Nine Female Photographers Pay Homage To A True Art Heroine, Inge Morath

 

Nine female photographers are embarking on an epic road trip across Europe, one that's meant to pay homage to one of the art world's most iconic heroines.

 

"Danube Revisited: The Inge Morath Truck Project" will be a photographic journey and traveling exhibition that turns a truck into a mobile tribute to the renowned Magnum photographer, Ingeborg "Inge" Morath.

 

Morath, who hails from Austria, began her career in journalism back in the late 1940s, eventually winding her way to Magnum Photos in Paris as an editor. It didn't take long for her passions for writing to turn to photography, and in 1953 she presented her first large photo feature to the great Robert Capa. She played assistant to Henri Cartier-Bresson before being asked to join Magnum as a full time photojournalist member in 1955, and thus began a prolific career spanning Europe, the United States, South America, the Middle East and Africa.

 

She was also famously married to playwright Arthur Miller, with whom she collaborated on several projects, including "In Russia" (1969) and "Chinese Encounters" (1979). Friends with Jean Arp, Alberto Giacometti, Saul Steinberg and Philip Roth, Morath ventured into the lives and homes of intellectual elites, studying language, art and literature in every country she visited. As someone who once admitted of her early career "I had never seriously occupied myself with photography; I did not even know a photographer," she built an enviable portfolio over decades of action, leaving behind an archive of thousands of images when she passed away in 2002.

 

"Danube Revisited" aims to celebrate this female photography pioneer by sending contemporary women artists along the Danube River, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, to retrace the footsteps of Morath. The river has long served as mythical inspiration for some of Europe's most prized cultural figures, and the women of "Danube Revisited" will have over 2,700 kilometers (approximately 1,700 miles) and 10 countries to soak up the lingering legacies.

 

The result of the adventure will be both new photographs and exhibitions of current works, culminating in a large-scale show that will pair Morath’s Danube works from the 1990s with new images created by the team -- all of whom received the Inge Morath Award at one point in their careers, a grant given annually by the members of Magnum Photos to honor the artist's life.

 

"Our project is intended for women, created by women, and in honour of the legacy of a pioneering woman from our industry," the project's Kickstarter campaign states. "To sustain this vision, we are organising special presentations, collaborations with professional women photographers, and portfolio reviews for emerging female photographers along the way."

 

"We are also making it possible for those who have babies or young children to bring them along," the group adds. "We are all between the ages of 31 and 41 and would love to prove that there doesn’t have to be an age or a period when women can’t create or take part in an adventure."

 

Check out the project on Kickstarter, and see more details of the campaign, which hopes to raise $50,000 by Sunday, June 8, 2014.