Curiosity, Courage and Adventure

Female Photographers Travelling

4 May to 13 July 2025
Kunstforum Ingelheim – Altes Rathaus

Since the early 20th century, female photographers have travelled to distant destinations with their cameras, often alone and under arduous conditions, leaving behind impressive photographs of their journeys.

Our exhibition focuses on the motives for travelling to countries, some of which were little explored, and thus crossing their own borders in three thematic areas: for some photographers, a journalistic assignment was the reason for setting off to foreign cities and regions. Others accompanied archaeological excavations or documented historical sites and modern metropolises. Other photographers travelled to distant countries to realise their own independent artistic projects. Regardless of the motivation or reason, all of the journeys demanded curiosity, courage and a sense of adventure from these women, but above all the ability to capture the one irretrievable moment with their camera.

The selected works from the last 100 years not only reveal that women’s photographic interest in certain motifs, events or activities runs through several generations. They also show how fluid the boundary can be between journalistic commissioned photography and free artistic shots.

An accompanying programme rounds off the exhibition.

Franziska Stünkel (*1973): all the stories 55, 2014
© Franziska Stünkel

Gerti Deutsch (1908–1979): Japan, 1960
© Fotohof

Herlinde Koelbl (*1939): Women in Turkmenistan, 2018
© Herlinde Koelbl