Curiosity, Courage and Adventure
Female Photographers Travelling
4 May to 13 July 2025
Kunstforum Ingelheim – Altes Rathaus
Registration for events required – bookable from 17 March
From the 1920s onwards, numerous professionally trained, independent and autonomous female photographers travelled to sometimes little-explored countries and created impressive images of the various destinations.
The more than 170 exhibited works by 21 female photographers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland were created over the last 100 years. Three exhibition areas focus on the motives of these women for travelling to foreign destinations, sometimes under difficult conditions:
For some of them, a journalistic assignment was the reason for travelling to distant countries and cities. Commissioned by publishers, they travelled from continent to continent, sent their clients photographs of these remote places and their pictures were published in newspapers around the world. Not only the cities and landscapes, but also the everyday life of the local population, the coexistence of tradition and modernity as well as the physical labour in the most diverse areas were of particular photographic interest to them.
Other female photographers accompanied archaeological excavations and research trips with their cameras or documented historical cultural sites abroad, some of which were doomed to destruction due to wars or climate change. With a trained eye, they captured an irretrievable moment for future generations. These photographers approached their sometimes seemingly brittle subjects with great sensitivity in order to capture their hidden beauty and deeper meaning – also for future generations.
The third section of the exhibition shows works by female photographers who travelled to other continents to realise independent artistic projects. They pursued a specific idea, sometimes as a series or realised over many years and countries. Their work examples also confirm that curiosity, courage and a thirst for adventure were and still are indispensable qualities for female photographers travelling.
The exhibited black-and-white and colour photographs from the 1920s to the present day reveal – beyond the impressions gained of distant countries and cities – how women’s interest in certain motifs, events or even people’s activities runs through three generations.
They also show how fluid the boundaries can be between commissioned journalistic photography, documentary photography and free artistic works.
The photographers and their travel destinations
Marianne Breslauer: France • Monika von Boch: Algeria • Julie Boehringer: Italy, Turkey • Gerti Deutsch: Japan • Lotte Errell: Egypt, China, Iran, Palestine • Barbara Klemm: Brazil, France, Ireland, Canada, Switzerland, USA • Herlinde Koelbl: Turkmenistan • Lisette Model: Italy • Inge Morath: Iran, Italy, Tunisia • Elisabeth Neudörfl: Thailand, Hong Kong • Helga Paris: GDR • Evelyn Richter: USSR • Alice Schalek: India • Fee Schlapper: Egypt, India • Jordis Antonia Schlösser: Iran, Cuba, Poland • Anne Schönharting: Hong Kong, Kirghizia • Ursula Schulz-Dornburg: Syria • Annemarie Schwarzenbach: Afghanistan (screen presentation) • Ré Soupault: Tunisia • Elfriede Stegemeyer: Spain • Franziska Stünkel: China, Denmark, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, USA • unknown: GDR, Europe, Japan
© Barbara Klemm: Matterhorn, Schweiz, 1993
Fee Schlapper: Lachender Sudanese, Assuan, 1958 © Nachlass Fee Schlapper, MUSEUM FOLKWANG, ESSEN
Ré Soupault: a. d. Serie »Tunis Quartier réservé«, 1939 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
© Herlinde Koelbl: Turkmenische Frau, Turkmenistan, 2018
© Nachlass/Estate Helga Paris: Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, 1981/82
Julie Boehringer: Anatolien, 1954, Firmenarchiv Boehringer Ingelheim
© Jordis Antonia Schlösser: Landschaft bei Mayarí, a. d. Serie »Kuba«, 2000
Gerti Deutsch: Frau füttert ihre Hunde mit Essstäbchen, Japan, 1960 © Fotohof Salzburg
© Anne Schönharting: Enkel Urgal, a. d. Serie »Sommerweide«, Kirgisien, 2007
Marianne Breslauer, Zwei Stühle im Jardin du Luxembourg, 1929 © Sammlung Fotostiftung Schweiz, Dauerleihgabe Konrad Feilchenfeldt
