In these works, EXPORT, a self-proclaimed feminist, used her body as a measuring and pointing device, encircling the curve of a curb or conforming to the angle of a corner—actions designed to defy the conformist culture of her native Austria in the postwar period. Most of the pictures from this series, Körperkonfigurationen (Body Configurations), are accentuated with black or red lines added in ink to the print. The failed conformity with the architectural structures, the geometric lines applied to the photographs, and the figure’s uneasy gymnastics emphasize the tension between the individual and the ideological and social forces that shape urban reality, registering the psychological effects of the built and natural environments.

Gallery label from

The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook, April 16, 2012–April 29, 2013.

Medium Gelatin silver print with red ink
Dimensions 14 × 23 7/16" (35.5 × 59.6 cm)
Credit Carl Jacobs Fund
Object number 875.2011
Department Photography

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VALIE EXPORT

VALIE EXPORT

Austrian, 1940–2026 76 works online

When VALIE EXPORT (born Waltraud Lehner) was 13 years old, she wrote in her notebook, “In the beginning was the word and the word was a man.

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