Who run the world? Girls! The LUDWIGGALERIE and the photographers

March 8, 2020

Today is International Women's Day - this year the United Nations is placing a special focus on women's rights and gender equality with the campaign I am #GenerationEquality. You can follow the campaigns and find out more on social media using this hashtag and #eachforequal and #IWD2020.

Carrie Fisher became the symbol of the Women's March in 2017, image source: pixabay.com

The 2000s produced a lot of strong, prominent women: Malala Yousafzai (child rights activist, Nobel Peace Prize winner), Greta Thunberg (climate activist), Michelle Obama, who campaigns for women's rights and especially girls' rights; Emma Gonzalez, who campaigns against US gun laws and Angela Merkel (Germany's first female Chancellor). Beyoncé Knowles, who also wrote the line "Who run the world? Girls!", has been campaigning for LGBTIQ rights for several years and Lady Gaga is involved in social activism for minorities ("Baby I was born this way!").

Outstanding women in art include, to name just a few, Frida Kahlo (Surrealism), Berthe Morisot (Impressionism) and Paula Modersohn-Becker (Expressionism); in contemporary art Marina Abramović (performance artist), Katharina Grosse (large-format paintings) and Pipilotti Rist (experimental films, video installations, digital art). Just a few weeks ago, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt am Main opened the exhibition “Fantastic Women. Surreal Worlds from Meret Oppenheim to Frida Kahlo”, to dedicate an exhibition to women in surrealism.

"Summer Day", 1879 by Berthe Morisot

The LUDWIGGALERIE has set itself the goal of increasingly presenting female positions in photography, which we would like to show once again retrospectively:

Exhibition poster for the show Eve Arnold, Marlene Dietrich in the recording studios of Columbia Records, NYC, 1952 © Eve Arnold Magnum Photos

In 2014 we opened a show about Eve Arnold. Born in Philadelphia in 1912 to Russian immigrants, she began as an autodidact; in 1957 she joined the legendary photo agency MAGNUM. The unusual fashion shots in Harlem at a time of racial discrimination, the long collaboration with Marilyn Monroe and of course her political reportages, for example on Malcolm X, show her unique and deeply impressive visual language. She addresses the veiling of women in Arab countries and shows a China that was in the midst of upheaval at the end of the 1970s. Her themes are always of sociopolitical relevance.

With her portraits in action (Alexey Brodovitch) – of film stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford – Eve Arnold writes photography history. Although her subjects often come from the world of women, Eve Arnold distances herself from an overly feminist appropriation:

"I wanted to be a female photographer and have the whole world open to my camera."

Exhibition poster for the show Herlinde Koelbl, Photography: Appearance and Reality, Andrea and Anita, Munich 2007 © Herlinde Koelbl

In the mid-1970s, Herlinde Koelbl, who lives near Munich, discovered her passion for photography. From the very beginning, her special feeling for people, unconventional topics and her approach to working on long-term projects was evident. Many will remember the "Traces of Power" project in particular. In 1991, she began this study, initially planned to last eight years, sought out fifteen politicians and CEOs and, during her annual visit, observed how office and responsibility, public attention and pressure to succeed changed people. The German Living Room was her first published book in 1980 and is now one of the classics of German photography history. Films and video installations complete her work.

Exhibition poster for the Brigitte Kraemer show, photography: Bude, Duisburg, 2007 © Brigitte Kraemer

Critical reports with a closeness to people and sometimes a wink, that is what characterizes Brigitte Kraemer's photographic work. Since the mid-1980s, the photographer, who lives in Herne, has worked for major newspapers and magazines, researching girls on Trebe or Pattex snoopers, observing men and cars or architecture typical of the Ruhr region with its operators and users such as Die Bude.
She has photographed the Oberhausen Peace Village with its injured children recovering there, as well as the women's shelters hidden from the public with their residents and fates. "In Good Faith" is the title of the work in which she observes the variety of religious customs and their special and often pragmatic manifestations in the Ruhr area. Her photographs are widely known and have provided an insight into the region and beyond for years.

Exhibition poster for the Regina Relang show, photography: Regina Relang, Gisela Ebel with butterfly glasses, 1950 © Munich City Museum Collection Photography Archive Relang

Regina Relang began her photographic career in Paris in the 1930s. She celebrated her first successes with reportage photographs taken during her travels through southern Europe. The physically demanding work of the porters in the port of Porto aroused her interest, as did a traditional Macedonian wedding in Galičnik. In the post-war period, Relang became Germany's leading fashion photographer. Her clients included well-known fashion designers such as Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent, and her photographs were published in contemporary fashion magazines such as Constanze, Madame and Film und Frau.

With her own photographic style, Relang overcomes the boundaries between fashion and reportage photography. In the 1960s, her photographic perspective changes and she increasingly photographs in the studio.

Exhibition poster for Linda McCartney, photography: Paul McCartney © Paul McCartney/Photographer Linda McCartney/Courtesy Collection Reichelt and Brockmann

Linda McCartney's career, then still Eastman's, begins when she gets a press invitation from the Rolling Stones. At the time, she was a single mother and worked as an office clerk for a magazine. She is the only photographer allowed on the ship SS Sea Panther, where the promotional party is taking place, and she succeeds in taking pictures of the Stones, casually and naturally. This is also McCartney's trademark; she remains unnoticed behind the camera. Her pictures of the great music stars of the late 1960s still shape our visual memory of this era, which was freeing itself from moral etiquette. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, Nico and Brian Jones, The Doors and The Who, Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan are captured by her in a natural and often dynamic manner. This is how she met her future husband Paul.

After her marriage, her photography shifted to the private sphere; she documented her travels and thus people and urban spaces, family life and experimented with alternative development methods.