International Women's Day / 2026

Giulia Frump

International Women’s Day: Founded over a hundred years ago evolving through various names and dates, this fulcrum of women’s rights was adopted by the United Nations only in 1975 and is still largely overlooked in many countries. And still, today, in board rooms and senate chambers, in court houses as in locker rooms, now add to the list private islands, it feels we are living in highly primitive times.

Despite statistical strides made in women’s rights, everywhere around us there is uncertainty for true equality. Small victories seem rather only symbolic concessions while the general culture and practice continue to suppress essentially half of the human race.

The overturning of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade chartered a new series of initiatives rolling back women’s rights even in the so-called highly developed nations. The newest efforts to dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion have launched a witch hunt calling into question every qualified and deserving woman or minority properly gaining their place.

It is unfortunate that the perception of this struggle has been turned into a zero-sum game by some, where gains on one side are perceived as a loss to the other. This is true, but only for those whose privilege had been based on the subjugation of the other. Rather than uplifting and celebrating and moving together in progress, the losers have been punching down, or leaving the game all together and isolating to their parents’ basement dwellings – bravo for the self-quarantine of the oldest disease in the history of mankind – were it not for their double life online, continuing to diffuse their toxicity, ironically from their near inert existence.

Still, today, in board rooms and senate chambers, in court houses as in locker rooms, now add to the list private islands, it feels we are living in highly primitive times.

Gains in the political sphere do not reassure. It would be too easy to criticize the misogyny. Tragically, some of the highest powered women in office are promoting a different agenda: Marine Le Pen in France, the daughter of Jean-Marie of the former the National Front; Meloni in Italy, the sister of the Brotherhood; Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, with her categorical view against female reproductive rights.

The women of the current U.S. administration, surprisingly high in numbers are equally disappointing in their function as loyalists, with prominent figures including Pam Bondi, Attorney General, misunderstanding her responsibility of protecting victims by protecting the offenders; Alina Habba, formerly personal attorney to Trump, illigally appointed as U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, now Counselor to the President; Lindsey Halligan facing now a similar fate in Florida; Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, now left with a warehouse full of T-shirts that say No War with Iran; Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, just let go following her responses to the ICE fiascos; Susie Wiles, Chief of Staff, who revealed quite a bit with Vanity Fair, a poignant interview drafted over nearly a dozen sessions throughout the administration’s first year – an exposé normalizing the dystopia and the dysfunctions of the ruling family, Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary, whose only transparency is in her title…. All, supposedly promoting America first family values too often at odds with women’s rights, reaffirm progress only in numbers. Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion snuffed out, and in its place, loyalist spokespeople without any challenge to the old agenda. As a collective they represent an extension of their counterpart’s power, if only their particular counterpart in question were not one of their greatest offenders. Irony works overtime building a ballroom, bombing a girls’ school, and vying for the Noble Peace Prize.

Thusly furnishing our governments with some of its greatest assailants, laws which protected women’s rights have been unravelling. Today in the U.S., it’s okay for a member of Congress to drive a minor across state lines to evade conviction on statutory rape; but it is illegal for that same girl to drive across state lines to seek health care to address the very violation.

Despite the seeming rise of empowerment, the image of women on social media still points to something unbelievable. Now with AI, prompted by men and money, the market is trending to diffuse media that glorifies misogyny and gratifies the most base of our instincts, cloning an army of virtual influencers to subjugate the minds and bodies of young girls early on with ideas of such degradation shown as success, a kind of digital incubation for trafficking victims, and teaching our boys not to become real men.

In the U.S., it’s okay for a member of Congress to drive a minor across state lines to evade conviction on statutory rape; but it is illegal for that same girl to drive across state lines to seek health care to address the very violation.

With such a basic principle of Equality and Respect, it should be quite elementary. And yet, so many fear that the smallest concession would be entering the slippery slope of – God forbid – doing good and what is right.

Since Artpil’s founding, we covered the #MeToo movement, traced the Elimination of Violence Against Women and counted down to the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the sometimes overlooked World Day of Social Justice. More recently during Covid, we covered The Shadow Pandemic. With the world in constant crisis, sometimes it is easy to forget. But these things are all interconnected.

Often our better halves, and without whom we could not be, we renew our commitment to engage. Welcome to the 171st edition of Prescriptions, and happy International Women’s Day. Once again, we celebrate the women who have inspired and created in the art world.

