Abstract

The #MeToo movement, feminist strikes, feminist demands for the eradication of gender violence often stand in various ways under the spotlight lately, very often in a tragic way. Additionally, although female artistic creation and the feminist approach to the arts do not necessarily constitute a new or innovative research perspective in the 21st century, however, and for various reasons, historically, this perspective does not seem to be a priority in the research and critique of artistic fields.

In the wake of these international debates on gender and identities and the general trend of exploring women's creative work, the new exhibition-production by MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography under the title “HerStories. Photographic practices, 1974-2024” seeks to showcase the domestic photographic production of women, from the 1970s onwards. The exhibition will be hosted in the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography and the Experimental Center for the Arts of MOMus, from 17 May until 15 September 2024; forty artists and photographers, four curators and eight researchers contribute in mapping this particular field of endeavor for the first time in Greece.

The exhibition is structured in three complementary narratives that seek to cover the multiple and complex dimensions of women's photographic practices over these five decades: the approaches to issues of women's identity regardless of whether they were self-determined as "feminist" or not, the representations of social and political realities through documentary photography, and the explorations of the photographic medium itself through works that are often highly experimental in nature. Integrating these three narratives, the exhibition aims to display the diverse and dynamic contribution of women in the field of photography: it presents the complexity of the female experience, the socio-political context in which they operate, and the innovative artistic ideas they use.

A bilingual edition accompanies the exhibition and functions as a supplement, focused on the history of women's photographic creation in Greece from the 19th century to the Metapolitefsi period (meaning change of regime), with texts by scholars in the field.