Contemporary Encounters with Ethnographic Photography in Britain and the Balkans
Presentation Type
Event
Start Date
8-3-2026 4:28 AM
Description
“Contemporary Encounters with Ethnographic Photography in Britain and the Balkans” brings together the photographs of two 20th century British ethnographer women in the Balkans. Rarely displayed, they both expose and challenge the dominant and singular “gaze” of Western/Europe onto Yugoslavia. Born in Aberdeen, Margaret Masson Hardie Hasluck (1885-1948) collected textiles, ceramics, and works of craft during her travels in Albania and Macedonia. She was respected for her research and publications, which included the first English-Albanian language reader, and also took a substantial number of photographs. Departing from London, Mary Edith Durham also extensively documented the Balkans from 1900 to 1921, travelling through Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia. There, she remains an icon or legend—with concurrent exhibitions in 2024, marking the 80th anniversary of her death—whilst in the UK, the place of her birthday, she has fallen into posthumous obscurity. Just two of over 800 photographs in the British Museum taken by Durham have been digitised, and mistakenly located by the institution in their “Africa, Oceania and the Americas” collections, making them hard to access. In both cases, their collections of “crafts”—often deemed the domain of women, or women’s work—are better kept and known by institutions, than their vital work in the field of photography.
Jelena Sofronijevic is a producer, curator, writer, and researcher based in London. Their curatorial projects include Invasion Ecology (2024) and EMPIRE LINES, a podcast which uncovers the unexpected flows of empires through art. They are pursuing a practice-based PhD with Gray’s School of Art, curating exhibitions of Balkan and Yugoslavian/diasporic artists in British collections. Jelena’s full portfolio is available on their website and Instagram.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Sofronijevic, Jelena, "Contemporary Encounters with Ethnographic Photography in Britain and the Balkans" (2026). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day. 9.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2026/schedule/9
Contemporary Encounters with Ethnographic Photography in Britain and the Balkans
“Contemporary Encounters with Ethnographic Photography in Britain and the Balkans” brings together the photographs of two 20th century British ethnographer women in the Balkans. Rarely displayed, they both expose and challenge the dominant and singular “gaze” of Western/Europe onto Yugoslavia. Born in Aberdeen, Margaret Masson Hardie Hasluck (1885-1948) collected textiles, ceramics, and works of craft during her travels in Albania and Macedonia. She was respected for her research and publications, which included the first English-Albanian language reader, and also took a substantial number of photographs. Departing from London, Mary Edith Durham also extensively documented the Balkans from 1900 to 1921, travelling through Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia. There, she remains an icon or legend—with concurrent exhibitions in 2024, marking the 80th anniversary of her death—whilst in the UK, the place of her birthday, she has fallen into posthumous obscurity. Just two of over 800 photographs in the British Museum taken by Durham have been digitised, and mistakenly located by the institution in their “Africa, Oceania and the Americas” collections, making them hard to access. In both cases, their collections of “crafts”—often deemed the domain of women, or women’s work—are better kept and known by institutions, than their vital work in the field of photography.
Jelena Sofronijevic is a producer, curator, writer, and researcher based in London. Their curatorial projects include Invasion Ecology (2024) and EMPIRE LINES, a podcast which uncovers the unexpected flows of empires through art. They are pursuing a practice-based PhD with Gray’s School of Art, curating exhibitions of Balkan and Yugoslavian/diasporic artists in British collections. Jelena’s full portfolio is available on their website and Instagram.