Women with Binoculars
The open-air exhibition Women with Binoculars presents a new selection of images by seven Magnum photographers Carolyn Drake, Diana Markosian, Peter Marlow, Martin Parr, Mark Power, Peter van Agtmael and Alex Webb. This series, new assembled by curator Enrique Muñoz García, shows women while they are using binoculars to look at something taking place “off screen,” outside the frame of the image. The presence of binoculars in the images tends to render the photographed women anonymous, and lets them be both the subject of the image and the agent. While the act of pointing one’s binoculars at something and visually tracking one’s target evokes surveillance, visual control, or military espionnage – that is, actions often associated with the male gender – this new collection of photographs invites us to rethink the social and political role of women in our system of representation.
In An Answer to Women with Binoculars, students in the second year of the graphic design program at the Schule für Gestaltung Bern und Biel/École d’Arts Visuels Berne et Bienne respond to the images collected by Enrique Muñoz García. Each student, under the guidance of their teachers, Dominik Müller and Roland Aellig, created a work that responds to one of the images. Their creations are presented in the exhibition space of the Schule für Gestaltung/École d’Arts Visuels.
Create an image of your own responding to Women with Binoculars! You can participate in our photo contest by sending us your image on Instagram with the hashtag #Womenwithbinocularsbiel19 or by emailing it to nermina.serifovic@jouph.ch until 31 May. The winners of the contest will be announced at the awards ceremony on Sunday, June 2 at 4 pm, at DISPO Halle, and will then be notified by mail.
