In Paris Photo, one of the biggest fairs in the world dedicated to photography as art, an innovative initiative called Elles x Paris Photo offers visitors a new way of visiting this overwhelming maze of striking and provocative images.
Around 50 images made by women were selected to create a circulation within the fair to celebrate the female photographic gaze. Here is our curation of this selection, where we looked at the body and its representation. Join us as we look at the world through women’s eyes.
IN CONVERSATION WITH DEVRIM BAYAR
Senior curator at KANAL-Centre Pompidou and curator of the 2025 edition of Elles x Paris Photo.
What does it mean to be a female curator?
Truth be told, I consider myself more than a woman who is a curator. I’m also influenced by my Belgian-Turkish origins. I’m based in Brussels, but I also studies in New York and have spent some time in Turkey, and even worked there at a now-defunct art center called Platform Garanti. My dual culture is as key to my self-definition as the fact that I’m a woman, I’m a mother, and I’m a curator. I’m also connected to the queer scene in Brussels, which influences my interests and my research. So I think my perspective is multiple in that way, as is my identity. And clearly, all these perspectives inform what I’m interested in and what I want to present.
What was your process like in putting together this selection?
We received over 800 images, and I just opened myself up to them and let them take me by surprise. My selection process was quite intuitive, I was charmed by the poetry, strength and sometimes critical power of the images. It was only at the end that I realized what it was about, themes that emerged both from the images themselves and from my own unconscious subjectivity. I realized that there were a lot of representations of women, a lot of portraits in the broader sense of the world. I believe that women photographers have a specific interest in women as subjects. I also noticed that there was a play between the figure and the environment, the space it inhabits. Look at Susan Meiselas’ image, where the human figure disappears into this apartment.
Do you think women photograph women differently than men do?
I’m not a man so I can’t speak to the way they experience it, and I don’t want to be binary or reductive. But if course there is a difference, women will probably objectify other women less than men do. Their experience is shared more deeply, probably in a more horizontal way, with more empathy between the photographer and the subject. Look at Marie-Laure de Decker’s self-portrait. She is physically showing her love for photography. It’s such a beautiful portrait.
There is a lot of experimental work here, in terms of printing techniques for instance…
Yes, a great example of that is Mia Weiner’s work. Those aren’t printed on fabric, they are woven. And not machine woven, she’s doing it herself. You can look up videos of her process online, she hand-weaves these images in her studio. It’s fascinating. She shows nude bodies, intimate moments with a queer point of view, although I don’t know whether she identifies that way: women with women, people of undiscernible genders, bodies which are not perfect but are true, sincere. Several artists in my selection transcend what is usually considered as photography. There is sculpture, tapestry, a video installation… Mostly coming from younger women who approach the medium in a very experimental, very fresh way.
Why was it important in that context to also include the image by Julia Margaret Cameron?
I wanted my selection to be as historically expansive as possible. I think it’s important for the public and for artists to have the space and ability to create intergenerational dialogue.
Do you think having a background in photo-reportage is an asset for a photographer?
There are actually a lot of women in that field. Being a photo-reporter, working with the press, is also a way to make a living for many artists. Look at Diane Arbus, she barely sold art print in her lifetime, but she had a prolific career in magazines. And that begs the question of what is an original Diane Arbus: is it what was printed in the magazines, or what was later presented in museums and galleries?
What surprised you the most when working on this selection?
I realized that I have a definite affinity with the 1970’s. The counter-culture which developed post-1968 really speaks to me. I also love the architecture, the interior design. When I looked at the dates of my selection, I realized that I had unwittingly chosen a lot of images from that time.
I also realized that there were many sleeping, reclining, or dreamy-eyed figures. I think I was unconsciously attracted to images where the subject isn’t looking at us, where they are in an introspective state. As a spectator, we are confronted by a double image, the one we see and the one we don’t have access to, the mental image of the photographed subject. It’s so interesting to realize that no image is unique: it is made of layer upon layer. The ones we perceive, as well as the ones that remain inaccessible to us.
A female bather having a nap on the hot marble of Cağaloğlu Hamam. March, 2020, Istanbul,Turkey., 2020, Photography, 50 x 50 cm, © Sabiha Çimen / Magnum Photos, Courtesy LOOCK, Berlin.
Oranges in a cold basin in the hammam. It is a way to cool down amid the heavy steam and heat of the Turkish bath, something I remember from my childhood. For me when marginalized women and girls hold the camera, something shifts. They are no longer the subjects of someone else’s story but the authors of their own. Each photograph becomes an act of defiance, a way to show the world who they are, beyond labels and limitations. In their images, beauty can be resilience, strength can be tenderness, and gender becomes something fluid,
chosen, and alive.
Sabiha Cimens, photographer
Susan Meiselas, from the book 44 Irving Street, 1970–1971, 2025, Photography book, 8.5 x 11 inches, © TBW Books
I made this self-portrait while living in a boarding house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The project, 44 Irving Street, evolved from my knocking on the doors of my neighbors — people I didn’t yet know — and asking if I could enter their rooms to photograph them. Each person chose where they wanted to sit within their space. After I returned with a contact sheet to share, I invited them to write me a letter about how they saw themselves in the picture.
Susan Meiseilas, photographer
In the Kitchen (Stove), 1977, Colour Archival Pigment Print, 41 x 31 x 2.5 cm, Copyright of the Estate of Helen Chadwick
Women artists have the ability to show themselves as they want to be seen: here Chadwick plays with this idea of the traditional ‘female nude’ representing herself standing, full frontal, bravely gazing out at the viewer and into their eyes. Unlike traditional representations of the female nude, where they are shown reclining, staring wistfully into space subjected to the viewer’s gaze, she is taking control of it. Chadwick captures herself standing inside the metal framework of a kitchen oven, the two hot plates (which resemble eggs, as a symbol of fertility), cover her breasts but the rest of her body – including her vagina – is left uncovered. It is a daring and iconic work by this seminal artist.
