Exhibition dates: 28th November, 2025 – 3rd May, 2026

Curator: Maggie Finch, Curator of Photography at the NGV

 

 

Dora Maar (French 1907-1997)
Pablo Picasso standing under reed screening, Mougins, summer, 1937 (Pablo Picasso debout sous les cannisses, Mougins, été, 1937)
1937
Gelatin silver photograph
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
© Dora Maar. Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia

 

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.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the NGV for allowing me to publish the media images in the posting. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. View Part 1 of the posting.

 

 

 

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

 

 

Lee Miller (American, 1907-1977)
Nimet Eloui Bey (installation view)
c. 1930
Gelatin silver photograph
23.0 x 15.8cm (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
© Lee Miller Archives, England 2023

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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

 

 

Lee Miller (American, 1890-1976)
Man Ray
1931
Gelatin silver photograph
23.1 x 17.5cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Joy Anderson, 2024
© Lee Miller Archives, England 2023. All rights reserved

 

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.

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, 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’.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

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’.

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, 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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Kati Horna (Mexican born Hungary, 1912-2000)
Leonora Carrington
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
© Kati Horna, courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery

 

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

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.

Anastasiia Kirpalov. “The Mexican Escape of European Surrealists During World War II,” on The Collector website Oct 15, 2024 [Online] Cited 17/04/026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

 

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.

Vitrine text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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

 

 

Ellen Auerbach (German 1906-2004)
R. Schottelius in New York
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
© Ellen Auerbach. VG Bild-Kunst/Copyright Agency

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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 (American, 1900-1992)
Martha Graham – Letter to the world
1940
Gelatin silver photograph
38.9 x 48.2cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
© The Barbara Morgan Estate

 

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.”

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
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.

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, 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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Florence Henri (European born USA, 1893-1982)
Nude composition (Nu composition)
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
© Florence Henri / Licensed by the Copyright Agency, Australia

 

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.

Maggie Finch. “Florence Henri Nude composition (Nu composition),” on the NGV website 16 Mar 23 [Online] Cited 24/12/2025. Used under fair use condition for the purposes of education and research

 

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

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, 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

 

 

Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher (German, 1931-2007/1934-2015)
Coal tipple, Goodspring, Pennsylvania
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
© Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher, represented by Max Becher

 

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.”

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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 (German, 1899-1998)
Self-portrait (Autoportrait)
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
© Ilse Bing Estate
Photo: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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

 

 

Eve Sonneman (American, b. 1946)
Real time (installation view bottom)
1968-1974, 1976 (published) (cover)
Artist’s book: photo-offset lithographs and printed text, 46 folios, printed paper cover, glued binding
20.5 x 38.0 x 0.8cm (closed)
1st edition
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, NGV Supporters of Photography, 2021
© Eve Sonneman

 

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!”

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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

 

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Annette, 1962; Annette, 1974
1962-1974, printed 1974
From the Time series (1962-1974)
Gelatin silver photograph
11.1 x 20.1cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with the assistance of the Visual Arts Board and the KODAK (Australasia) Pty Ltd Fund, 1974
© Courtesy of the artist

 

“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

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

Vitrine text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

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 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

 

 

Hedda Morrison (German, 1908-1991)
No title (Lone pine against sunlit cliff face)
1935
Gelatin silver photograph
22.8 x 30.3cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1976
© Harvard-Yenching Library. Originals held by the Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University

 

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.

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 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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

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.’

Wall text from the exhibition

 

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

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

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 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.’

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

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 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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978)
She is a tree of life to them
1950
Gelatin silver photograph
32.8 x 24.1cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2024
© Consuelo Kanaga

 

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.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

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.

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, 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

 

 

Maggie Diaz (American, 1925-2016, Australia 1961-2016)
3AW mobile studio, Elwood Beach
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
© Maggie Diaz

 

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’.

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
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

Wall text from the exhibition

 

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 (American, 1917-2012)
More fashion mileage per dress, Barbara Vaughn, Harper’s
Bazaar, New York
1956
gelatin silver photograph, ed. 13/25
43.1 x 60.9cm (image)
50.8 x 56.5cm (sheet)
Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through
the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2023
© Estate of Lillian Bassman

 

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

 

 

 ALL

Christine Godden (Australian, b. 1947)
Untitled (installation view)
1974
Gelatin silver photographs
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Christine Godden (Australian, b. 1947)
Untitled
1974
Gelatin silver photograph
15.2 x 22.5cm (image) 20.0 x 25.2cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased from Admission Funds, 1991
© Christine Godden

 

 

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

 

 

Christine Godden (Australian, b. 1947)
Untitled
1973, printed 1986
Untitled
1973, printed 1986
Untitled
1973, printed 1986
Untitled
1974
Untitled
1973, printed 1986
Untitled
1974
Purchased from Admission Funds, 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 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.

Vitrine text from the exhibition

 

 

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal), Moongalba
1974
Gelatin silver photograph
16.3 x 24.2cm (image and sheet)
ed. 1/9
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Ms Ingeborg Tyssen, 2001
© Courtesy of Ken Jerrems & estate of Lance Jerrems

 

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

 

 

Ponch Hawkes (Australian, b. 1945)
No title (Summer night in the backyard at Falconer Street)
c. 1975, printed 2018
Gelatin silver photograph
30.3 x 20.3cm (image)
38.3 x 27.9cm (sheet)
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2018
© Ponch Hawkes

 

 

Ponch Hawkes (Australian, b. 1945)
No title (Women’s Theatre Group, performing outdoors beneath a Women’s Liberation banner in the City Square)
1975, printed 2018
Gelatin silver photograph
20.2 x 30.3cm (image)
28.0 x 38.2cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2018
© Ponch Hawkes, 2023

 

 

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

 

 

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