‘In those fascist times,” says Federica Muzzarelli of Italy in the 1920s and 30s, “women were not free. They were regarded as mothers and homemakers. But the Wulz sisters were determined to create their own destiny. They chose photography as a way of being independent – and to show through their images that women could live that way.”
Muzzarelli is the curator of Wanda and Marion Wulz: Avant-Garde Photography in 20th Century Italy, a show about to open at the Estorick Collection in London. The Wulz sisters experimented with blended and altered images more than half a century before Photoshop was invented. The most famous image to emerge from their studio was I + Cat, a self-portrait of Wanda superimposed on the face of the family pet. But the show aims to cast Marion in a new light, showing that she was no mere assistant, but rather equal to her sister in terms of photography, as they championed feminism in fascist Italy, keeping the idea of women’s emancipation alive at a time of unbridled patriarchal ideology.
Wanda, born in Trieste in 1903, was a promising dancer and musician; Marion, two years her junior, had been to art school and wanted to paint. But after the pair inherited their father’s photographic studio, which had in turn been founded by his father, they realised it represented their best path to an autonomous future. “They photographed modern women, dancing, playing sports, doing gymnastics,” says Muzzarelli. Women who were artists, poets, writers and actors sat for the sisters. Among them were painter Leonor Fini and Olympic fencing champion Irene Camber.
In 1932, Wanda exhibited six works, including I + Cat in the National Exhibition of Futurist Photography. The show was staged to mark 10 years since the fascist revolution but, contends Muzzarelli, Wanda was never interested in that . She just wanted to show, as the only woman taking part, that she was every bit as capable as the men.
“She showed she had the ability and skill to create a photomontage,” says Muzzarelli. Her technique for I + Cat, which superimposed one negative on top of another, was invented in the mid-19th century, but Wanda used it in a new way, making one face hers and the other that of Mucincina, the family cat. Both negatives will be in the London show, as well as the finished work. “Wanda wanted to explore the idea of female identity, of the cat as a free creature, a symbol of freedom,” says Muzzarelli, who believes another picture Wanda showed in the 1932 exhibition – Futurist Breakfast, showing items from a woman’s dresser – was also included to make a feminist point.
The exhibition was Wanda’s only foray into futurism, but the years that followed were the sisters’ heyday. They continued to live in the apartment block in central Trieste in which they had been born, and where their studio was based. It became the centre of an informal female salon.
“For several years,” says Claudia Baroncini, director of the Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia, which owns the sisters’ archive, “the fashion designer Anita Pittoni lived with them. With her, they created a kind of club of artists – women who wanted to experiment with new ways of living. So they were pushing a different sort of life alongside a different sort of photography. And of course, photography has always been about a fusion of ideas and reality. So they were living their art.”
Their first role in the studio was as subjects – they were often dressed up and photographed by their father, Carlo, when they were children. So they were always acutely aware of self-image, of disguise, of what appearance symbolised. As portrait photographers they were experts at “improving” the look of their sitters. “They were very clever with negatives,” says Baroncini, “creating shadows to change the shape of someone’s mouth or eyes, or to improve the quality of their skin. You can see, looking at the negatives, how much work they did to make their prints perfect. And that meant famous women wanted to be photographed by them, because they wanted to look perfect.”
They also photographed one another: the show will include Marion’s striking portrait of Wanda wearing motorcycle goggles and another of her dressed as Cleopatra, while Wanda’s shots of Marion include her wearing designs by Pittoni, along with an extraordinarily modern-looking closeup with shining eyes.
In spring 1945, as the second world war ended, Trieste was liberated from fascist rule by the Yugoslav army. From the terrace of their apartment, Marion photographed tanks and soldiers – and later celebrations in the street when the Anglo-American troops arrived. “These images show she was fully part of the artistic partnership,” says Baroncini.
Although the women worked until the 1970s, they never recaptured their early success. Money became a struggle and they closed their studio in 1981, while continuing to take photographs. After Wanda died in 1984, Marion – who lived another nine years – documented their life and work together in a series of diaries.
“Their lives had been tough,” says Baroncini, “and they didn’t realise the importance of their work for the history of photography. Wanda had a brief burst of fame during the futurist period, but they would be very surprised to know that, more than 120 years after their births, they were being recognised as great photographers.”
