The intention of decolonising museums is not ...

 ... "to erase history, or the history of the object, but to work collaboratively with communities to develop multiple perspectives to support a better understanding and deeper meaning. Decolonising the collection will mean that we have more information about objects, not less. We will be able to present a more balanced, authentic and decolonised account of history."
Comms team response to blog comment, 2022

photograph by Inge Morath (Museum Hamburger Bahnhof, Saachi Collection Show, Berlin, 1998) via

Inge Morath + Her Male Pseudonym

 "A bold and determined woman, she managed to establish herself in a then male-dominated filed, and even had to sell her first shots to a number of publishers under the male pseudonym Egni Tharom. The first woman to ever join the renowned Magnum Photos agency, first as an editor and later, in 1955, as a full photographer, Inge Morath helped breaking down many prejudices with her talent."
Inge Morath exhibition, Museo Diocesano, Milan 2020

photograph of Inge Morath via

Inge Morath And Borders, by Arthur Miller

A fascination with the border came naturally to Inge Morath who was born in Graz, the frontier city of southern Austria facing the Southeast. Her mother's family had homes and property in Lower Styria, what is Slovenia today. A child of Germanic culture it might be said that a kind of border ran through Mathilda, Inge's mother, who had  a particular understanding of the Slavic people who bordered Austria.



For Inge the concept of the border between cultures and races was essential to the understanding of peoples. Raised under Nazism with its manic super nationalistic credo, resistence to the current tendency to characterize individuals according to their origins rather than as human persons was something to be resisted. It was not that she was blind to the impress of culture on individuals, however, quite the opposite - through travel and study and her mastery of languages she could not help but take culture and history into account in all her approaches to different people. What her historical perspective gave her was a profound respect for differences and for individuals and their cultures.



Inge of course could not help but understand that there are indeed good and retrograde cultural traits imbedded in national characteristics. With the end of World War II she could not wait to escape Germany and Austria and to find a way to live in France, which became her second birthplace. French culture, I think, was her favorite of all, but saying this I am instantly reminded of how she adored a certain spiritual stretch in the Russian mentality, the familial warmth of the Italian, the venerable self-security of the Chinese, the poetry and literature and painting of the Germans, the Spanish austerity and the breadth of the English literary embrace. In short, she was in actuality a citizen of the world, with a closer affinity to more aspects of world culture than anyone I have ever encountered.
 (...)




In the idea of the border she seemed to have found the complexity of her own existence. The border is the end of something and also the beginning, the escape and the entry, the desire to forget and the need to remember. Inge was torn by these contradictory forces. She could bridle at the spineless obedience inherent in the militaristic side of Germany's culture, and a moment later defend Germany's art and poetry; in the end what she could not help rising to defend was human dignitiy and freedom, regardless of national context. As a photographer she worked alongside and had many close friends who were Jews, and indeed married one, but she could not forget what had moved her in Arab and Muslim culture and refused to demonize those people. Inge was a woman without demons.
(...)

Arthur Miller




- Miller, A. (2003) Inge Morath And Borders. Foreword. In: Strassegger, R. (ed.) Grenz.Räume. Inge Morath. Last Journey. Munic et al.: Prestel
- photographs via and via and via and via and via and via

Quoting Doris Lessing

"The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion."
Doris Lessing



Doris May Lessing (1919-2013), born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Iran, was a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 - the eleventh woman and the oldest person (88 years and 52 days) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny" (via).
In "The Golden Notebook" (1962), Lessing describes Anna Wulf's strive for honesty freedom from "the chaos, emotional numbness, and hypocriscy afflicting her generation", she "tries to live with the freedom of a man". Lessing was attacked for being "unfeminine" in the weay she depicts female anger and aggression. Her response: "Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise." "These attitudes in male writers were taken for granted, accepted as sound philosophical bases, as quite normal, certainly not as woman-hating, aggressive, or neurotic." (via)

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photograph of Doris Lessing by Inge Morath (1993), (c) The Inge Morath Foundation Magnum Photos via

Londinium, the multicultural metropolis

London - founded by the Romans, conquered by the Saxons and Normans, developed as a commercial centre by Italian, Flemish, and Baltic traders - is a multicultural metropolis, a truly international city with 100 different languages spoken in almost each of its boroughs (via). In the past, immigration brought new life styles, foods, music, ... The mix of different cultures is not new, "London always was a city of foreigners" who become an essential part of British culture. In fact, for "much of its history the percentage of Londoners born outside the capital was actually far higher than today" (via); 37% of its current population is foreign-born (via).



