection – with 170+ recently acquired and 130+ on display for the very first time.
Featuring portraiture, photojournalism, landscape photography, fashion photography, experimental avant-garde imagery and more, Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light explores the work of the artists against the backdrop of significant social, political and cultural events – from Melbourne to Tokyo, Paris to Buenos Aires. From historic images of the suffrage movement at the turn of the twentieth century, through to the women’s liberation movement and beyond, the exhibition reveals how these artists have used key photographic styles to capture, reflect and challenge the world around them. This exhibition highlights the rich networks of exchange of information, ideas and support between many of these women across the world.
The exhibition showcases the work of prominent and leading figures of photography, as well as drawing attention to lesser-known artists. Featured artists include Berenice Abbott, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Imogen Cunningham, Mikki Ferrill, Sue Ford, Christine Godden, Ponch Hawkes, Annemarie Heinrich, Ruth Hollick, Florence Henri, Kati Horna, Germaine Krull, Tina Modotti, Lucia Moholy, Tokiwa Toyoko, Francesca Woodman, Yamazawa Eiko, among many others.
The exhibition reflects a recent strategic collecting focus on celebrating the contributions of women artists of the early twentieth century in the NGV Photography collection. Many of the new works on display – including by artists previously unrepresented in the NGV Collection – have been acquired with the generous support of the Bowness Family Foundation, who have been involved with the NGV for almost 25 years and who also generously contributed to the publication. There have also been significant works joining the NGV Collection with the generous support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family, as well as Professor Wang Gungwu, and Joy Anderson.
Highlight works include an outstanding selection of photographs by Dora Maar, including fashion photographs, social documentary images and portraiture. Dora Maar was a sophisticated artist and image-maker and deeply connected within the avant-garde community. In 1935-36, she created these studio images of Pablo Picasso, with whom she was romantically involved. In these portraits, on display in the exhibition, Maar turns the gaze of her camera onto Picasso, offering the viewer a candid insight into their private domestic lives.
A further highlight is Dorothea Lange’s instantly recognisable work, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936, commissioned as part of a campaign by the US government Farm Security Administration to bring recognition to the impacts of the Great Depression on working class families. Lange created several photographs of the woman, Florence Owens Thompson, and her children. This image, focussed on Thompson’s seemingly anxious face, became a poignant symbol of the times.
In the 1930s German-born Ilse Bing became known as the ‘Queen of Leica’ for her use of the small, hand-held camera which allowed her the flexibility to shoot from dizzying angles, create contrasts of light, shade and shadows, and dynamic perspectives. The exhibition will feature Bing’s iconic modernist image, Self-portrait 1931, showing the artist’s reflection, of herself and her camera, accompanied by her side profile in another angled mirror demonstrating the significance of the camera in her image-making.
Inner-city Melbourne of the 1970s is brought to life in the photographs of Ponch Hawkes, offering audiences a first-hand glimpse into the changing social dynamics and sense of activism of the period. Photographs on display include her documentation of life in communal houses, of urban graffiti calling for childcare and social housing, of celebrations for Gay Pride Week, and documentation of the Women’s Theatre Group, performing outdoors beneath a Women’s Liberation banner.
Also on display is Olive Cotton’s iconic Teacup ballet, 1935, a wonderful study of light, shadows and forms. Cotton had purchased an inexpensive set of cups and saucers to replace the mugs in the Sydney studio of photographer Max Dupain, where she was studio assistant. Realising their potential for a dynamic arrangement, she photographed the teacups with elongated shadows, creating a striking composition of shadow play that Cotton described as “ballet-like”.
American artist Lee Miller moved to Paris in 1929, where she became Man Ray’s photographic student, then colleague, model and lover – all the while creating her own extraordinary photographs. On display in the exhibition is Miller’s portrait of Man Ray, taken in 1931 in Miller’s Paris apartment depicting her subject framed tightly, his gaze diverted.
Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, better known by their adopted alliterative pseudonyms Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, were an artist duo who radically questioned the constraints of gender in their artwork and lives. The pair are represented in this exhibition with the artist’s book Aveux non Avenus, 1930. In this highly experimental book, featuring ‘essay-poems’ and collaborative photomontages, which feature self-portraits of Cahun with a shaved head and androgynous appearance and dress, Cahun and Moore raise powerful questions about identity, sexuality and self-expression.