Richard Saltoun Gallery
Autoportrait, Paris, 1970, Tirage argentique, 30 x 40 cm, Marie-Laure de Decker courtesy galerie Anne-Laure Buffard et galerie in camera
This photograph radiates something quite magical, with the photographer smiling as she embraces her Leica in front of a mirror. Everything is perfectly synchronized: the movement of her finger on the shutter, her joyful smile, and that tender embrace of the camera. It is also striking is a kind of inversion of the gaze. It’s as if it were the camera that is looking at us. One might say that in this work, Marie-Laure de Decker is not simply representing herself; she is thinking herself as a photographer. The Leica becomes almost a double of her being, a prosthesis of vision. It feels as though we are witnessing a moment of unity as if capturing a fusion between Marie-Laure de Decker and her camera.
Anne-Laure Buffard
Fuki XI, 2024, Cyanotype on handmade Japanese gampi paper, 21 x 15 cm, Mika Horie
“Fuki” is a Japanese word that has a double meaning. It refers to a lotus, and also embodies the strength of women; even when enveloped within the lotus leaf, it signifies her unwavering spirit to move and dance freely with powerful determination. In this theme, she confidently showcases her nude body to highlight women’s unique strengths compared to men. Her resilient spirit empowers her to assert her voice and social status as equal to men, valuing both external beauty and the inner grace that embodies true strength.
Mika Horie, photographer
Pippa Garner, Future Man! (series), 1987, book, 24 x 30 cm, Tim Street-Porter
We cannot extend the notion of female gaze to Pippa Garner’s work. She has transcended the concept by working with the idea of uniqueness, the uniqueness of his-her point of view. It is also important to say that she was still Philip Garner when this specific photograph was taken.
Jurgen Maelfeyt, Galery ArtPaper
Courtesy of Hans P. Kraus Jr., New York ,Julia Margaret Cameron (English, born in India, 1815-1879) “La Sainte Famille,” 1872, Albumen print, 34.5 x 27.6 cm
Her subjects are the holy family—the Madonna with infants Jesus and John the Baptist. The soft focus and lighting give the picture a painterly quality reminiscent of works by renaissance artists. Cameron was considered an artist during her lifetime. Her work was exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum and Colnaghi gallery in London. She was one of very few women photographers of her time who were considered artists.
Hans P. Kraus, gallerist
Havana, Cuba, 1954, Lifetime gelatin silver print, 40 x 50 cm, © Eve Arnold/Magnum Photos
This photograph was taken by Eve Arnold in Havana, Cuba, in 1954, during one of her early assignments for Magnum Photos. At first glance, it might be mistaken for a film still or one of Arnold’s backstage portraits of a celebrity, yet what she truly captured here is a moment of quiet isolation, imbued with a haunting beauty. Arnold’s approach was grounded in careful observation and subtlety. She moved silently and instinctively, adapting to unpredictable conditions and using them to her advantage. Here, she allows us to witness an intimate, contemplative moment in a noisy, male-dominated world.
Clémence Vichard-Larroque, Galery Magnum
Fawzia, a vegan activist and photographer lives with Deeko and Lucie, a rooster and a hen. Beirut, Lebanon, 2023, Archival pigment print, 90 x 60 cm, ©Myriam Boulos/Magnum Photos
What I try to do is to listen to the people I photograph. It is actually one of the things that interest me in photography: The image as an encounter. To represent women outside of the male gaze means not to have preconceived ideas about what and who we are photographing, and not to reduce people to stereotypes and symbols. It means to see every people we meet as their own creature and planet.
Myriam Boulos, photpgrapher
from Life in Philly, 1986, Gelatin silver print, 279×356mm, Mao Ishikawa
After meeting a former U.S. Marine while working at a bar in Koza, Okinawa, Ishikawa later visited him in Philadelphia after he had returned home, where she began photographing. Knowing that many Black soldiers stationed in Okinawa had struggled with poverty and racial discrimination in their own country, Ishikawa wanted to see for herself what kinds of places they lived in and what kind of lives they were leading in America. Her deep empathy and solidarity with people living in disadvantaged circumstances are clearly reflected in this series as well.
Takashi Kakishima, Poetic Scape Gallery
A Flash of Heat (placeholder), 2024, Handwoven acrylic, cotton, paper, and silk yarn, raw ruby and 14 carat gold hanuman pendant, 109cm x 175cm, Homecoming Gallery, Mia Weiner
When I shot this image, I was at an artist residency over the summer where the heat and humidity blanketed and held you. It was late afternoon, and, if you look carefully, you can see the camera remote in my hand on the top left of the image. Once I returned to my studio with my loom, I began to prepare the photograph to weave by editing and creating a giant map, planning every crossing of threads on the loom. The scale was very important to me for this weaving, letting softness be big and take up space.
Mia Weiner, photographer
Yıldız Moran, Untitled,Bilecik, Turkey,1957,Gelatin silver print,28.5*18 cm, Unique, Vintage
Her approach is profoundly abstract and tactile. Unlike her male counterparts, she was not there to document, but almost to dissolve the document — to leave behind only the texture. In the original negative, a man gazes from a window in the background — yet Moran darkened that area, erasing his gaze entirely. What remains, in the end, is her own: a gaze as delicate as it is resolute.
Deniz Artun, Galery Nev