Parisa Azadi

Ordinary Grief: A Story of Reconciliation

Parisa Azadi’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Europe and the U.S., including Cortona On The Move, Belfast Photo Festival, the American Center For Photographers, Melike Bilir Gallery, among others. Her work has been recognized by the World Press Photo 6×6 Global Talent Program and the Chris Hondros Fund Award. In 2023, Parisa was named one of the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch, received the Magnum Foundation Mobility Grant, and joined the South Asia Incubator Program. Her photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Courrier International, Annabelle Magazine, among others.

Paige Fiddes, Mariana del Carmen and Cristina Kirstein, Kin / South Africa

Women by Women

Celebrating the most talented image-makers from our global open call, this shortlist of 150 photographers and video makers from around the world presents a powerful, intimate, and richly diverse reflection on womanhood through the female gaze. PhotoVogue proudly unveils the shortlist of the most talented artists selected from Women by Women, their most ambitious Global Open Call to date. This digital exhibition brings together a remarkable group of 150 photographers and video makers whose work explores what it means to see – and be seen – as a woman.

Corinne Day, The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola (ed.), Mack

The Virgin Suicides: Corinne Day / Sofia Coppola

For her first feature film, The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola commissioned British fashion photographer Corinne Day to join her on set. Renowned for her unadorned, grungy photographs of iconic models of the 1990s, Day’s representation of female beauty met its match in Coppola, whose debut marked the first of her unaffected, empathetic depictions of womanhood. Published by Mack.

Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin is known not only for her talent and visionary career, but also for her uncompromising social commitment. Her work speaks of lives in such a way at times it can almost feel overwhelming. Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is on view at Gagosian, London, through March 21, 2026. The exhibition calendar for Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well has included Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, and moves to Grand Palais in Paris, March 18 – June 21, 2026.

Rachel Jump

The Shadow Pandemic

At the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, we treated The Shadow Pandemic. This other virus, which has existed for a far greater period of time and whose rate of contagion is perhaps the highest known – the population in denial even more staggering – has not yet a cure.

Michella Bredahl, My Mother Smoking in the Bathroom, 1995

Michella Bredahl: Rooms We Made Safe

Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, presented Rooms We Made Safe, the first museum exhibition by the rising artist Michella Bredahl (1988, Greve, Denmark). Bredahl is known for her distinctively intimate portraits of friends and acquaintances, capturing them in unguarded moments at home.

Deana Lawson, Communion, 2017

Deana Lawson

Deana Lawson (American, born 1979) received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004 and currently lives and works in New York. Lawson refers to the subjects of her photographs as “her family.” Although she is not related to them by blood – in fact, they are nearly all strangers – the pictures are remarkably intimate. Her previous landmark exhibition was co-organized by ICA/Boston and MoMA PS1, running through various dates and venues including at High Museum of Art, Atlanta. She was featured in our last month’s Black History Month.

Emma Portner / Photo Alexander Black

Emma Portner

Emma Portner’s complex and delicate choreography draws on the grotesque, the artificial, and extreme emotionality, her extraordinary performances leaving her audiences breathless. Among her performances we featured Femme Debout, responding to the exhibition Francis Bacon & Alberto Giacometti, and by certain accounts outdoing these masters, which premiered at Fondation Beyeler.

Alessandra Sanguinetti

Alessandra Sanguinetti is a member of Magnum Photos, and her photographs are held in museums including the Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Recently, Sanguinetti was among Brad Feuerhelm’s Welcome to the Castle, Photobooks of the Year, American Suburb X.

Dust Bunny, Bryan Fuller, World Premiere, USA, 2025, 106m, English

Locarno, Sundance, TIFF & Cannes

With an industry that has often been hostile to the female figure and persona, we hail the film festivals that have increasingly featured female directors: Locarno Film Festival, TIFF – Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and Festival de Cannes.

Lise Sarfati

In The Next Door Room

The awakening of adolescence has been a recurring theme fascinating many artists; conflicts of identity, physical metamorphosis, psychological instability, emerging sexual and emotional sensations. In The Next Door Room, Photography of Lise Sarfati; Text by Javier Panera Cuevas / Domus Artium Salamanca.

Siouxsie Coutellec Nistos

30 Under 30 Women Photographers / 2026

Founded in 2010, 30 Under 30 Women Photographers has helped emerging, mid-career, as well as some accomplished women photographers gain further exposure and participate in a collective among peers. With styles ranging from art photography to documentary, portraiture to street and fashion, the works have been overwhelmingly well received.