Las Lavanderas (The Washerwomen) c. 1940, also on display, is one of several photographs created by Mexican artist Lolo Álvarez Bravo of women washing their clothes at a waterfront. The sun casts long shadows from a nearby structure, transforming the scene of everyday labour into one of dynamic angles and forms. Bravo is known for her passionate documentation of the peoples and cultures of Mexico, through such dynamic and vivid compositions.
Parliamentary Secretary for Creative Industries, Katie Hall, said: “This exhibition will celebrate the work of women photographers who documented the world around them from vastly different places and perspectives. The NGV continues to present exhibitions that show us life through different lenses and introduce us to creative trailblazers from around the world.”
Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV, said: “Like all collecting institutions globally, the NGV has been actively looking at historically underrepresented areas of our collection, including gender. Though this is a long and ongoing process, this exhibition offers an opportunity to celebrate and share the more than 300 works by women photographers, many of which we’ve collected since 2020. We hope this exhibition gives audiences the chance to discover the work of lesser-known photographers or deepen their appreciation of familiar ones.”
Professor Simon Tormey, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin, said: “This important exhibition foregrounds the often-overlooked contributions of women to the evolution of photography across the twentieth century. At Deakin, where we teach and research across Creative Arts and Photography, we are proud to support initiatives that celebrate artistic innovation and also challenge historical silences. This collaboration with the NGV exemplifies our commitment to the transformative power of the arts.”
The exhibition will be accompanied by a beautifully illustrated publication exploring the images, lives and stories of women photographers from the pivotal period of 1900-1975. The publication will feature new essays from NGV Curators and international contributors including leading American art historian, critic and curator Abigail Solomon-Godeau; Emeritus Professor at the ANU School of Art & Design Helen Ennis; World Press Photo lead curator Amanda Maddox; photographer and writer Carla Williams, and Tokyo Photographic Art Museum curator Yamada Yuri. Women Photographers 1900–1975 will be co-published with Hatje Cantz in Berlin.
This exhibition coincides with the fifty-year anniversary of the first International Women’s Year in 1975, as declared by the United Nations.
Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Ilse Bing Salut de Schiaparelli (1934, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Salut de Schiaparelli (installation view) 1934 Gelatin silver photograph 49.5 x 39.7cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Salut de Schiaparelli 1934 Gelatin silver photograph 49.5 x 39.7cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
Upon moving from Frankfurt to Paris in 1930, Ilse Bing established a studio known for producing innovative portraits and fashion photography. This photograph was commissioned by fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli for a new perfume called Salut. Bing placed a scattered bouquet of lilies in the composition to represent the perfume’s scent. The image’s dreamlike quality is enhanced by Bing’s experimental use of the solarisation technique, which reverses the tones in a photograph.
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At Play: The Studio, Light and Shadows
In the 1920s, amid the aftermath of the First World War, many European avant-garde artists experimented with photography to actively ‘see’ the world anew. So-called New Photography emerged during this period, with images characterised by the play of light and shadow, extreme vantage points and the use of sharp focus. These techniques aimed to disorient the viewer – familiar scenes were made to feel unfamiliar.
Artists embracing these styles predominantly worked in studios, creating experimental images that explored the principles of New Photography. Some images were made purely as artistic exercises, while others demonstrate the use of experimental techniques for commercial purposes. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a great demand for modern photography in advertising, newspapers, catalogues and picture magazines. With the wide dissemination of these media, the influence of New Photography travelled far beyond Europe, and can be seen in works by Olive Cotton in Sydney, Lola Álvarez Bravo in Mexico City and Annemarie Heinrich in Buenos Aires.
