I had the honor to participate in a roundtable discussion on the occasion of the exhibition celebration and virtual opening reception - Communism Through the Lens: Everyday Life Captured by Women Photographers in the Dodge Collection at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, on April 29, 2021. The exhibition is scheduled to open in May (exact date tbc) and be on view virtually until October 17, 2021 with the possibility of in-person viewing in the fall, depending on the COVID-19 situation and related safety measures in place at the time.
I was invited by the exhibition curator, Maria Garth, Graduate Curatorial Assistant (Dodge Fellow) at the Zimmerli Art Museum. The event featured a curator-led overview of the exhibition by Maria Garth, followed by a roundtable discussion with guest speakers and a question-and-answer session with the audience. Guest speakers include Mark Svede, Ph.D., Ohio State University, and myself.
The event was introduced by Julia Tulovsky, Ph.D., Curator at the Zimmerli Art Museum, and the discussion was moderated by Jane Sharp, Ph.D., Research Curator at the Zimmerli Art Museum and Professor of Art History at Rutgers University.
View the virtual exhibition on the Zimmerli Art Museum website.
Zenta Dzividzinska, Untitled, 1965. Gelatin silver print on paper. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union.
Exhibition Communism Through the Lens features selected photographs by my mother, Latvian artist and photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011).
To learn more about the life and work of Zenta Dzividzinska, please visit the website https://www.artdays.net/
Zenta Dzividzinska. Two. From the series Riga Pantomime. 1964–66. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union / Latvian National Museum of Art.
About the exhibition Communism Through the Lens: Everyday Life Captured by Women Photographers in the Dodge Collection:
“Spanning almost the entirety of the Soviet Union’s history from the 1920s through the 1990s, this exhibition of rarely-seen images explores themes of political art, documentary photography, and gender, offering a historical look at how women photographers interpreted life in the communist state. [. . .]
Despite the Soviet Union’s rhetoric of gender equality, women of both generations from all over the Soviet Union shared a range of personal and professional challenges in advancing their careers as photographers.
Bringing together over one hundred and thirty works from the Zimmerli’s Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, including photography books and journals, the majority of which are displayed for the first time, this is the first exhibition at the Zimmerli devoted to photography by women from the Soviet Union. It also presents a survey of approaches to photography to highlight for the first time the central role played by women in redefining photography’s social reach – and expressivity – as perhaps the quintessential modernist medium.”
Zenta Dzividzinska. Untitled. From the series House Near the River. 1968. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union / Latvian National Museum of Art.
See a few slides from my presentation below, and watch the event’s recording on the Zimmerli Art Museum’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btHF69FZfgA
Read about the exhibition in The Calvert Journal: “A virtual exhibition celebrates the overlooked legacy of Soviet women photographers” (April 27, 2021): https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/12716/soviet-female-photographers-virtual-exhibition-