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.