With startling foresight and radical clarity, more than 50 years ago, German artist Marianne Wex (1937–2020) photographed women and men on the streets and in public spaces throughout her hometown of Hamburg. She then categorized thousands of these images based on the positions of subjects’ arms, legs, feet, hands and heads, along with rephotographed images from magazines, newspapers and other print sources—creating a singular taxonomy of the ways in which women and men move differently through the world. First shown in Berlin in 1977, Let’s Take Back Our Space: “Female” and “Male” Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures is a revolutionary visual archive and a bracing feminist take on gender, photography and society.

Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives brings Wex’s trailblazing work into dialogue with seven leading contemporary artists who, in turn, reappraise the relationships between contemporary bodies and public spaces, from non-binary, queer, decolonial,l and intersectional feminist viewpoints: Nona Faustine, Martine Gutierrez, K8 Hardy, Yuki Kihara, Joiri Minaya, Paulina Olowska, and Wendy Red Star. Featuring a previously unpublished interview with Wex, as well as new conversations with each of the artists, this artist-centric publication explores the intersections of race and gender, and brings new resonance to the idea of “taking back our space” as both a reclamation of physical territory and the power to represent oneself.