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at second left, Ilse Bing Salut de Schiaparelli (1934, above); at second right, Annemarie Heinrich (Argentinian born Germany, 1912-2005) Eva’s apple (La manzana de Eva) 1953; and at right, ringl+pit (German, active 1930-1933, Ellen Auerbach and Grete Stern) Komol (1931 printed 1984, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
ringl+pit, Berlin Grete Stern (Argentine born Germany, 1904-1999) Ellen Auerbach (American born Germany, 1906-2004) Komol 1931, printed 1984 Gelatin silver photograph 34.4 x 23.3cm (image) 35.2 x 24.0cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Named after the childhood nicknames of Grete Stern (Ringl) and Ellen Auerbach (Pit), photography studio ringl+pit was sought after for its highly innovative and experimental work. The studio’s work broke free from feminine ideals and expectations. Komol, an unconventional advertisement for hair dye, is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the shallow nature of commercialised femininity. ringl+pit’s playful productions speak to the safety of the artists’ shared space, described by art historian Elizabeth Otto as ‘a haven of humour and honesty for the photographers in contrast to the outside world that does not understand them’.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left in the bottom image, Grace Lock The fly (c. 1960s); Ruth Bernhard Two Leaves (1952); and at right, Imogen Cunningham Agave design I (1920s, printed 1979) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) Agave Design I 1920s, printed 1979 Gelatin silver photograph 32.6 x 25.6cm (image and sheet) 49.6 x 39.8cm (support) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1979
Image from the Art Blart archive
Following the birth of her three sons, Imogen Cunningham had to close her portrait studio in Seattle. However, she found a way to continue taking pictures at home. According to Cunningham, she would spend the afternoons while her children napped photographing her plants, ‘because I couldn’t get out anywhere, and I had a garden’. In this close-up image of an agave, Cunningham focuses on the plant’s sharp lines and the play of light. The image is recognised as one of the most iconic abstracted avant-garde images of the early twentieth century. Soon after its creation, the image was included in the 1929 contemporary exhibition Film und Foto in Stuttgart, Germany.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing two photographs by Lola Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1903-1993) with at second right, Tribute to Salvador Toscano (1949 printed 1960s, below) New acquisition; and at right, The washerwomen (Las Lavanderas) (c. 1950, below) New acquisition Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Lola Álvarez Bravo Tribute to Salvador Toscano (1949, printed 1960s) New acquisition; and at right, Lola Álvarez Bravo The washerwomen (Las Lavanderas) (c. 1950, below) New acquisition Photo: Marcus Bunyan
New acquisitions
Lola Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1903-1993) The washerwomen (Las Lavanderas) c. 1950 Gelatin silver photograph on cardboard 18.9 × 22.3cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
New acquisition
Throughout her career, Lola Álvarez Bravo took several photographs of women washing their clothes at the waterfront. In this image, a large shadow from a nearby structure is cast over a group of women, children and dogs. The shadow appears to symbolise Mexico’s industrial growth and post-revolution transformation. Álvarez Bravo implemented modernist photography techniques such as high contrasts and extreme viewpoints to transform scenes of everyday labour into graphic compositions of dynamic angles and forms.
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image at left, Barbara Morgan (United States, 1900-1992) Hearst over the people (c. 1938-1939, below) New acquisition; at second left, Barbara Morgan City shell (1938, printed 1972); at second right, Margaret Bourke-White Campbell’s Soup No. 6 (1935, below) New acquisition; and at right, Margaret Bourke-White Beach accident, Coney Island (1952, below) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992) Hearst over the people (installation view) c. 1938-1939 Gelatin silver photograph 26.3 x 32.4cm (image) 26.8 x 33.0cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2023 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
New acquisition
After moving to New York in 1930 with her photojournalist husband, Barbara Morgan turned to photography after a decade devoted to painting and printmaking. While her children were sleeping, she would experiment with avant-garde photographic techniques. In this photomontage, the artist set out to ‘visually distort the consummate distorter’: media mogul William Randolph Hearst, notorious for his sensationalist news empire. Hearst’s grinning face is stretched into a sinister omniscient octopus, its tentacles writhing into crowds of workers on the street. First published in the influential left-wing magazine New Masses, this is a compelling depiction of psychological infiltration. It also, perhaps, proposes Hearst as an effigy of authority for agitators to protest.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Berenice Abbott New York at Night (1932); at second left, Berenice Abbott Old Post Office, Broadway and Park Row, Manhattan, May 25 (1938, below); and at right, Berenice Abbott Park Avenue and Thirty-Ninth Street, Manhattan, October 8 (1936) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Cities, Industries, Technologies
The early decades of the twentieth century came to be known as the Machine Age due to rapidly increasing automation, technological change and mass production. As cities industrialised, photographers responded by capturing buildings, workers and crowds.
