UNKNOWN AVANT GARDE SURREALISTS, Paris, 1924

Which role does photography play in the writing of history? That is the question Anna Artaker probes in her research-oriented practice, which is largely based on historic imagery. The series “Unknown Avant-Garde” analyzes the systematic exclusion of women from the art-historical canon through a study of ten photographs of prominent movements in the art of the twentieth century. Each of the group portraits features a single woman artist amid her male colleagues. Artaker unearthed the stories of additional women members who had faded into obscurity. In the accompanying captions, she inserts their names in place of those of the male protagonists who appear in the pictures.

Credit: Man Ray, Man Ray Trust / Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris