by Olivia Noss // May 22, 2026
The tendency to qualify photography as being made “by women” has always felt infantilizing. In the contemporary photo world, “photography by women” has become a genre in and of itself—the term embodies the nexus of feminism and capitalism aimed at selling art, the common denominator of which is precisely its lack of specificity and boldness of vision, relying almost exclusively on identity politics to drive its relevance and value. This tendency to feature “female” artists’ work can fall very quickly into tokenism.
Marianne Brandt: ‘Selbstporträt mit Kamera im Atelier in der Kugel gespiegelt, Bauhaus Dessau,’ 1928-1929, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin // © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026
On the other hand, there exists the necessity to highlight works by women throughout history, whose narratives have often been omitted from its official telling. ‘New Woman, New Vision. Women Photographers of the Bauhaus’ is a redemptive example of this kind of historical rewriting. Presented by the Bauhaus-Archiv at the Museum für Fotografie, the exhibition offers an array of works by photographers who attended the Bauhaus school and made radiant contributions to the movement itself. More than that, it offers an exciting body of evidence to support the role of the camera as a tool for financial liberation and self-invention.
Before seeing this show, I hadn’t associated the Bauhaus movement with photography at all. My impression was that it was a movement that balanced function and form by way of furniture design, painting and color theory. Relatedly, “Neues Sehen”—translated here as “New Vision”—was a movement adopted by professors of the Bauhaus School that perceived photography as a mode of artistic expression that distinguished itself from painting. Rooted in subjectivity that defied the “New Objectivity” movement, it viewed the camera lens as an extension of the body—an additional eye through which to perceive the world.
Lucia Moholy: ‘Porträt Eva Weininger auf der Treppe zur Veranda eines Meisterhauses in Dessau,’ 1927, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin // © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026
A major tenet of the Bauhaus movement was experimentation. Self-portraiture offered fertile ground for the explorative spirit of the time. Photographers turned cameras on themselves and each other, depicting a range of expressions of womanhood, across and beyond the binary. In one image, a butch figure wears a white button down shirt, tie and khaki pants, and looks just beyond the frame, pensively. Elsewhere, Grit Kallin-Fischer’s ‘Self-portrait with cigarette’ depicts the photographer splayed languidly on the floor, her hands crossed elegantly on either side of her, smoking a cigarette in reverie. Although difficult to imagine, a photograph of a woman smoking without a cigarette holder was unusual at the time, and considered vulgar. This image reflects a widespread reimagining of how a woman could operate in society. Trousers, cropped hair and short dresses expressed a cosmopolitan swagger, often implying an unmarried and employed life that defied the aesthetic and cultural expectations of upper class society.
Grit Kallin-Fischer: ‘Selbstporträt mit Zigarette,’ um 1928, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
Unlike classic understandings of Bauhaus principles—which emphasized minimalism, clean lines, visual balance and clarity—the works of these women deviated from rote documentation, celebrating ornamentation, abstraction and complexity by way of style and tone. The show’s sub-genres: self-portraiture, still lives, nudes, architecture, photograms and photojournalistic images offer a turn from a documentary approach to a textural and evocative one. Notably, Elsa Thiemann’s photo of a radio tower shot from below exemplifies a view that abstracts its standard likeness into a kaleidoscopic portal. Other artists experiment with double exposures, solarization processes and photograms, all of which offer novel iterations of what darkroom photography could look like.
Elsa Thiemann: ‘Funkturm, Berlin,’ 1930er-Jahre, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin // © Margot Schmidt
In the words of the Bauhaus-Archiv: “the pictorial archetype of the new woman finds a visual counterpart in the experimental style of the new vision.” The resulting synergy between women and the camera offered more than just newfound creative expression: it allowed for the claiming of a destiny, a life enriched by financial autonomy, self-definition and creative pleasure. If a photograph represents an allocation of what carries value, these photographers simultaneously tell us who they are and what is worth seeing. The collective wielding of the lens by these artists enabled them to constantly re-determine their position in the world and to reinvigorate aesthetic conventions of their time, offering, in a quite literal sense, a new vision for who they were and who they could become.
Exhibition Info
Museum für Fotografie
Group Show: ‘New Woman, New Vision: Women Photographers of the Bauhaus’
Exhibition: Apr. 17-Oct. 4, 2026
smb.museum
Jebensstraße 2, 10623 Berlin, click here for map
