At the Museum of Photography from 24 May 2024 to 26 January 2026

On 24 May, a new theme year will begin at the Museum of Photography, focusing on the body in Estonian photographic history.

The first exhibition of the body theme year Gendered Lens features works from the beginning of photography in Estonia until the advent of the digital age in the 2000s.

During this long period, artistic conventions, technical possibilities, moral norms and cultural and political contexts changed.

The exhibition Gendered Lens features nudes and portraits with the body at the centre. There are also works where primarily symbolic meaning or emotion is expressed through the body. For the first time in Estonian art history, the historical pornographic photograph is presented, which has existed as an independent genre since the early days of photography.

Alongside conventional portraits, you will see photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries showing people in non-traditional roles or activities. There are images of carnival and queer culture and private intimate practices.

Alongside the romanticised female nude of the late Soviet era, you can see experiments with form at that time and nude photographs unknown to the public. Photographic art from the 1990s is represented, when a new, often transgressive conception of the body emerged – unadorned nudes, sexual minorities, old people’s bodies and atypical gender roles.

The photographs in the exhibition come mainly from the collections of the Museum of Photography but also from other cultural institutions and private collections. More than half of the photos are on public display for the first time.

The research uncovered several treasures that will change our photographic history. For example, a rare original photograph by Estonia’s own porn photographer Ned de Baggo from the 1930s, an amateur pornographic album for private use from the Soviet era, and the work of little-known author Einar Tiits (1963–2016) have been rescued from the dustbin of history.

In the courtyard of the Museum of Photography, a photo series of found negatives by Anna Stina Treumund (1982–2017) is on display. In the Secret Staircase Gallery, Merilis Roosalu and Relika Kala have put together an exhibition called Summer Holidaymakers about beach culture enthusiasts of the 1930s.

The curator of the exhibition is Annika Haas, the artist designer is Katri Haarde. Texts by art historian Katrin Kivimaa, gender equality expert Mari-Liis Sepper, folklorist Andreas Kalkun, and Annika Haas play an important role in the exhibition.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

More about themed years>

Toomas Volkmann 1990

Linda Belling before 1904. Author Heinrich Tiidermann TLM Fb 9295: 4

Self prtrait. Author Einar Tiits

Self portrait. Anna-Stina Treumund 2008