Exhibition · 2025

Femme Fatale

2 March 2025 · CITYgalleryVIENNA, Vienna

In my own words

An archetype everyone thinks they know. Together with the women I worked with in Vienna we read it again from the beginning — and found something much more interesting than the cliché.

Lyrical softness on one side, elemental strength on the other, and the truth living in the tension between them. The femme fatale was never dangerous because she was cold; she was dangerous because she knew exactly what she wanted. That is a very different picture to make.

Gallery

Works from the exhibition

Black and white portrait of a woman with curly hair, half her face in shadow.
A woman in a black top stands by a bright window, one hand at her neck, looking away.
A woman in a black ruffled skirt leans back on an armchair, head tilted upward.
A woman with pale curls and dark glasses lies on a bed, arms above her head.
Studio portrait of a woman in a fur collar with a pearl earring, looking into the lens.
A woman in patterned stockings sits sideways on a chair beside a table, one hand resting behind her.
A woman in a period dress leans against the riveted steel of a bridge.
A woman in a long dark dress walks along a lit bridge at night.
A woman in a headscarf and glasses sits on a stone staircase, legs crossed.
A woman turns her head to the light, one hand in her short hair.
A woman leans against a plain wall, hand raised to her hair, shoulder bare.

© Norbert Bánhalmi / BANHALMI. All rights reserved. Images from the BANHALMI archive, 1999–2026.

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Read how this work connects to its period in the oeuvre.

The work within the oeuvre

Why it belongs here

How it connects to the wider work

Femme Fatale was presented at CITYgalleryVIENNA in Vienna on 2 March 2025. The portrait series revisits the familiar archetype through the contrast between softness and strength.

Period of the oeuvre

V2023–presentCommunity, education and public presence

Read about this period

Follow the related records to explore the people, projects and themes around this work.

Related projects and archive records

Period of the oeuvre · V

Community, education and public presence

This exhibition belongs here because of the question behind it, the photographs it brought together and the traces it left in public.

Archive overviewCommunity, education and public presence Press and moving imageFemme Fatale Curatorial dossierResearch context