"FEMALE FOCUS" Exhibition Opening

In its sixth year, the Hamburg Portfolio Review (HPR) is deliberately presenting exclusively female photographic perspectives at the FREELENS Gallery, thereby strengthening the visibility of women photographers in an international context. Despite the significant contributions made by women to contemporary photography, structural inequalities persist in terms of representation, funding, and public recognition. “Female Focus” sees itself as a contribution to greater gender equality, diversity, and cultural participation.

Fifteen international women photographers present works addressing subjects ranging from military education and intergenerational memory to war, ageing, and identity – revealing the diversity of contemporary photography.

Laura Riis opens the exhibition with a look at one of only six military boarding schools for girls in Pakistan, where young female cadets seek their own paths between discipline and self-empowerment in a structurally unequal society. While these young women seek freedom within one of the country’s most hierarchical institutions, Mathilde Mazars turns her attention to another challenging reality faced by young people: she follows the stateless Bajau community off the coast of Borneo, whose younger generation is creating new spaces for cultural self-assertion despite being denied citizenship rights.

Photo: Jana Islinger

From a geopolitical periphery, the focus shifts to the social topography of a German city: Jana Islinger explores how an invisible north-south divide in Duisburg shapes the biographies of young women, linking her own family memories with present-day structural inequalities. Lucia Alonso Garrido is likewise interested in lives that exist beyond societal expectations – she portrays women in their eighties who, as members of a Lisbon collective, understand ageing not as withdrawal, but as an expression of vitality and visibility.

Chantal Pinzi also documents a break with convention: Moroccan horsewomen who are claiming their place within their country’s cultural heritage through Tbourida, an equestrian tradition historically dominated by men. Rather than looking to the past, Paula Hornickel takes us into the future: her photographic series examines human-robot coexistence across Germany in care, research, and everyday life, raising questions about the social and ethical implications of this new proximity.

Photo: BEDEL | Delphine Blast

In contrast to this human-machine alliance, Claudia Deganutti focuses on humanity, warmth, and self-determination. She follows two men with Down syndrome in their shared, independent everyday lives, challenging common prejudices and assumptions surrounding disability.

Within the domestic sphere, Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom situate their work around a Jewish mother-daughter relationship in London, where art, memory, and queer identity intertwine. From familial intimacy, the focus shifts to collective resistance: Jana Margarete Schuler portrays the Luchadoras of Ciudad Juárez, female wrestlers who enter the ring not only to face their opponents, but also to challenge gender-based violence and invisibility.

From the wrestling ring as a space of refuge, the perspective turns directly to the precarious reality of a country at war: Viktoria Sorochinski returns to Ukraine during the war and, in the continuation of her long-term project on Poltava, focuses less on destruction than on the quiet persistence of everyday life in the shadow of conflict. Maria Høy Hansen likewise seeks out moments of respite and continuity: her reportage on a holiday camp for Ukrainian children in the Carpathians shows how, even in the midst of war, a space free from air-raid sirens and fear can emerge for ten days.

Photo: Maria Høy Hansen

The work of Laura Anna Rossa addresses a very different form of shelter and care: over the course of two years, she follows the residents of a long-term psychiatric care facility in Belgium, revealing what risks being lost in a healthcare system increasingly driven by efficiency. Yiming Zhu translates the relationship between women’s labour and spirituality into an entirely different visual language: taking Chinese sericulture as her point of departure, she traces forgotten narratives of women’s economic activity and fertility.

From the silkworm to the flower: Delphine Blast turns her attention to the hidden violence behind apparent beauty – on Colombian flower farms, she documents the manipulation of blossoms and the resulting physical and health-related burden placed on female workers.

The exhibition concludes with Zahra Motallebi, whose series on trans women and drag performers in Iran makes visible, over the course of three years, a world that is officially denied existence in her home country – a powerful plea for the right to visibility that resonates throughout the exhibition.

The exhibition opening will take place as part of the 6th HPR on 24 September at the FREELENS Gallery in Hamburg.

Curated by Nina Röder & Peter Lindhorst