Sabiha Çimen, *A plane flies low over students riding a train at a funfair over the* weekend, from *Hafiz,* 2018 © Sabiha Çimen / Magnum Photos

Written by Melia Chendo
Copy Edited by Chloë Rain
Photo Edited by Yanting Chen

Close Enough at the ICP introduces the public to the work of 12 contemporary women photographers of Magnum. The exhibition exists as a cohesive body of personal stories and experiences, highlighting various perspectives of what it means to navigate the world as women with different identities. Each artist brings physicality to their perspective and frames their work in relation to the collective, the world, the spaces beyond them and within them. Existing within the body of a woman and how this affects the way that they interact with other bodies and with other spaces is central to each Magnum photographer’s work. Just as women’s embodiment of gender is creatively personalized, the artists illustrate their collections uniquely, actively, and with deep vulnerability, in a manner that interconnects their work as one strong, developed collection. Even though the exhibition is separated into two floors of the ICP, it is entirely open and uninterrupted by walls – each of the collections are able to coexist with one another, leaving the viewer to perceive one artist from the vantage point of another.

Carolyn Drake, *Lucy with Azaleas*, from *Knit Club*, 2018. © Carolyn Drake / Magnum Photos

When one enters the gallery, they almost immediately encounter the sounds of Newsha Tavakolian’s film. In between her words, a thick silence amplified by the film’s speakers simultaneously penetrates the room and creates a space for the imagery to fill around it. For the Sake of Calmness by Tavakolian is an exploration of the physical intensity of premenstrual syndrome and how this intensity parallels the state of Iran and the state of the political world. The tension of several individuals’ still, locked engagement with the camera is heightened by their subtle movements, their positions in the film, and the quiet sounds infiltrating their gaze. The artist creates a physical experience of how womanhood and emotional pain manifest themselves in bodies through visuals and narrative. While watching For the Sake of Calmness, the viewer can hear the voices from Alessandra Sanguinetti’s collection ringing, echoing, and heightening the silence and subtlety of the film. It becomes clear through these preliminary interactions with the exhibition that individual collections communicate with and highlight different meanings within one another.

Just beyond Alessandra Sanguinetti’s personal account of two Argentinian children’s long-term development and Sabiha Çimen’s photographs of female Muslim students, lies Olivia Arthur’s installation. Her works span the width of the gallery wall and create a narrative of individuals’ relationships to their bodies. Through her particular framing of perspective, she conveys the tactile, mechanical nature of different bodies and how they interact with various spaces. Both full portraits of people and focused glimpses of bodies are juxtaposed with technical machines and objects, challenging ordinary perceptions of materiality.

Myriam Boulos utilizes the agency of photography to recognize and question normalized realities. Born in Lebanon after the end of a long-term civil war, Boulos grew up within a fragmented political world and sought to reclaim her sense of the body, home, and the physical relationship between these through photography, and through a local perspective. The textures within photographs of red, plush theater chairs and a human chest dripping with licks of red blood are contrasted with a bright black and white image of an intimate couple. This sensuality becomes part of an overarching narrative that seeks to narrow the gaps between bodies and sites of political tension in Lebanon.

Hannah Price, *Untitled (Pull Over), Brewerytown* from *City of Brotherly Love*, 2011. © Hannah Price

In City of Brotherly Love, Hannah Price draws on themes of gender, racial politics, and social perception as she humanizes the complicated situation of catcalling by interacting with objectification as something that can be engaged with and subverted. The walls holding Price’s collection are filled with the portraits of catcallers that have become the subject of the viewer’s attention– the subject of Price’s active, intentional involvement in an uncomfortable and dehumanizing interaction.

Susan Meiselas, *Dawn, Suite 7, a refuge in the Black Country*, from *A Room of Their Own*, 2016. © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos

The second level of the exhibition involves work by Bieke Depoorter, who creates a visual narrative of photographers’ complex relationships to their subjects; Cristina de Middel, who documents personal photographs of sex worker clients in Rio de Janeiro; Lua Ribeira, who explores relationships in the context of Trap and Drill music culture in Spain; Susan Meiselas, who exhibits a continuation of A Room of Their Own; and Nanna Heitmann, who presents her groundbreaking, personal account of the war in Russia and Ukraine from her home in Moscow.

Close Enough presents itself as a highly immersive, unified narrative of how various Magnum women personally embody and encounter the social constructions, relationships, and events influencing their realities. The vulnerability of each photographer helps establish a deep connection to the audience and brings visibility to the invisible tension of politics, norms, and the violent unspoken. Each photographer’s work expresses independently significant interpretations of the intersection of the body and identity, and they add further depth and angles to the idea of womanhood as a deeply intimate and shared experience.