The international call for Female Portraits in Dialogue: From Historical to Contemporary Photography has closed with an extraordinary response: 393 portfolios from 369 photographers from every corner of the world, each with their own vision, their own visual culture, their own way of interpreting female identity.

The project, realised with the support of the Consiglio Regionale del Friuli Venezia Giulia, was born from the idea of bringing contemporary photography into dialogue with the female portraits preserved in the archives of the Fototeca dei Civici Musei di Storia ed Arte di Trieste, images created between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by masters such as Giuseppe Wulz, Marion Wulz, Ugo Borsatti, Adriano de Rota, Emil Rabending, Carl Pietzner and Giovanni Battista Berra. Faces of women worlds apart in terms of era, role and origin: from Empress Sissi to the bread sellers of Servola, from Japanese women photographed during a tea ceremony to the ladies of Trieste’s bourgeoisie. Portraits that will enter into dialogue with contemporary visions across the many facets of the female experience: identity, motherhood, work, social transformation.

The selection of works and the scientific direction of the exhibition are entrusted to Claudia Colecchia, head of the Fototeca dei Civici Musei di Storia ed Arte of the Municipality of Trieste, one of the most important photographic archives in the region with nearly three million images documenting the artistic, urban and social history of Trieste from 1840 to the present day.

Thank you to everyone who took on this challenge and chose to bring their work to this project. The selected images will be exhibited at Trieste Photo Days 2026 in a prestigious exhibition venue of the Municipality of Trieste: a true encounter between gazes across time, which we cannot wait to share with you.