Dr. Marie Meyerding Kunsthistorikerin Wissenschaftlerin Zeitgenössische Kunst, Fotografiegeschichte, Kunstgeschichte im globalen Kontext, Art Historian, Contemporary Art, History of Photography, Art History in a Global Context

Art Historian & Head of a Junior Research Group

Modern and Contemporary Art

Theory and History of Photography

Art History in a Global Context

About

Dr. Marie Meyerding is an art historian and head of a junior research group at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. Her current research explores art and ecology under socialism. From 2024 to 2026, she was a postdoc with a Walter Benjamin Position from the German Research Foundation (DFG), during which she conducted research for her project ‘Landscapes of Surveillance: Environmental Art and the Stasi in the Global GDR’ at the Technical University of Dresden. She is the author of Women and Photography in Apartheid South Africa (Routledge, 2025) and Sights of Struggle: The History of the Tambo Village Women (Lecturis, 2023). Her writing has appeared in African Arts, Third Text, Art Margins Online, Critical Arts, Safundi, kritische berichte, sehepunkte and Camera Austria. In 2023, she curated the Open Call-winning exhibition Defiant Visions at apexart, New York. Her work has been supported by the German Academic Exchange Service, the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung, the Peter E. Palmquist Foundation, the Photography Network and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, among other institutions. She holds a PhD (summa cum laude) in African Art History from Freie Universität Berlin and an MA (distinction) in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art.

 

News

  • Book Launch Women and Photography in Apartheid South Africa

    Book Launch "Women and Photography in Apartheid South Africa" on 12 July 2025

    On Saturday, 12 July 2025, at 7 PM author Marie Meyerding will present the recently published book “Women and Photography in Apartheid South Africa” in a conversation with Craniv Boyd, scholar of African arts and arts of the African diasporas. The book launch takes place in collaboration with Hopscotch Reading Room at AGIT (Nansenstrasse 2, 12047 Berlin).

    Tracing the lives and works of five women in four case studies, Meyerding examines the representation of women in the field of photography in South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. In recuperating their forgotten archives, the book argues that none of these women are marginal figures, but rather that each of them played a leading role in the field of photography in their own time.

  • Book Cover Women and Photography in Apartheid South Africa

    Book Release "Women and Photography in Apartheid South Africa" in April 2025

    Tracing the lives and works of five women in four case studies, author Marie Meyerding examines the representation of women in the field of photography in South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. All of them are critically understudied, with no existing scholarship dedicated exclusively to their photographic contributions.

    Focusing on the representation of women on two different levels—as agents, behind the camera, and as subjects, in photographs—it showcases women photographers portraying their female contemporaries and analyses to what extent they adhered to or subverted common forms of gender representation. In recuperating their forgotten archives, the book argues that none of these women are marginal figures, but rather that each of them played a leading role in the field of photography in their own time.

    The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history of photography, gender studies, intersectionality and African studies.

  • Public Keynote Lecture by Maja & Reuben Fowkes

    You are cordially invited to the public lecture by Maja and Reuben Fowkes on Wednesday, 4 June 2025, at 6.30 pm in Lecture Hall E08 (Institut für Kunst- und Musikwissenschaft, August-Bebel-Str. 20, 01219 Dresden).

    The lecture entitled “Green Border Crossings: Beyond-Human Agents in the Eco-Critical Art Practice of the Socialist Anthropocene” is the public part of the non-public writing workshop “Socialist Eco-Aesthetics: Networks of Art and Ecology in the ‘Eastern Bloc’”, which will take place from 4 to 6 June at Technische Universität Dresden.

    This event is sponsored by the Graduate Academy of the Technische Universität Dresden, which is funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments.

