Subtle & Subversive

From 8 December 2023 to 19 February 2024, Berlin’s f³ – freiraum für fotografie presents newly discovered and previously unpublished images by American photographer Ruth Orkin – one of the very few professional women photographers of the 1940s and 1950s. Orkin’s work was featured in numerous publications such as The New York Times, Look, and Life Magazine. She was also represented in the legendary MoMA exhibition, ‘The Family of Man’. Yet despite the outstanding quality of her work – which easily places her in the ranks of the master photographers of her time – Ruth Orkin is still not widely known outside of the US.

One of her perhaps most recognisable photographs is ‘American Girl in Italy’: recorded in 1951, it shows a self-assured young woman striding past an assembly of admiring men. The image would go on to become a fixture within the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. 

Ruth Orkin’s subtle, yet radically subversive photographs show women who are ahead of their time, turning away from gender stereotypes and conventions. With sharp humour, the photographer created reportages such as ‘Who Works Harder’, which juxtaposes the life of a housewife and mother with that of a career woman. She documented women in beauty salons, at cocktail parties, at dog shows and on Hollywood’s movie sets – with subjects ranging from personalities such as Lauren Bacall, Jane Russell, Joan Taylor and Doris Day to waitresses, stewardesses, soldiers and best friends.

In the course of their explorations, Nadine Barth (curator and publicist at Barthouseprojects) and Katharina Mouratidi (artistic director at f³ – Freiraum für Fotografie) discovered unique, multi-layered and largely unpublished works that show the late artist in a whole new light – emphasising her gift as a sensitive, thoughtful and witty chronicler of American women in the 1940s and 1950s.