Trieste's Wulz sisters: the photographers who defied fascism

A feature in the Guardian this week has turned international attention to two sisters from Trieste whose photography studio became an unlikely site of resistance in fascist Italy. Wanda and Marion Wulz, who ran a portrait studio in the city, used their cameras to shoot dancers, fencers and other accomplished women — a quiet challenge to the regime's insistence that women be mothers and homemakers, the paper reports.

The Guardian's piece, which draws on the work of photography scholar Federica Muzzarelli, recounts how the sisters went so far as to weaponise their family cat, Mucincina, in their visual defiance of Mussolini's Italy. In those fascist times, Muzzarelli is quoted as saying, "women were not free. They were regarded as mothers and homemakers."

For this bureau, the story lands close to home. Trieste in the 1920s and 30s was a border city, culturally Mitteleuropean and multilingual, where the regime's drive for conformity pressed hard against a cosmopolitan fabric. That the Wulz sisters' work has re-entered the international conversation now, nearly a century on, speaks to the enduring pull of their images.

The Wulz sisters were born into a family of photographers in Trieste, a city that under Austro-Hungarian rule had been a crossroads of Central European cultures and that, after 1918, found itself absorbed into the Kingdom of Italy. Their studio, Wulz Photography, became known for portraits that deviated from the era's expected feminine poses, capturing women in athletic, artistic and intellectual registers instead, the Guardian reports.

The Guardian's feature, published on Tuesday, positions the sisters within a broader history of Italian women photographers who used the medium to carve out space in a society that denied them full citizenship. The reference to the cat Mucincina as a "weapon" underscores the playful yet pointed nature of their rebellion — a domestic animal turned symbol of independence in a regime that prized obedience.

The international re-appraisal of the Wulz sisters comes as part of a wider reckoning with Italy's fascist past, a subject that foreign outlets have revisited with increasing frequency. For Trieste, the story is also a reminder of the city's layered identity: a place where Italian, Slovene and Austro-Hungarian influences overlapped, and where cultural production often carried political meaning.

The Guardian's account does not specify whether the sisters' work has been exhibited internationally in recent years, but the feature's publication suggests a growing audience beyond Italy. Museums and galleries in Central Europe, which have shown growing interest in interwar women photographers, may find in the Wulz archive a compelling addition to that canon.