According to the 1981 census, for instance, more than one in six were born outside the UK (mainly in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean). This characteristic of London, however, did not start in the 1980s but much earlier. In his book "A City Full of People", historian Peter Earle states that around 1700, "a clear majority of Londoners had not been born in the capital" but in France, Spain, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Germany, Southern Europe, ... Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and in other parts of England (at the time, people from Cornwall, for instance, were perceived as "foreigners"). About 150 years later, under Queen Victoria, London was still a multicultural city. In the 1840s alone, 50.000 people arrived from Ireland fleeing the famine and by 1850, London's Jewish population had increased to ca. 20.000 leaping to 120.000 in the following fifty years. By 1800, there were several thousand Africans living in London and more and more people from South East Asia settled in the city (via).



Even in its early Roman days Londoners were "just as cosmopolitan and diverse" as they are today. According to new DNA findings, gladiators in London circa 50 A.D. may have come from North Africa and different parts of Europe. The cosmopolitan nature of ancient London may have drawn on people from all over the Roman Empire and it seems that London "hasn't changed all that much in character" (via).

"But the findings serve as a reminder that the past often looked very, very different from the all-white panoramas built in the years since. Especially somewhere like London, a crossroads from its very beginning." (via)

"And so today's fears of a multicultural capital are myopic, because that is exactly what London always was, during the centuries of greatness when it became the top city in the world." (via)




- interesting: The ethnic population of England and Wales broken down by local authorities, The Guardian, 2011, link
- all photographs of London by Inge Morath (1923-2002) via, copyright The Inge Morath Foundation - Magnum Photos, courtesy 'Clair Gallery, last photograph by Inge Morath (street corner at World's End, 1954) via; fog photograph taken in 1954, all the others in 1953

World Mental Health Day

At the initiative of the World Federation of Mental Health and with the support of the WHO, on 10 October World Mental Health Day is celebrated. Prevalence estimates vary but have in common that experiencing some kind of mental health problem (e.g. depressive, eating or anxiety disorder, schizophrenia etc.) during lifetime or even in the course of a year is not as far-fetched as one might think (e.g. via). In Austria, a country with 8.5 million inhabitants, 900.000 people are currently in treatment. On a global scale, estimates range between 400 million and 1.5 billion people who are affected (via).



The aim of the day is raising awareness as the social stigma attached to mental disorders can make problems worse. According to the Mental Health Foundation, about nine out of ten say that stigma and discrimination have a negative impact on their lives. Problems are related to finding work, being in a long-term relationship, living in decent housing, and being socially included in mainstream society (via). In the UK, the campaign Time to Change aims to challenge mental health stigma and discrimination.



Invisible disabilities are not readily apparent. Those whose disabilities are invisible might even have to convince other people that they are impaired not knowing what consequences their disclosure might have. In line with the "seeing is believing" attitude, readily visible impairments are said to be the ones that are taken more seriously (Coté, 2009).



The Mask Series was a collaboration between the Austrian photographer Inge Morath (1923-2002) and The New Yorker cartoonist Saul Steinberg (1914-1999). They started the project in the 1950s and continued it into the 1960s.



Coté, J. (2009) Invisible Disability Disclosure. Athabasca: MA
National Mental Health. Development Unit. (n.y.) Stigma and discrimination in mental health (via); photos via and via and via and via and via and via and via

The Paper Bag Test

The so called "paper bag parties" required people to pass the "brown paper bag test" in order to be admitted. If you were lighter than a brown paper bag, you could go to the party. Since women could attempt to lighten their skin with make-up, the bag was usually placed against an exposed arm. However, not all paper bag parties had visible paper bags. And, although the practice is universally condemned, there is still the notion that the ideals behind the practice survived. In 1982, Alice Walker coined the term "colourism" which refers to the form of discrimination that is based on social values that are associated with skin colour.



- Kerr, A. E. (2006) The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Colorism, and Rumor and the Case of Black Washington. University of Tennessee Press
- photograph taken by Inge Morath (Saul Steinberg, "The Mask Series") via

Update 2017: Photograph has been changed