Curiosity, courage and adventure

Exhibition Kunstforum Ingelheim - Old Town Hall | May 04 to July 13, 2025

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Since the early 20th century, female photographers have been conquering distant destinations with their cameras, often under arduous conditions, and leaving behind impressive images of their travels.

Our exhibition focuses on the reasons for traveling to countries, some of which are 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 went to distant countries to realize their own independent artistic projects. Regardless of the motivation or reason, all of the trips 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 between journalistic commissioned photography and free artistic photography can be.

(Text: International Days – Boehringer Ingelheim)

Ullstein, female photographers and travel photography. The combination of these themes is clearly echoed in the Ullstein photographic collection at ullstein bild. We see this in the works of Alice Schalek, Lotte Errell, Margot Lubinski, Charlotte Rohrbach, Regine Relang, Cami Stone, Yva, Ilse Steinhoff, Hedda Walther, Nini and Carry Hess.

Lotte Errell's photo series from China, published in the 1930s, conveys concentrated insights into the culture and living conditions of the time alongside her landscape views. The photographs from Alice Schalek's trip to India were first published by Ullstein in 1929 in a special issue of the magazine Die Dame entitled “An den Höfen der Maharadschas”. They speak of exoticism, of the significance of a world in decline, and at the same time of the sensitivity of their observer. The combination of travelogue, photography and publication not only reveals the great daring of this journey. It also illustrates the special nature of an in-depth – female – exploration of the world, from which contemporary viewers and we today benefit.

The original photographs by both photographers and the original 1929 issue of the Ullstein magazine Die Dame can be seen in the exhibition “Curiosity, Courage and Adventure” at the Kunstforum Ingelheim.

The pictures in the gallery below can also be found in the photo dossier at ullstein bild.