CAITLIN RYAN

In conjunction with the 2026 Filter Photo Festival, Filter Photo is pleased to present a talk with MoMA curator, Caitlin Ryan. On the occasion of the publication Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives (MoMA, 2026; co-edited with Roxana Marcoci), Ryan will discuss West German artist Marianne Wex's sweeping feminist survey of gendered body language.

From 1972 to 1977, Wex covertly photographed people in her hometown of Hamburg, observing how men and women were socialized to inhabit space differently, and rephotographed related pictures from advertisements, newspapers, magazines, film, television, and art catalogues. For the artist, “these mostly unconscious actions” were “essential parts of our communication” that warranted typological analysis. The publication brings Wex's groundbreaking project into dialogue with seven contemporary artists using photography to explore the politics of gender and notions of public space.

Caitlin Ryan is Assistant Curator in The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, where she has been on the curatorial teams for exhibition and catalogue projects, including Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum (2022); Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear (2022); An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers (2023); LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity (2024); and New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging (2025). Prior to joining MoMA as a Mellon Research Consortium Fellow in 2020, she held curatorial positions at the Princeton University Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and teaching roles at Princeton University and Georgia State University. She earned a PhD in Art & Archaeology from Princeton University.