  • Writing Workshop: Socialist Eco-Aesthetics: Networks of Art and Ecology in the ‘Eastern Bloc’

    Technische Universität Dresden, 4-6 June 2025

    Artists from the diverse socialist states—often grouped together as the ‘Eastern Bloc’—addressed the increasingly urgent ecological issues of their time. Just as environmental problems cross borders, artists were connected not only across the firm boundaries of the socialist countries, but also across the so-called Iron Curtain. At a time when the planetary dimensions of the environmental crisis were being recognised for the first time, artists joined forces to engage with their natural environment in new and critical ways.

    This workshop examines the systems in which artists, activists, governments and agents in the political and cultural sphere addressed ecological issues through art under socialism.

    Maja and Reuben Fowkes give a public keynote lecture on Wednesday, 4 June 2025, at 6.30pm in Lecture Hall E08 (August-Bebel-Straße 20, 01219 Dresden).

  • 123

    Exhibition at apexart New York

    My exhibition Defiant Visions was on view at apexart New York from June 1 until July 29, 2023.

    The aim of the show is to expand public perception of anti-apartheid imagery by showcasing how women photographers exercised resistance to oppression through the lenses of their cameras.

    Image: Mavis Mtandeki, Meeting of the African National Congress Women's League at a Church in Belville, early 1990s, courtesy of Mavis Mtandeki.

  • 123

    Book Release "Sights of Struggle: The History of the Tambo Village Women"

    In spring 2023, the book “Sights of Struggle: The History of the Tambo Village Women” with Mavis Mtandeki’s photographs and my texts was published by Lecturis.

    Mavis Mtandeki is one of the first black South African women photographers. She captured not only the political transformation of the country and the transition of the women’s organisations but also the difficult and dangerous relocation of numerous women from KTC to Tambo Village. As the premier settlement financed by the new government after the first free elections in 1994, Tambo Village stands as a testimony of the women’s defiance and their political claim on land and houses.

    This book tells the history of these courageous women captured through the lens of Mavis Mtandeki.

Postdoc Project

Landscapes of Surveillance: Environmental Art and the Stasi in the Global GDR

Art in the late German Democratic Republic (GDR, 1949–1990) was one of the central sites for addressing the increasingly pressing environmental issues. Yet, no comprehensive account of environmental art in the GDR exists. Not only the influence of the Stasi on the thematic complex of environment and art but also its international manifestation are critically understudied. This leaves immense gaps in our historical understanding of the relationship between environment and society at local and international levels and the ways in which artists and state agents have shaped this relationship and may continue to do so today.

The GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany which enforced its communist ideology through an immense surveillance network of state agents and informants led by the Ministry of State Security, an apparatus commonly referred to as Stasi. This surveillance apparatus influenced all parts of society including the art world which was strongly affected by censorship and undermining. Another notorious intervention of the Stasi was the concealment of the consequences of large-scale environmental pollution in the GDR. This research project aims to reveal the role of the environment for the field of art in the GDR of the 1980s, determining the extent to which environmentally conscious artistic approaches were influenced by the Stasi as well as by local or global phenomena.

By analysing the triad of art, environment and the Stasi, I want to highlight transnational flows of money and ideas to question a strictly national historiography of art, emphasising how conceptions of nature and art shifted on a regional and international level through mutual exchange. Considering how artists have dealt with surveillance in urban and rural landscapes through various artistic media, this project aims to show the changing coping strategies and stylistic devices artists used. Against this backdrop, I hope that a more focused and detailed analysis of environmental art in the GDR reveals how artistic practices were deployed to navigate and to oppose the surveillance strategies and methods of the Stasi. Furthermore, I aim to highlight what role questions of gender and intersectionality played in the fields of environmental art and state surveillance in the GDR. In doing so, I hope to uncover power mechanisms deployed then and now for monitoring and discrimination both in the art world and in society at large.

Examining environmental art that encounters moments of surveillance, my research project aims to reveal the art world’s power structures that shed light on shifting dynamics between humans, nature and machines by the example of the GDR. This in turn might increase our understanding of the role of artists and governments in addressing environmental disasters and the impacts of climate change today.

