Gender & Sexuality

Why Don’t You Dance? — Hannah Darabi on resistance, memory and movement in Iran

“This is an ambitious, multilayered project,” says Nathalie Herschdorfer, director of Photo Elysée and Jury President of the Lausanne museum’s biennial prize for a mid-career photographer, commenting on the latest recipient, Hannah Darabi’s Why Don’t You Dance?

7 July 2025
“When gender is a binary, it’s a battlefield,” said the queer author Kate Bornstein. “Get rid of the binary, and gender becomes a playground.”

If to be seen is to exist, we must not underestimate the power of photography to validate our experiences.

With the history of the medium anchored in the white male gaze, this collection celebrates artists who traverse new realms of agency and autonomy, exploring the important role that photography can play in visualising marginalised identities.