Germaine Krull’s photographs from the 1920s and 1930s exemplify her dynamic, modern vision. Reflecting on the inspiration she gained from photographing cranes and bridges in Europe, which eventually led to the production of her famed 1928 photobook Métal, she said: “These steel giants revealed something to me that made me love photography again. From this moment onward, I began to SEE things as the eye sees them, and it is at this moment that photography was born for me.”
Machine Age artists were also experimenting with photomontage, a method that offered radical new perspectives and challenged conventional ways of seeing. Photomontage emerged in direct response to industrial development, as cities expanded and everyday life transformed. Barbara Morgan’s images reflect on the tension between the natural and the constructed. In contrast, Varvara Stepanova and Aleksandr Rodchenko embraced the tools of mass production, combining design, image-making and progressive printing techniques to create graphic publications that promoted the Soviet Union’s industrial power to a wide audience.
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Old Post Office, Broadway and Park Row, Manhattan, May 25 (installation view0 1938 Gelatin silver photograph 23.9 x 19.3cm (image) 25.3 x 20.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
New acquisition
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Old Post Office, Broadway and Park Row, Manhattan, May 25 1938 Gelatin silver photograph 23.9 x 19.3cm (image) 25.3 x 20.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021
New acquisition
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Park Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street, Manhattan, October 8 1936 Gelatin silver photograph 19.3 x 24.3cm (image) (irreg) 20.2 x 25.2cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2021
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Margaret Bourke-White Campbell’s Soup No. 6 (1935, below); Margaret Bourke-White Beach accident, Coney Island (1952, below); and at right, Berenice Abbott New York at night (1932 printed c. 1975, below) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) Campbell’s Soup #6 1935 Gelatin silver print 17.3 × 24.1cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024 Public Domain
New acquisition
Margaret Bourke-White became widely known for her documentation of workers and scenes of modern industry. Her photography was used on the cover of the first issue of Fortune magazine in 1930, and on the first photographically illustrated cover of Life in 1936. Bourke-White often documented aspects of the Machine Age, contrasting machines and human labourers. Taken in a factory owned by Campbell’s, a major American canned-food company established in 1869, this photograph captures part of the canning process. Bourke-White’s framing, which does not show the worker’s face, amplifies the dominance of the machine. The image first featured as a commission for a local food magazine alongside the caption ‘tangled and tricky, spaghetti defeats the mechanic’.
Wall text from the exhibition
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) Beach accident, Coney Island 1952 Gelatin silver photograph 35.2 x 27.9cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1973 Public domain
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) New York at night 1932, printed c. 1975 Gelatin silver photograph 34.1 x 26.1cm (image and sheet) 49.8 x 40.0cm (support) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of an anonymous donor in memory of Rosa Zerfas (1896-1983), 1985 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
This photograph of the illuminated buildings of New York is the result of a fifteen-minute exposure taken from high up in the Empire State Building. The idea of documenting a changing metropolis recalls the project of pioneering French photographer Eugène Atget, who recorded Paris as it transitioned from the nineteenth into the twentieth century. Berenice Abbott had befriended Atget through fellow American émigré artist Man Ray, for whom she worked as a darkroom assistant after moving to Paris in 1921. Atget’s influence on Abbott was profound: on her return to New York in 1929 she focused on documenting the city’s civic spaces and architecture.
Wall text from the exhibition
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) New York at Night 1932 Gelatin silver print 12 7/8 x 10 9/16″ (32.7 x 26.9cm)
Photograph from the Art Blart archive
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Changing New York 1939 Artist’s book: half-tone and letterpress text, blue cloth cover, photographic dust jacket 1st edition Purchased NGV Foundation 2022 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
New acquisition
In her funding proposal for the photobook Changing New York, Berenice Abbott described her desire to capture the ‘spirit’ of the city, driven by the realisation that ‘the tempo of the metropolis is not of eternity, or even time, but of the vanishing instant’. The images in the photobook are accompanied by texts written by Abbott’s partner, art critic Elizabeth McCausland. However, recent research has revealed that Abbott and McCausland’s original intentions for the book were significantly different to what was ultimately published, included alternate texts and a more innovative interplay between words and images.
