July 2008
Female Trouble & German Pictures
The invention of photography 160 years ago was not just a new way to take pictures. Women seized the new technical medium as a way to experiment with identity and to question clichés of female representation. Playing with supposedly “eternal femininity,” they examined social and political definitions and their boundaries. From July 17 through October 26, the exhibition “
Female Trouble. The Camera as a Mirror and Stage of Female Production” will show early examples of photographic self-exploration by Claude Cahun, Florence Henri and the Countess Castiglione, alongside works by contemporary artists Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas and Pipilotti Rist, who deconstruct and redefine womanhood with video installations and photographs.
Photographer Eva Leitolf’s images also confront politically and socially explosive issues. Her work “
German Pictures—In Search of Evidence” is a long-term study on xenophobic acts of violence and their public discourse. Starting in the early 1990s, Leitolf documented crime scenes: sympathizers with the culprits and indifferent spectators. In 2006, the photographer returned to these crime scenes and once again took pictures of the mundane sights, combining them with researched texts on the crimes and the judicial, political and media onslaught that ensued. Leitolf’s meticulous work is a thorough questioning of how society deals with xenophobic crime, and an investigation of the potential of photography as a means of documentation. Like “Female Trouble” this exhibition will be on display at the art section of the Pinakothek der Moderne, from July 25 through October 9. <<<
