Silver Girls
Retouched History of Baltic Photography

The exhibition presents a selection of works by twenty-one early women photographers from the Baltic States. Some of their stories significantly contribute to art history, while others serve as small but essential expansions of an existing view of our shared past. Placed in dialogue with contemporary artists from the same region, mirroring each other between different centuries, practices, and topics, their stories become a part of a larger narrative of the development of photography. 

When photography arrived in the Baltics, it quickly captivated the nobility, including noblewomen, who embraced it as a hobby. With the rise of commercial photography in the early 20th century, women found employment in the emerging industry. Though many of them worked in the shadow of their male counterparts - often as retouchers, copyists, or assistants - others managed to set up their own studios, shaping images of the world that would please the customer while actively participating in photography's pursuit to become art.

Silver Girls invites viewers to rediscover the forgotten stories of women photographers in the Baltics through the surface of a physical and metaphorical reflector of truth - the mirror - which has played a significant role in making the photographic image itself. It is the play of reflections, in which the lost and found, the destroyed and recovered, the denied and accepted, converge into the present narrative we choose to trust, a particular type of mirror we choose to look into.

However, most of us perceive photography daily in a much more straightforward manner, as a functional medium, as a simple and sincere means to preserve fleeting memories, like artist Diāna Tamane's flower-loving grandmother, whose photo albums inspired the series Flower Smuggler. 

Despite its universal appeal, the development of photography in the three Baltic countries is rarely explored in parallel, partly due to language barriers. Goda Palekaitė's installation Lunar Sisterhood bridges this divide by drawing on the fundamental essence of photography - light. It uses the mystical form of the full moon as a unifying force around which the exhibition's spirits gather. In contrast, Marge Monko's video Sheer Indulgence uses the seductive yet oppressive language of commercial imagery, which has historically provided women with both income and independence.

Silver Girls exhibition project first took place in 2020 at the Tartu Art Museum. It showed selected works by ten early women photographers from Estonia and Latvia paired with works by contemporary European artists contemplating our visual history's lost and neglected aspects. Now, the initial selection of the photographers has been expanded, bringing together all three Baltic countries and their stories.

Early women photographers from Estonia: Olga Dietze, Helene Fendt, Emilie Johanson, Anna Kukk, Marie Keerd,  Hilja Riet, Lydia Tarem
Early women photographers from Latvia: Lūcija Alutis-Kreicberga, Antonija Heniņa, Minna Kaktiņa, Emīlija Mergupe, Marta Pļaviņa, Emīlija Raguel-Lācīte, Ērika Zariņa
Early women photographers from Lithuania: Zinaida Bliumentalienė, Aleksandra Jurašaitytė, Antanina Laucienė, Paulina Mongirdaitė, Veronika Šleivytė, Domicelė Tarabildaitė-Tarabildienė, Jadvyga Vaitaitienė-Markevičiūtė
Contemporary artists: Marge Monko, Diāna Tamane, Goda Palekaitė

Curated by Šelda Puķīte, Agnė Narušytė and Indrek Grigor

Exhibition architects:  Mindaugas Reklaitis, Kristijonas Nenartavičius
Graphic designer: Aleksandra Samuļenkova
Producing designer:  Ugnė Balčiūnaitė
Copy-editors: Ieva Puluikienė, Emma Stirling, Agnė Narušytė
Translators: Aušra Simanavičiūtė, Agnė Narušytė
Coordinators of the exhibition: Ieva Mazūraitė-Novickienė, Ernestas Parulskis

Organizer: National Gallery of Art / Lithuanian National Museum of Art

Project funded by: Culture Ministry of the Republic of Lithuania, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, VV Foundation

Project partners: Tartu Art Museum, Wunder Kombinat, NoRoutine Books

Sponsors: Fundermax, publishing house "Lapas"