Vitrine text from the exhibition
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) Fort Peck Dam, Montana Front cover, Life magazine, first issue, November 1936 Published by Time Inc. Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text Shaw research Library, Gift of Patrick Pound, 2025
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) Fort Peck Dam, Montana Front cover, Life magazine, first issue, November 1936, ‘Salesman’s edition’ Published by Time Inc. Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text Shaw research Library, Gift of Patrick Pound, 2025
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) Fort Peck Dam, Montana Reproduced on front cover, Life magazine, tenth anniversary issue, 25 November 1946 Published by Time Inc. Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text Shaw research Library, Gift of Patrick Pound, 2025 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
New acquisitions
When the American publication Life was purchased by Henry Luce in 1936, it was transformed into a photographic news magazine. Its aim was to let its readers ‘see’ the world. Photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White had preciously worked with Luce at Fortune magazine, and a year later he sent Bourke-White to the Soviet Union as the first official foreign photographer allowed to create images of Soviet industry. Later, she was the first accredited woman photographer assigned to photograph the effects of the Second World War.
In 1936 Life magazine gave Margaret Bourke-White the brief of seeking out something ‘grand’ and aspirational at the chain of dams being built at the Columbia River basin. The dams were being built to stimulate the economy as the United States grappled with the devastating effects of the Great Depression. The resulting photograph was selected for the first cover of the relaunched Life magazine. An image of modern industry, the composition emphasises the graphic forms and patterns created by the bases of the elevated spillway. The pillars seem to repeat endlessly, overshadowing two workers dwarfed by the enormous construction. Bourke-White’s image is considered an iconic representation of the Machine Age.
Vitrine text from the exhibition
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) Fort Peck Dam, Montana Front cover, Life magazine, first issue, November 1936 Published by Time Inc. Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text Shaw research Library, Gift of Patrick Pound, 2025
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) Fort Peck Dam, Montana Front cover, Life magazine, first issue, November 1936, ‘Salesman’s edition’ Published by Time Inc. Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text Shaw research Library, Gift of Patrick Pound, 2025 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
New acquisitions
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971) Fort Peck Dam, Montana Front cover, Life magazine, first issue, November 1936 Published by Time Inc. Magazine: offset lithographs and printed text Shaw research Library, Gift of Patrick Pound, 2025
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing at left, Laure Albin Guillot (French, 1879-1962) Hammer in bloom 1940s New acquisition; at second left, Germaine Krull The Eiffel Tower (c. 1928, below); at third left, Germaine Krull At the Galeries Lafayette c. 1930 New acquisition; at centre, Bea Maddock Square (1972, below); at third right, Ilse Bing Champs de Mars (1931 printed 1994, below) New acquisition; at second right, Heather George The last wall of Melbourne’s Old Eastern Markets comes down for the Southern Cross (c. 1966 printed 1978, below); and at right, Olive Cotton Radio telescope, Parkes (1964) Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Germaine Krull (Dutch born Germany, 1897-1985) The Eiffel Tower (installation view) c. 1928 Gelatin silver photograph 17.0 x 24.3cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
New acquisition
Germaine Krull (Dutch born Germany, 1897-1985) The Eiffel Tower c. 1928 Gelatin silver photograph 17.0 x 24.3cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
New acquisition
Germaine Krull photographed industrial forms, political upheaval and modern life. Trained in Munich, she opened a portrait studio in 1919, relocating to Paris in 1926. Three years later, Krull’s photographs were included in the renowned 1929 exhibition Film und Foto in Stuttgart, Germany, the first international exhibition of modernist photography. During the 1920s the Eiffel Tower became a symbol of modernity for many artists, including Krull. In this image, she reimagines the visual language of the man-made structure, highlighting both the beauty and functionality of the famous landmark. Krull led a peripatetic life across four continents, focusing on photojournalism in South-East Asia after the Second World War and later living among Tibetan monks.
