Review of 'New Woman, New Vision' | Berlin Art Link

Qualifying photography as “by women” can feel infantilizing and can become a genre shaped by feminism and capitalism. The marketable framing often lacks specificity and bold vision, relying heavily on identity politics to determine relevance and value, which can lead to tokenism. Highlighting women’s work throughout history is also necessary because many narratives have been omitted from official accounts. “New Woman, New Vision. Women Photographers of the Bauhaus” presents works by photographers who attended the Bauhaus school and contributed to the movement. The exhibition supports the idea of the camera as a tool for financial liberation and self-invention. It also connects “New Vision” to photography as an expressive mode distinct from painting, rooted in subjectivity and treating the lens as an extension of the body.

"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."

"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. A major tenet of the Bauhaus movement was experimentation."

Read at Berlin Art Link