American Women Photographers

Highlights the contributions of women to photographic history.

American women have made significant contributions to the field of photography for well over a century. This bibliography compiles more than 1,070 sources for over 600 photographers from the 1880s to the present. As women's role in society changed, so did their role as photographers. In the early years, women often served as photographic assistants in their husbands' studios. The photography equipment, initially heavy and difficult to transport, was improved in the 1880s by George Eastman's innovations. With the lighter camera equipment, photography became accessible to everyone. Women photographers became journalists and portraitists who documented vanishing cultures and ways of life. Many of these important female photographers recorded life in the growing Northwest and the streets of New York City, became pioneers of historic photography as they captured the plight of Americans fleeing the Dust Bowl and the horrors of the concentration camps, and were members of the Photo-Secessionist Movement to promote photography as a true art form. This source serves as a checklist for not only the famous but also the less familiar women photographers who deserve attention.

American women have made significant contributions to the field of photography for well over a century. This bibliography compiles more than 1,070 sources for over 600 photographers from the 1880s to the present. As women's role in society changed, so did their role as photographers. In the early years, women often served as photographic assistants in their husbands' studios. The photography equipment, initially heavy and difficult to transport, was improved in the 1880s by George Eastman's innovations. With the lighter camera equipment, photography became accessible to everyone. Women photographers became journalists and portraitists who documented vanishing cultures and ways of life. Many of these important female photographers recorded life in the growing Northwest and the streets of New York City, became pioneers of historic photography as they captured the plight of Americans fleeing the Dust Bowl and the horrors of the concentration camps, and were members of the Photo-Secessionist Movement to promote photography as a true art form. This source serves as a checklist for not only the famous but also the less familiar women photographers who deserve attention.

With a rising number of women throughout the world picking up their cameras and capturing their surroundings, this book explores the work of 100 women and the experiences behind their greatest images. Traditionally a male-dominated field, street photography is increasingly becoming the domain of women. This fantastic collection of images reflects that shift, showcasing 100 contemporary women street photographers working around the world today, accompanied by personal statements about their work. Variously joyful, unsettling and unexpected, the photographs capture a wide range of extraordinary moments. The volume is curated by Gulnara Samoilova, founder of the Women Street Photographers project: a website, social media platform and annual exhibition. Photographer Melissa Breyer's introductory essay explores how the genre has intersected with gender throughout history, looking at how cultural changes in gender roles have overlapped with technological developments in the camera to allow key historical figures to emerge. Her text is complemented by a foreword by renowned photojournalist Ami Vitale, whose career as a war photographer and, later, global travels with National Geographic have allowed a unique insight into the realities of working as a woman photographer in different countries. In turns intimate and candid, the photographs featured in this book offer a kaleidoscopic glimpse of what happens when women across the world are behind the camera.

Women Photographers and Feminist Aesthetics makes the case for a feminist aesthetics in photography by analysing key works of twenty-two women photographers, including cis- and trans-woman photographers. Claire Raymond provides close readings of key photographs spanning the history of photography, from nineteenth-century Europe to twenty-first century Africa and Asia. She offers original interpretations of well-known photographers such as Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, and Carrie Mae Weems, analysing their work in relation to gender, class, and race. The book also pays close attention to the way in which indigenous North Americans have been represented through photography and the ways in which contemporary Native American women photographers respond to this history. Developing the argument that through aesthetic force emerges the truly political, the book moves beyond polarization of the aesthetic and the cultural. Instead, photographic works are read for their subversive political and cultural force, as it emerges through the aesthetics of the image. This book is ideal for students of Photography, Art History, Art and Visual Culture, and Gender.

In this landmark volume, Rosenblum (A World History of Photography) examines sympathetically the achievements of women in photography since its invention in 1839, and highlights society's failure to give them appropriate recognition. One research obstacle the author encountered was the 19th-century practice of men taking credit for work done by women. Here is work from 250 female camera artists, from Julia Margaret Cameron (b. 1815) to Annie Leibovitz (b. 1949), who, despite strong cultural resistance, mastered everything from early wet-plate views and portraits to 35 millimeter photojournalism, often initiating aesthetic and commercial improvements. Her chronicle of women's part in each era's artistic movements and media transitions, plus capsule biographies with an in-depth bibliography and index, make this a seminal reference work. The author's choice of 263 photographs seems to favor the esoteric, bringing to light a largely unknown world in vivid originality and broad archival conception.

Five established women photographers from different Latin American countries document their distinct communities in this volume. The subjects include the Indian celebrations of Holy Week, Chilean boxers and street entertainers, politics in Buenos Aires and Hispanic female street gangs.