Every year, with support from the Ministry of Culture and Kering, the ELLES x Paris Photo program highlights women’s contributions to the fair. When it began six years ago, only 20% of the artists of the fair were women. This year, that number has risen to 38%, underscoring the importance of such initiatives. L’Œil de la Photographie spoke with Raphaëlle Stopin, the curator of this year’s program and the director of the Rouen Normandie Photographic Center and former director of the Hyères festival.
What is the guiding theme of the ELLES x Paris Photo program?
What seemed interesting in selecting artists for ELLES x Paris Photo was having both a retrospective and forward-looking perspective. First, looking to the past allows us to shed light on women artists from previous generations. Today’s women artists, who have developed their careers over the last 10 to 20 years, receive an attention that women working in the 1970s or earlier did not. I thought it was important to give greater attention to these previous generations, and at the same time show the great diversity in their artistic practices, such as in documentary photography — for example, Letizia Battaglia (Italy, 1935-2022) and her socially impactful photography — or in strong experimental choices like those of Elisa Montessori (Italy, 1931) or Hisae Imai (Japan, 1931-2009). Contemporary creation is also well represented, with about a third of the selected artists being 40 or younger.
In the program, you view contemporary creation through a historical lens.
Looking to history, highlighting women artists, acknowledging the diversity, plurality, and richness of their approaches, experiences, and commitments helps us better understand contemporary creation. The idea is also to contribute in anchoring the current scene within a photographic history where memory is shared more equitably. Too often, when efforts are made to bring women artists to the fore, they’re viewed somewhat simplistically. Women artists have frequently been associated with intimate, introspective expressions linked to the domestic sphere to which they were historically confined. They have often voiced the limitations of their condition, especially through photography, a medium that has been widely used by the media to capture this orderly, domestic image. Yet their explorations of photography as a medium in itself have been rarely acknowledged, and even when their legitimacy is finally recognized, they’re often immediately defined by their gender, as if we struggle to see their work outside of them being women. This is inaccurate concerning women’s contributions and implies that experimental forms, exploring photography’s malleability, are solely contemporary and uniquely of the younger generation. While artists today have more freedom, women choosing art today share with their predecessors the same pursuit of world representation, the same rigor in finding their voice within this research. Engaging in experimentation, taking creative risks, comes from a strong, universal desire — it is not unique to any era or gender unless that desire is restricted, as it has long been for women.
This year, Kering is providing additional support by offering four grants to galleries exclusively representing women artists. Could you tell us about the selected galleries and their exhibits?
The goal was to select four galleries making their first appearance at Paris Photo, showcasing works by women artists in either solo or collective exhibitions. The Roman gallery Monitor presents the work of Elisa Montessori, a painter born in 1931. For Paris Photo, Monitor chose to exhibit large photographic compositions, assemblies in grid forms, arranged like a near-abstract map. The highly contrasting black-and-white fragments are almost calligraphic. What’s interesting is that while this work from the 1970s initially seems rooted in conceptual photography, when viewed alongside her paintings, it reveals a more sensual approach. Also in Italy, the Genoese gallery Martini & Ronchetti highlights the work of Lisetta Carmi (1924-2022) and her I Travestiti series, photographed in Genoa during the 1960s. This series allows for a historical perspective on today’s concerns around queer imagery and representation. Higher Pictures, a New York gallery highly committed to representing women artists, presents a group show featuring Carla Williams (United States, 1965), Susan Lipper (United States, 1953), and Janice Guy (Great Britain, 1953), exploring portraiture and self-portraiture. Carla Williams’ work reflects on the collective imagery of pin-ups, which she reinterprets as an African-American lesbian artist. Janice Guy’s self-portraits are connected to European conceptual art and performance, re-imagining the female body and its freedom while reconsidering photography’s capacity to objectively record, often with the camera itself visible in the frame. Susan Lipper’s Grapevine series will also be shown, a documentary work portraying a marginalized West Virginian community through staged portraits depicting their harsh reality in a theatrical manner.
The program includes various sectors, from Principal to Prismes and Voices. One of the selected galleries, Nadja Vilenne, is part of Prismes, presenting Aglaia Konrad’s work.
Aglaia Konrad is among those who have used photography, not so much as a medium to challenge society’s image of women, but more technically. Photography records, fragments, inventories, and files, allowing the artist to transform this material into installations and volumes. Her photographs form a vast database of architecture, textures, and materials, which she then reassembles into different forms.
A conference day will be held on Thursday, November 7. What’s on the program?
Four conferences will take place throughout the day, addressing topics that echo the program: often-unknown historical figures, artists who use photography to expand representational landscapes, fill voids, and artists who explore photography’s potential and malleability.
We will explore the work of American photographer Tee A. Corinne, studied by Charlotte Flint, alongside Donna Gottschalk, whose work is studied by Hélène Giannecchini and will be exhibited at Le BAL in 2025. The historian Clara Bouveresse will moderate the discussion, delving into the archives of the queer community. Another talk, led by writer Simonetta Greggio, examines Lisetta Carmi’s work alongside that of writer Goliarda Sapienza; both were born in 1924, they depicted society’s margins, and were only recognized later in life. I will moderate a panel on spatial possibilities in photographic works, bringing together Aglaia Konrad, Andrea Grützner, and Marleen Sleeuwits, while the final conference explores Gisèle Vienne and Estelle Hanania’s collaboration in performance, moderated by art historian Sophie Delpeux.
All the artists in the program are featured in a publication by Paris Photo, available at the fair. Could you tell us more?
Indeed, the publication highlights all the artists in the program, including those from the four galleries receiving the Kering grant, totaling 50 artists. This document goes beyond being a simple guide; we wanted it to be a beautiful object that visitors would want to keep… going back to the issue of creating lasting traces.
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