Ruth Orkin: Women on the Move

Few photographers shaped the visual language of the mid-20th century with the clarity, empathy, and narrative force of Ruth Orkin. Long recognized as a key figure in the rise of American photojournalism, Orkin forged a body of work that placed women—ordinary and extraordinary—at the center of the modern world. Ruth Orkin: Women on the Move, on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts from December 12, 2025, through March 29, 2026, revisits this legacy through 21 iconic and intimate photographs made between the 1950s and 1970s.

Working at a time when women’s roles were rapidly shifting yet deeply constrained, Orkin used her camera to document lives in motion—women studying, traveling, working, serving, and navigating public space on their own terms. Her photographs move fluidly between private and public realms, from classrooms and homes to city streets and European piazzas, capturing moments that feel spontaneous yet deeply attuned to social context.

Orkin’s photographic vision was shaped early on. Raised in Los Angeles as the daughter of a silent film actress, she absorbed the language of cinema before she ever held a camera. Although she aspired to become a filmmaker, institutional barriers—including the exclusion of women from the cinematographers’ union—redirected her path. Photography became her medium, and she brought to it a distinctly cinematic sense of storytelling, often aiming to distill an entire narrative into a single, decisive frame.



Her work is perhaps best known for its nuanced portrayal of women at a time when visual culture was dominated by the male gaze. Whether photographing Hollywood stars like Ava Gardner and Jane Russell or anonymous members of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II, Orkin resisted spectacle in favor of presence. Glamour gives way to vulnerability; uniformed strength replaces idealized femininity. In each case, women are portrayed not as symbols, but as individuals occupying space with agency.

A central work in the exhibition, American Girl in Italy (1951), epitomizes Orkin’s approach. Created in collaboration with the subject, Ninalee Craig, the image captures the complexity of being a woman alone in public—confidence and scrutiny, freedom and friction existing simultaneously. Far from a staged provocation, the photograph reflects Orkin’s lived experience and her commitment to showing women as active participants in the world rather than passive observers within it.

Across the exhibition, Orkin’s photographs reveal why her work remains foundational to the history of photography. They document a pivotal era while speaking directly to contemporary conversations about representation, mobility, and authorship. As Orkin herself once observed, success lay in creating images that felt “funny-terrible-moving-beautiful” all at once—a balance her work continues to achieve decades later.

Ruth Orkin: Women on the Move offers not only a portrait of women in midcentury America, but also a reminder of photography’s power to reshape how lives are seen, remembered, and understood.



About the Artist
Ruth Orkin (b. 1921, Boston, d. 1986, New York City) discovered her passion for the film industry and photography while growing up in Los Angeles, developing her own photographs by age 12. At age 17, she embarked on a cross-country trip to photograph the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. Orkin spent three months exploring major cities across the U.S., which led her to be featured in numerous newspaper articles. In 1943, she moved to New York City and entered the male-dominated field of photojournalism, working for publications such as Life, Look and the New York Times. With her husband, Morris Engel, and screenwriter Ray Ashley, she co-wrote and co-directed the independent film Little Fugitive (1953), which was nominated for an Academy Award and is credited with inspiring the French New Wave film movement.

Orkin’s photography was selected by Edward Steichen to be included in many group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, including the landmark The Family of Man in 1955. She was noted as one of the “Ten Top Photographers in the U.S.” by the Professional Photographers of America in 1959. Her work is in the collections of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and International Center of Photography, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
www.orkinphoto.com
@ruthorkinphoto


National Museum of Women in the Arts
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts. With its collections, exhibitions, programs and online content, the museum inspires dynamic exchanges about art and ideas. NMWA advocates for better representation of women and nonbinary artists and serves as a vital center for thought Leadership, community engagement and social change. NMWA addresses the gender imbalance in the presentation of art by bringing to Light important women artists of the past while promoting great women artists working today. The collection highlights a wide range of works in a variety of mediums by artists including Rosa Bonheur, Louise Bourgeois, Lalla Essaydi, Lavinia Fontana, Frida Kahlo, Hung Liu, Zanele Muholi, Faith Ringgold, Niki de Saint Phalle and Amy Sherald.
nmwa.org
@womeninthearts