PhD Project

The Representation of Women in Photography in Apartheid South Africa

My dissertation examines the representation of women in the field of photography in South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century through four case studies. My research focuses on the representation of women on two different levels: as agents, behind the camera, and as subjects, in photographs.

The case studies highlight the photographic practice of Mabel Cetu who worked for popular 1950s magazines which were aimed at a Black readership, Jansje Wissema’s institutionally preserved 1970s photographs of the demolition of District Six and pictures of people close to her held in private collections, Lesley Lawson’s photobook Working Women (1985) and her involvement in the photographic collective Afrapix during the so-called ‘struggle photography’ of the 1980s as well as the practice of Mavis Mtandeki and Primrose Talakumeni who were mandated onto a photography course in 1989 as representatives of a political women’s organisation and subsequently exhibited their photographs at art exhibitions in South Africa and London. 

All four case studies exemplify crucial points within South African photography history and present incidents of systemic ex- and inclusion of women in this field. They further shed light on shifting prevalent modes of representing womanhood in photography, raising issues of agency and authorship in the highly contested field of visual production. Looking at how these women negotiated common representations of gender in their photographic practice, this study reveals the changing underlying power structures of the field of photography along gendered lines.

My research does not aim at the holistic evaluation of one photographer but deals with various fragmented aspects of the work of several women practitioners. This is due to the historical power structures around archiving, which prevented the inclusion of these women in historiography. Exploring the professional and personal lives of some of the most important women photographers working in apartheid South Africa, this study analyses the institution of photography and the ways in which it is archived, considering issues of intersectionality.

Publications

  • Sehepunkte

    "Review of Liliana Gómez: Archive Matter. A Camera in the Laboratory of the Modern, Berlin: Diaphanes Verlag 2022“

    Published in sehepunkte 25 , no. 9 (2025).

  • Christa Jeitner’s Visions of Trees

    "Christa Jeitner’s Visions of Trees"

    Art Margins Online, Special Issue on “The Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts”. Edited by Maja and Reuben Fowkes, 2025.

  • Source

    "Review of Simon A. Clarke: Life Itself. Photography and South Africa"

    Published in the Belfast-based magazine Source. Thinking Through Photography no. 118 (2025).

  • "Ost-West-Verbindungen"

    I have written a review of the 10th edition of f/stop – Festival für Fotografie "Flucht in die Öffentlichkeit" that took place in Leipzig from 31 May to 16 June 2024 for the magazine Camera Austria 167.

  • "Photography between Publicity and Politics. The Life and Work of South African Photographer Georgina Karvellas"

    Georgina Karvellas was one of the few women photographers documenting apartheid South Africa for several decades. She produced work for the fashion and music sector next to striking documentary work with a clear stance against the government’s segregationist policy.

    Published in Third Text 38, no. 1-2 (2024, special issue on “Polyphony: Voice, Method, Archive”): 207-227.

  • "A Woman’s Modernist Frame: Doing Justice to Constance Stuart Larrabee’s Photographs of World War II"

    Constance Stuart Larrabee is one of South Africa’s best known woman photographers. This article explores her ambivalent relationship to the Nazi regime by closely examining her photographs taken in Munich during the mid-1930s as well as her better-known photographs of the public humiliation of French women who had maintained relationships with German soldiers taken in Southern France in 1944.

    Published in kritische berichte 52, no. 2 (2024, special issue on “Visual Justice”): 29–38.

  • Aperture Interview

    An interview with Stefanie Qaba Jason about my exhibition Defiant Visions was published on the Aperture website.

    Together we spoke about some of the artists gathered in the apexart exhibition and how their practices can help us make sense of apartheid, photography, and history-making at large.

  • Sights of Struggle

    Book "Sights of Struggle: The History of the Tambo Village Women"

    Mavis Mtandeki is one of the first black South African women photographers. She captured not only the political transformation of the country and the transition of the women’s organisations but also the difficult and dangerous relocation of numerous women from KTC to Tambo Village. As the premier settlement financed by the new government after the first free elections in 1994, Tambo Village stands as a testimony of the women’s defiance and their political claim on land and houses. This book tells the history of these courageous women captured through the lens of Mavis Mtandeki.