Wall text from the exhibition
Bea Maddock (Australian, 1934-2016) Square 1972 Photo-etching and etching 46.2 × 36.7cm (image) 49.0 × 39.4cm (plate) 76.0 × 56.8cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1973 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
In the 1970s, Australian artist Bea Maddock embraced the photo-etching process, which incorporates pen and ink. She regularly used found images as the basis for these works. In Square, Maddock overlaid an image of people in a crowd, taken from ‘a book on movement of people in cities’, with a grid structure. As she said, “The actual grid comes from the windows in the National Gallery School, Victorian College of the Arts … the windows had little grills on them … and so they got drawn in because that’s how I saw the world – through those windows.”
Wall text from the exhibition
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Champs de Mars (installation view) 1931, printed 1994 Gelatin silver photograph 21.9 x 33.1cm (image) 27.6 x 35.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) Champs de Mars 1931, printed 1994 Gelatin silver photograph 21.9 x 33.1cm (image) 27.6 x 35.3cm (sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022
Taken atop the Eiffel Tower, this image sees Ilse Bing turn her lightweight 35 mm Leica camera downwards, photographing the people and bustling city below. The distance created by this dizzying viewpoint reduces the scene to a pattern of shapes and forms. Images such as these were characteristic of a ‘new way of seeing’ that was adopted by avant-garde photographers during the interwar period.
Wall text from the exhibition
Heather George (Australian, 1907-1983) The last wall of Melbourne’s Old Eastern Markets comes down for the Southern Cross c. 1966, printed 1978 From the Melbourne, old buildings and new projects series (c. 1966) Gelatin silver photograph 24.0 × 29.1cm (image) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1980 Public domain
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing in the bottom image at left, Germaine Krull At the Galeries Lafayette c. 1930 New acquisition; at second left, Bea Maddock Square (1972, above); at third left, Ilse Bing Champs de Mars (1931 printed 1994, above) New acquisition; at second right, Heather George The last wall of Melbourne’s Old Eastern Markets comes down for the Southern Cross (c. 1966 printed 1978, above); and at right, Olive Cotton Radio telescope, Parkes (1964) Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Aleksandr Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956) and Varvara Stepanova (Russian, 1894-1958) USSR in construction, no.12 (Parachute issue) (installation views) 1935 Illustrated journal: colour rotogravure, 22 pages with fold-out inserts, lithographic cover 42.3 x 60.3 x 1.2cm (open) 42.3 x 30.3 x 0.4cm (closed) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, NGV Supporters of Prints and Drawings, 2019 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Varvara Stepanova and her husband, fellow artist and designer Aleksandr Rodchenko, were founder-members of the First Working Group of Constructivists. This is a French-language edition of USSR in Construction, a journal that aimed to reflect, through photography, the modernisation of the Soviet Union and to promote its industrial power. The journal employed cutting-edge artistic and printing developments, and this issue was designed by Stepanova and Rodchenko using original ideas around photomontage and page design. Dedicated to the ‘brave Soviet paratroopers’, the so-called ‘Parachute’ issue draws upon the circular form of the opened parachute.
Wall text from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light at NGV International, Melbourne, November 2025 – May 2026 showing collotypes from Germaine Krull’s portfolio Métal 1928 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
One of the most significant modernist photobooks of the 1920s, Germaine Krull’s Métal portfolio comprises sixty-four images printed on individual sheets, a title page and a three-page preface by the French writer and journalist Florent Fels. Krull photographed iron structures such as cranes and transport bridges in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Marseille and Saint-Malo, as well as the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Krull showcases the beauty and innovation of the structures, conveying the sense of awe that accompanied the rapid industrialisation of the time. The presentation of the photographs – loose, to be arranged however the viewer chooses – is also radical, allowing for endless interpretations.
Wall text from the exhibition
Germaine Krull (European, 1897-1985) Métal 1928 64 black and white collotype plates, letterpress on paper, black cloth-backed paper-covered board portfolio with ribbons 30.5 x 23.5 x 2.5cm (overall) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2023
Photographs from the Art Blart posting Germaine Krull Métal 1928, December 2018. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
Germaine Krull’s 1928 publication Métal is often described as one of the most significant photobooks of the twentieth century. Interestingly, Métal is not a book in a conventional sense, of sequential pages bound together with a narrative to guide the structure. Rather, when looking through this new acquisition to the NGV Collection you can immediately appreciate its unique design as an object. This dynamic format which, along with the vitality of the photography, has continued to inspire graphic designers, book publishers and artists since its publication almost a century ago.
