The women issue

For Susan Meiselas (USA, 1942), full member of Magnum Photos since 1980 and current President of the Magnum Foundation, connectivity is the key element in photography: “The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don't belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.” Meiselas is best known for her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua and her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America, which were published widely throughout the world.

In the spring of 1940, Russell Lee wrote to his boss, Roy Stryker, at the Farm Security Administration, proposing he spend several weeks shooting Pie Town, New Mexico, a small settlement of homesteaders near the state’s western border

Rachel Papo (USA, 1970) was raised in Israel. Almost 15 years after her mandatory military service ended, she went back to several Israeli army bases, using photography as a vehicle to re-enter this world. Serial No. 3817131 represents her effort to come to terms with the experiences of being a soldier, from the perspective of an adult.

Vanessa Winship (UK, 1960) went to Georgia for the first time in 2003, not long after the so-called Rose Revolution. Although she didn’t go because of the revolution as such, this was the context in which she found herself. In what ways are people attached to the country?

Lucia Ganieva, who was born in Russia but has lived in the Netherlands since 1993, graduated cum laude at the Foto Academy in Amsterdam in 2007. For her series Factory she visited the 'Kombinat named after F.N. Samoilova', a very big textile plant in the town of Ivanovo, some 275 kilometres north-east of Moscow – the town of brides.

4Sale is the culmination of a year-long creative union between four talented artists of Eastern Europeancdescent; four female photographers turning their nakedceyes on themselves. Varying in style, the works are allcpopulated by the girls themselves. Combined, thiscresulted in a frank, playful, and occasionally enigmaticccelebration of female eroticism.

Mirjana Vrbaski (Canada, 1978) aims to "balance the notions of ambiguity and universality" in a portrait. As presented in the independently published art book Seven Verses of Emptiness, these portraits function as an exploration of the endless potential for meaning behind silence and emptiness. Taking an evocative portrait is extremely challenging, as it should capture both the physical features and character of the subject.

This large, ongoing narrative project by Viktoria Sorochinski (Ukraine, 1979) occupies a space somewhere between fantasy and documentary. Even though all the scenes are staged, they portray a real mother-daughter relationship. But the boundary between the child (Eve) and the adult woman (Anna) is blurred to an unusually high degree.

Masculine femininity, often dubbed 'cross dressing' in popular culture, has a long history in Western cultural memory. Yet it is often dismissed as frivolous entertainment. Sophia Wallace (USA, 1978) decided she needed a new strategy to prevent unconscious prejudice towards gender construction and representation