  • Blog Article "A Picture’s Worth" in AfricaIsACountry

    Mabel Cetu is considered South Africa's first Black woman photojournalist and documented the everyday lives of Black communities in the 1950s.

    Image: Photographer unidentified, Front cover of Zonk! African People’s Pictorial, October 1956, courtesy of the National Library of South Africa, Cape Town.

  • "Review of Leena Crasemann: Unmarkierte Sichtbarkeit? Weiße Identitäten in der zeitgenössischen künstlerischen Fotografie, München: Wilhelm Fink 2021"

    Published in sehepunkte 22 , no. 10 (2022).

  • "'Africa's First Woman Press Photographer': Mabel Cetu's Photographs in Zonk!"

    For years, researchers have been searching for photographs made by Mabel Cetu, who “was said to be the first Black South African woman photojournalist” (Siopis 2006: 10). Cetu was a Black woman who worked as a nurse for more than twenty-five years before she was trained as a photographer in…

    Published in African Arts 55, no. 3 (2022): 54–69.

  • "59th Venice Biennale : Lebohang Kganye : Once Upon a Time"

    “Into the Light” is the theme which curator Amè Bell chose to present South Africa in Venice this year. Next to Roger Ballen and Phumulani Ntuli, Lebohang Kganye exhibits one of her first photography series on the upper floor in Arsenale. Fourteen photographs of different sizes are displayed in various formats. Dark walls and narrow corridors underline…

    Published in The Eye of Photography on June 2, 2022.

  • 123

    "Performing Gender in Video Art: Candice Breitz’s Extra"

    This article examines Candice Breitz's recorded performances and negotiations of the representation of women and gender dynamics in her video art, looking in particular at her work Extra (2011).

    Published in Third Text 35, no. 5 (2021): 554–68.

  • 123

    "Affective photographs: Alice Mann’s series Domestic Bliss"

    In 2014, the South African photographer Alice Mann made the series Domestic Bliss which portrays domestic workers in her home country. Only a few years later Mann took these photographs down from her website due to strong criticism leveled at her work. In order to explain the portraits’ canceling, this paper undertakes a close visual reading of the series looking at the ideas of agency and affect.

    Published in Safundi 22, no. 3 (2021): 245–61.

  • 123

    "Aestheticising Atrocity: George Osodi’s Series Oil Rich Niger Delta"

    This paper analyses the aestheticisation of environmental disaster in George Osodi’s series of photographs Oil Rich Niger Delta (2003–2007).

    Published in Critical Arts 35, no. 5–6 (2021): 129–44.

  •  123

    "Review of Darren Newbury / Lorena Rizzo / Kylie Thomas (eds.): Women and Photography in Africa Creative Practices and Feminist Challenges, London / New York: Routledge 2021"

    Published in sehepunkte 21 , no. 1 (2021).

  • 123

    "Lebohang Kganyes Ke Lefa Laka: Her-Story"

    Published in the exhibition catalogue Family Affairs. Familie in der aktuellen Fotografie, edited by Ingo Taubhorn and Haus der Photographie der Deichtorhallen Hamburg, 90. Heidelberg: Kehrer 2021.

Exhibition

Defiant Visions

On view at apexart New York from June 1 until July 29, 2023.

Defiant Visions showcases women photographers’ resistance to the apartheid regime through the lenses of their cameras. Apartheid was a system of institutionalized discrimination against people of color that existed in South Africa between 1948 and 1994. During decades of oppression, these women took photographs to expose not only racist but also gender-discriminatory social, economic and political structures.

