The Wulz Sisters' Camera Defied Fascist Italy

A new feature in the Guardian has brought renewed attention to the work of Wanda and Marion Wulz, two sisters who ran a photography studio in Trieste during the fascist era. According to the article, the pair defied what it calls the 'unbridled patriarchy' of Mussolini's Italy by photographing dancers, fencers and other celebrated women — as well as their cat, Mucincina, in a famous portrait that became a quiet act of rebellion.

The Guardian quotes Federica Muzzarelli, an academic, who notes that in those fascist times women were not free; they were regarded as mothers and homemakers. The Wulz sisters, by contrast, used their camera to present women as active, athletic and independent — a subversive image in a regime that prized domesticity and male authority.

For a region like Umbria, where the legacy of fascism lingers in stone-built towns and family archives, the story of the Wulz sisters is a reminder that resistance often took place far from the political stage — in studios, in portraits, in the careful framing of a subject's gaze.