Women Photographers in History

This course aims to investigate the role of women in the development of photography from a historical, critical, and transcontinental perspective. Over five thematic sessions, we will analyze the essential contributions of women photographers from diverse geographical spaces—Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania—mapping a complex visual landscape of female expression in photography.

In a field initially marked by the marginalization of female voices, the course highlights not only artistic creations, but also the conditions of production, strategies of representation, and the social implications of photographic practice among women. From the botanical experiments of Anna Atkins to the radical interventions of Zanele Muholi or the visual poetry of Rinko Kawauchi, we will traverse a global map of female photographic expression and explore how these artists negotiated aesthetic, political, and identity-based positions within a historical context often dominated by male perspectives.

Through this comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the course offers a critical reassessment of the photographic canon and a theoretical framework for understanding how gender influences the production and reception of photographic images.

What you will learn:

• about the history of photography from a gendered and intersectional perspective;

• about women’s contributions to the development of photography;

• how to analyze images by placing them in a historical, social, and political context.

Course schedule:

• Sunday, October 4, 2026, 11:30–15:00

• Sunday, October 11, 2026, 11:30–15:00

• Sunday, October 25, 2026, 11:30–15:00

• Sunday, November 1, 2026, 11:30–15:00

• Sunday, November 8, 2026, 11:30–15:30

Course details:

The course is open to anyone interested in the history of photography and gender studies, as well as those interested in visual art and contemporary curatorial practices, visual anthropology, cultural history, or media studies.

About the lecturer, briefly:

Ana-Cristina Irian is a research-based artist, researcher, and curator, active in the field of collections, photographic archives, and multimedia projects. She studied sociology (Trento and Regensburg), visual anthropology (Bucharest and Perugia), and holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Her artistic practice, guided by the motto No one left behind, focuses on objects of memory and integrates photographic materials into contemporary art works. She has participated in over 50 exhibitions in Romania and abroad and is a member of the Union of Visual Artists of Romania and the European platform Futures.She has been involved in projects such as Dacia 50 – an ethnography of the Dacia car after its 50 years, The Wells of Oltenia – a mapping of community wells in southern Romania, Arhive poVestite – recovery and promotion of private photographic archives, Fragmentum, Heretheylived, #mili-eu, Ileana, Mr. B’s grandmother, Debara, Sacoșa Est–Vest – Freedom.Body.Resistance, EERIE, The Titans– research based art. She published the object-book STRATA / B (Omnia Photo, 2020), and her visual experiments from 2016–2020 became two artist books included in the European Versopolis collection. She is the author of Photographic Collections and Archives Today, in the Digital World (2022) and The Production of Space and the Social Life of Artworks in the Street (2024). In 2024, she was a finalist at the LensCulture Art Photography Awards. Her most recent project, The Titans and the Vanishing Green, is presented at Chester Photo Festival 2025.