Ruth Orkin in Turin
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Ruth Orkin in Turin
Largest ever exhibition of her work in Italy
Ruth Orkin’s most famous photo—American Girl in Italy (1951)—will be among the more than 150 photos of her work displayed at the Musei Reali Torino in the largest anthology of her work in Italy.
Through July 16, the Sale Chiablese, part of Turin’s Royal Museums, will exhibit one of the most iconic street shots in the history of photography, along with the Orkin’s portraits of personalities such as Robert Capa, Albert Einstein, Marlon Brando, Orson Welles, Lauren Bacall, Vittorio De Sica, Woody Allen and others.
This exhibition aims to revisit the work of the woman who wanted to be a director and who, due to circumstances, being a male cinematic world, had to find her place elsewhere. She hasn't given up on her dream of hers, but she has faced it in a different way, creating a singular, extremely rich and new language through photography. Ruth Orkin's photographic work is about images, cinema, stories and ultimately life. This exhibition is the definitive affirmation of the work of this young woman who has reinvented another kind of photography”. —Anne Morin, curator of Ruth Orkin. Una Nuova Scoperta
Orkin’s famous photograph has been the subject of controversy over the years, with some feeling that the image is a glorification of the “male gaze.” But both Orkin and her subject Ninalee Craig, aka Jinx Allen, dispelled this notion in interviews before their deaths.
“As a depiction of both female flânerie and the unwelcome attention of men, how the image is interpreted—as straightforward harassment or a study of ‘empowerment’—is part of its enduring and enigmatic appeal,” explains Kitty Grady in a 1921 piece for British Vogue.
What Orkin and Allen had conceived as an ode to fun and female adventure was seen as evidence of the powerlessness of women in a male-dominated world.
That interpretation bewilders the subject herself. ‘At no time was I unhappy or harassed in Europe,’ says Craig. Her expression in the photo is not one of distress, she says; rather, she was imagining herself as the noble, admired Beatrice from Dante’s Divine Comedy. To this day she keeps a ‘tacky’ postcard she bought in Italy that year—a Henry Holiday painting depicting Beatrice walking along the Arno—that reminds her ‘of how happy I was.’ —An Image of Innocence Abroad, Smithsonian Magazine
RUTH ORKIN. A NEW DISCOVERY
Through 16 July 2023
Location: Musei Reali Torino | Sale Chiablese
Official website: https://www.mostraruthorkin.it
Official exbibition book from Skira Editore: https://www.skira.net/en/books/ruth-orkin/
Suggested hotels
Two NH Hotels are located within walking distance of Sale Chiablese. Book your stay in an NH Hotel before May 31 to get up to 20% off.