How far have we reached when it comes to gender equality? The progress has been great in many countries. The percentage of women in parliament has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, the numbers of boys and girls enrolling in school has leveled out in most developing countries and many women today are born into a world where they have exactly the same rights as men. However, there are many dark numbers showing up in the stats and it seems like we still have a long way to go. This published by UN highlights some of the remaining challenges that need our attention in todays society.
Photography is another area which has always been very male dominated, and in some ways still is. Yet, if you start digging into the history of photography, women have been involved with the medium since the beginning. Looking back as far as 1840 when most women didnt even have a profession, almost 20% of professional photographers were female and in Northern Europe it was surprisingly common for a woman to start up her own photography studio. Kodak must have picked up on a potential market as in the 1880s they launched a campaign called .
At 窪圖勛蹋we see so much great photography being produced by both men and women, so here is a tribute to some of the most forward thinking female photographers to remind us that any goal can be achieved if we believe in it.
Julia Margaret Cameron
(1815 -1879) was a highly ambitious woman, who was not afraid of experimenting with her photographs. Whilst photography at this time was looked at as a scientific medium, Cameron became a pioneer in photography as an art form by staging her subjects and adding allegorical meaning to her images.
Dorothea Lange
(1895 – 1965) started up her own studio in San Francisco at the age of 23, but took her camera to the streets during the Great Depression. The work she did as a documentary photographer is still as relevant today when discussing photojournalism. After an entire life dedicated to photography she became the sixth photographer to have a solo exhibition at Moma, and the first to be female.
Margaret Bourke White
The story of (1904 -1971) is more than impressive. She was the first female photographer for Life magazine. By working her connections she ended up as the first accredited Western photographer entering the Soviet Union during the industrial revolution. This ended up with Margaret being the first woman accredited to photograph World War II combat zones. War did not scare her off and neither did her illness. When she was starting to develop Parkinson’s disease she continued her career by photographing the Korean War.
Lee Miller
Searching through stories of (1907 1977) life its difficult to know where to even begin. She lived an eventful life, with many highs as well as lows. Her career started as a fashion icon, after bumping in to Cond矇 Nast himself in Manhattan. It didnt take long for Lee Miller to realise she belonged as much behind the camera as in front of it so she left Manhattan and joined the surrealist movement in Paris. She soon became Man Rays student and muse. After working as an artist and fashion correspondent for Cond矇 Nast London, she transformed her career again, this time as a war photographer and writer. After her death, her son found thousands of her photographs tucked away in the loft. They include intimate portraits of Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Cocteau, Max Ernst and Mir籀. The most famous picture portraying Lee Miller herself is shot in Hitlers bathtub.
Diane Arbus
(1923 1971) is one of the most prestigious art photographers of the 20th century. It was her husband, Allan Arbus, that introduced her to photography and they started out in advertising and fashion together. They became a successful team with photographs printed in magazines like Vogue. However, this wasnt enough for Diane, and in the late 1950s she began to focus on her own photography. She was attracted to off-beat subjects and was often roaming the streets and seedy hotels to find new faces to document. Her images had a crude style and she managed to capture people in a way never seen before. The fascination for Diane Arbus and her photographs continued to thrive, but on a personal level she struggled and in the beginning of the 70s she committed suicide in her New York apartment.
Vivian Maier
(1926 -2009) is the woman who appeared out of the blue and rewrote the history of street photography. A huge box containing her negatives where sold off at an auction with nobody knowing the potential value of the work. Throughout her life as a nanny she managed to create more than 150,000 images capturing her own curiosity of the world. She kept her passion for photography completely private by hiding away her photographs throughout her life.
Mary Ellen Mark
(1940 -2015) was born in Philadelphia and dedicated over four decades traveling and documenting the lives of people she met on her journeys. Many of her images highlight humanity in difficult social situations and offer the viewer a new perspective on problems such as homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness and teenage pregnancy. Mary Ellen Mark did not only photograph her subjects, she got involved with them and spent the necessary time it takes to fully understand someone’s situation in order to truthfully tell their story. In 2014 Mary Ellen Mark received the Lifetime Achievement in Photography Award from the George Eastman House.
Annie Leibovitz
(born 1949) is probably the most successful photographer of all time. She has photographed almost every living celebrity, including John Lennon on the same day he was assassinated. In 1973 she became chief photographer for Rolling Stone magazine and by the time she moved on she had shot 142 of their front covers. Later on she started working for both Vogue and Vanity Fair. Annie Leibovitz work has always balanced a fine line between advertising, fashion and art which makes her photographs truly inspiring to look at.
Sally Mann
After you’ve seen one of (born 1951) photographs it will stick with you for the rest of your life. The closeness and intimacy captured in her photos is almost haunting. She is best known for her large format, black-and-white photographs of her three children. The book called immediate family created a lot of controversy as some of the images in the book explore the themes of insecurity, loneliness, injury, sexuality and death. The work Sally Mann has created over the years has certainly challenged our perception of art photography and its a great reminder of how much a singular photo can communicate.
Lalla Essaydi
(born 1956) grew up in Morocco and later moved to Saudi Arabia with her husband. After divorcing him she started her journey as an artist in Paris and currently lives in the US. Her work has traveled the world and has been an eye opener for many as it explores how gender and power correspond with Muslim womens bodies and the spaces they inhabit. The photographs themselves are mesmerizing and beautiful as they often are covered in Arabic calligraphy, an art form exclusively being practiced by men. Its easy to be deceived by the beautiful patterns and colours in Lalla Essaydis photographs, but up close they open up a difficult discussion on the theme of womens identity and freedom.
There are so many more remarkable photographers out there and I wish I could equally add them all in to this blog post. But perhaps we should turn our eyes to some new talents that are currently working hard to get their work recognized instead. Here are some brilliant photos from female photographers that can be found in the 窪圖勛蹋collection.
Is there anyone you’d like to add to the list? Please let us know in the comments.