This exhibition explores the work of practitioners employing black and white imagery to focus on the women surrounding them. Mabel Cetu’s appearance in the 1950s magazine Zonk! sheds light on her own training and her portrayals of modern womanhood. Jansje Wissema depicted women’s ordinary lives in the extraordinary site of District Six before and after its destruction by the government during the early 1970s. As members of the photographic collective Afrapix, Zubeida Vallie and Lesley Lawson captured women’s grief and struggle at the height of eruptive violence during the 1980s, while Mavis Mtandeki recorded township life and the changing women’s political organizations during the country’s democratic transition in the early 1990s. The exhibition also presents the short documentary You Have Struck A Rock (1981), edited by Deborah May and Georgina Karvellas to document the famous 1956 Women’s March and its aftermath.

Alongside photographic prints and film, magazines and photobooks will be on display, highlighting the work of women photographers on life under apartheid.

Enjoy this Instagram live walk through from the opening or find further information on the apexart website.

Dr Marie Meyerding Kunsthistorikerin Wissenschaftlerin Zeitgenössische Kunst Fotografiegeschichte Kunstgeschichte im globalen Kontext Art Historian Contemporary Art Curator Kuratorin Defiant Visions apexart New York City exhibition Ausstellung
Dr Marie Meyerding Kunsthistorikerin Wissenschaftlerin Zeitgenössische Kunst Fotografiegeschichte Kunstgeschichte im globalen Kontext Art Historian Contemporary Art Curator Kuratorin Defiant Visions apexart New York City exhibition Ausstellung
Dr Marie Meyerding Kunsthistorikerin Wissenschaftlerin Zeitgenössische Kunst Fotografiegeschichte Kunstgeschichte im globalen Kontext Art Historian Contemporary Art Curator Kuratorin Defiant Visions apexart New York City exhibition Ausstellung

Curriculum Vitae

 

Academic Career

2026 - today

Head of a Junior Research Group, Cluster of Excellence ‘Imaginamics‘, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

2024 - 2026

Postdoc, Walter Benjamin Position (German Research Foundation), Technische Universität Dresden

2019 - 2023

PhD with summa cum laude, History of Art of Africa, Freie Universität Berlin

 

Education

2019

MA with Distinction, History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art

2018

BA, Cultural Studies, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg

 

Scholarships, Grants and Fellowships

2024 - 2026

Walter Benjamin Position from the German Research Foundation for the project “Landscapes of Surveillance: Environmental Art and the Stasi in the Global GDR”

2025

Postdoc Starter Kit from TU Dresden for the organisation of an international workshop

2022 - 2023

Photography Network Project Grant for “Sights of Struggle: The History of the Women of Tambo Village: A Project to Digitise and Publish Mavis Mtandeki’s Archive”

2022 - 2023

Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung Grant for “Sights of Struggle: The History of the Women of Tambo Village: A Project to Digitise and Publish Mavis Mtandeki’s Archive”

2022 - 2023

Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellowship, National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.

2022

Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Fund for Historical Photographic Research Grant for “Jansje Wissema and the Women of District Six”

2019 – 2023

Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach PhD Grant, Freie Universität Berlin

2018 -2019

German Academic Exchange Service Scholarship for MA study at The Courtauld Institute of Art

 

Selected Talks

02/2026

“Soft Ecologies: Textile Environments Under Socialism”, session on “Expanding Critical Frameworks: Unraveling Devaluation and Recontextualizing the Field of Fiber Art“, CAA Annual Conference, Chicago

10/2025

“Of Fantastic Creatures and Queer Futures: The Ecofeminist Paintings of Annemirl Bauer”, Posthuman Ecofeminism in Art, Literature, and Aesthetics, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

03/2025

“Ecofeminist Aesthetics in the late GDR”, Marx in the Anthropocene: Capital, Nature, Ecology, Environment, Università Iuav di Venezia

11/2024

“Umweltkritische Industrie-, Stadt- und Landschaftsansichten im Werk von Tina Bara und Helga Paris”, Symposium Fotografie und Industriekultur, Salinemuseum Halle

10/2024

“Fabricating Freedom: Textiles, Censorship and Environmental Art in the GDR”, symposium on “Objects. Between Absorption and Isolation”, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut

