The long-awaited and comprehensive catalogue accompanying the Estonian Museum of Photography’s main exhibition of the year of the body, Gendered Lens, has been released.  The book bears the full title Gendered Lens. Body, Gender, and Sexuality in the History of Photography in Estonia from the Late 19th Century to the Early 2000s, clearly signalling its broad historical and thematic scope.

How have the body, gender, and sexuality been represented in the history of Estonian photography? Exploring this question reveals a visual history in which the boundaries between documentary and staged photography, as well as between intimacy and the public sphere, are often blurred. Photography has always operated within the tension between truth and construction. Gendered Lens invites viewers to reconsider the history of photography – from late 19th-century studio portraits to the boundary-pushing photographic art of the 1990s – not merely as a sequence of images or interpretations, but as a stage on which gender, identity, and the gaze are continuously redefined.

The catalogue presents an extensive study of the gendered and sexualised body, bringing together diverse perspectives on the history of Estonian photography.

To find out more please go to the direct link.