Berlin Exhibition Spotlights Overlooked Women Photographers of the Bauhaus

A Berlin exhibition challenges the persistent myth that women at the Bauhaus were confined to weaving by showcasing approximately 300 photographs by 29 female photographers. Curator Kristin Bartels from the Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung notes that many women worked across departments, studying architecture and photography. The exhibition, titled New Woman, New Vision: Women Photographers of the Bauhaus, runs from 17 April to 4 October at Berlin's Museum für Fotografie. It features works drawn from the Bauhaus-Archiv's extensive collection, the world's largest dedicated to the school. Photographs by Lucia Moholy, who documented Bauhaus objects and people as early as 1923, are included; her work was often overshadowed by her husband László Moholy-Nagy. Other participants include Ellen Auerbach, Elsa Thiemann, Gertrud Arndt, Florence Henri, Marianne Brandt, and Margarete Dambeck-Keller. The show also includes contemporary responses from artists Kalinka Gieseler, Caroline Kynast, and Sinta Werner. Bartels emphasizes that the archive's holdings, built from artists' life works, enable the rediscovery of forgotten figures, particularly women. The Bauhaus school operated from 1919 to 1933 in Germany, with photography playing a major role even before formal instruction began in 1929. Some photographers featured were affiliated with the New Bauhaus in Chicago, established after the original school closed under Nazi pressure.