10/2024

“Mail Art and Environmental Activism: Karla Sachse’s Subversive Practice Between State Surveillance and Official Art Production”, online workshop series on “Women and Mail Art: Gendered Perspectives on Marginal Artistic Practices”, University of Warsaw and University of Berne

10/2024

“Ecofeminist Art in the Late Global GDR”, conference on “Gender, nature, and ecology”, University Paris 8

06/2024

“Rooted Resilience: Women, Censorship and Environmental Art in the Late GDR”, conference on “GDR goes ‘Glocal’: Culture, Cooperation, and Conflict”, Warburg-Haus, Hamburg

05/2024

“Visions of Trees: Environmental Art and Surveillance in the Global GDR”, conference on “The Great Transformation of Nature: Extractivism, Terraforming and Monoculturalization in Global Socialisms”, University College London

10/2023

“Art, Activism or Advertisement: The Photographs of Georgina Karvellas”, Photography Network Symposium on “Photography’s Frameworks'“ held virtually and hosted jointly with the University of the Western Cape in South Africa

03/2023

“Out of Sight: Women and Photography in Apartheid South Africa”, as part of the photo-historical seminar “Archival Absences: An Incomplete History of Photography”, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rom

03/2023

“Navigating the Archive”, Photography Network’s Virtual Speaker Series

05/2022

“Missing Images: Women and Photography in Apartheid South Africa”, Namibian and Southern African Studies Research Colloquium, Universität Basel

04/2022

“Collective Struggle Photography”, Panel on “Collectives, Art and Neoliberalism”, Association for Art History’s 48th Annual Conference, Goldsmiths, University of London

11/2021

“Between Affirmation and Denial. The Photographic Practice of Mavis Mtandeki and Primrose Talakumeni”, The Developing Room’s Fifth Annual Graduate Student Colloquium on the History and Theory of Photography, Rutgers University

06/2021

“Sichtbarkeitspolitik im Wandel. Überlegungen zu Gender und Intersektionalität in der Fotografie Südafrikas zwischen Apartheid und Demokratie”, Talk series “Facing Reality”, Fotofestival Nürnberg

06/2021

“Photography, Text, Power. Lesley Lawson’s Working Women (1985)”, 18e École de Printemps “Art & Text”, Reims

06/2021

“Aestheticizing Atrocity. George Osodi’s Series Oil Rich Niger Delta (2003-2007)”, ACASA Triennial Symposium of African Art, Chicago

02/2021

“Die Macht der Repräsentation. Kritische Überlegungen zu Gender und Intersektionalität in der südafrikanischen Fotografie während der Apartheid”, Research Colloquium on the Theory and History of Photography, Folkwang Universität Essen

11/2020

“‘Africa’s First Woman Press Photographer’: Mabel Cetu”, “Aesthetics of Visibility” - Berlin Graduate Symposium for Modern and Contemporary Art History, Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

10/2020

“The Politics of Visibility. Lesley Lawson’s Working Women”, Symposium Cont·Act! Photography and Agency, Museum Folkwang, Essen

 

Teaching

Winter semester 2024/2025

“Forest Dieback in Art: Aesthetics, Symbolism and Criticism”, Seminar for Master students, Institute for Art History and Musicology, Universität Mainz

Winter semester 2024/2025

“Reframing (Art) History: The Representation of Women in the History of Photography in South Africa”, Seminar for Master students, Institute for Art History and Musicology, Universität Mainz

Winter semester 2024/2025

“Cross-Border Views and Global Politics of Representation: Women, Photography and Intersectionality in 20th Century South Africa”, Seminar for Bachelor students, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg

Summer semester 2022

“The Power of Representation: Women and Photography in South Africa”, Seminar for Bachelor students, module “Theory and History of Photography”, Institute of Art History, Universität Zürich

2020 - 2023

Guest lectures about my dissertation research at Freie Universität Berlin, Universität Zürich, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Maryland Institute College of Art and Lette Verein Berlin

Contact

I am based in Berlin.