Métal consists of a folded board cover, with ribbons attached, that acts as a folder for the pages within. The cover, designed by artist Lou Tchimoukow, reproduces one of Krull’s photographs of a detail of machinery on Paris’s Eiffel Tower. This image is overlaid with bold, vertically arranged letters spelling out ‘KRULL’ in a staggered pattern that mimics the lines of the structure beneath. Within the folder are sixty-four unbound plates. Each plate reproduces a photograph by Germaine Krull of industrial forms (and on one occasion, two images to a page) printed as collotypes, as well as the words ‘Krull, Métal’ at the top left, the plate number at the top right, and the publisher’s information ‘A. Calavas, Paris’ at the base. There is also an insert of eight pages (two sheets folded) that includes texts by journalist Florent Fels, and words from Krull herself. …
For Métal, Krull brought together a selection of recent photographs which, as she wrote in the introductory text, were from sites that included the Eiffel Tower, as well as the cranes and transport bridges of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Marseille and Saint-Malo. Apart from the Eiffel Tower, they are emblematic of new industries and engineering emerging in these European cities in the decade after the end of the First World War and could, at first glance, be read as a tribute to modernity as seen through this rapid industrial development.
The presentation of the photographs, however, disrupts the opportunity for any clear narrative, or interpretation. While they are numbered, Krull’s images are printed without any captions (a radical technique in a photobook for the period). The audience is encouraged to actively engage: they are able to construct their own sequences and visual associations. And the composition of the images is highly varied – some close up and cropped, showing the cogs, bolts and mechanics; some reveal dizzying angles and perspectives; some show clear lines, some are abstracted; the majority are taken outside, some are within a factory; some are printed on the vertical, some on the horizontal; some are the result of multiple exposures, as if to emphasise a sense of movement or energy.
Art historian Professor Kim Sichel writes that Krull constructs an ‘activist narrative’ in Métal: ‘Through narrative techniques that are part taxonomy, part lyrical poem, part vertiginous montage, part Industrial-Age adulation, and by making the whole volume uncomfortable and strange to read, she brings her machine parts to life as they oscillate uneasily throughout the album’.2
The photographs in Métal can be linked to contemporary art movements circulating within Europe, such as the visual language of the ‘New Vision’ styles of photography emerging out of the Bauhaus in Germany, or the clean lines of the ‘New Objectivity’ as demonstrated by photographers, such as Albert Renger-Patzsch. Krull’s photographic vision, however, remains dynamic and unique – it does not follow one clear aesthetic or technical path. Métal is an innovative publication: it is open-ended and allows for endless interpretations.
2/ Kim Sichel, “Montage: Germaine Krull’s Métal,” in Sichel, Kim, Making Strange: The Modernist Photobook in France, Yale University Press, Connecticut, 2020, pp. 33–4.
Maggie Finch. “Germaine Krull Métal portfolio 1928,” on the NGV website 22 Oct 25 [Online] Cited 24/12/2025. This article first appeared in the January–February 2024 edition of NGV Magazine. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research
![Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Shadow Self-portrait, Juan-les-Pins, France]' 1927 from the exhibition 'Walker Evans. Now and Then' at Fundación Mapfre, Barcelona, February - May, 2026](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/walker-evans-shadow-self-portrait-juan-les-pins-france.jpg "Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Shadow Self-portrait, Juan-les-Pins, France]' 1927 from the exhibition 'Walker Evans. Now and Then' at Fundación Mapfre, Barcelona, February - May, 2026")
![Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
'[Subway Passengers, New York]' 1938](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/3428-018-web.jpg "Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Subway Passengers, New York]' 1938")
![Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Boarded-up House, Stonington, Connecticut]' 1974](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/walker-evans-boarded-up-house-stonington-connecticut.jpg "Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Boarded-up House, Stonington, Connecticut]' 1974")
![Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910–1990) '[Haircutting in Front of General Store and Post Office on Marcella Plantation, Mileston, Mississippi]' 1939](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/wolcott-haircutting.jpg "Marion Post Wolcott (American, 1910–1990) '[Haircutting in Front of General Store and Post Office on Marcella Plantation, Mileston, Mississippi]' 1939")
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