Women photographers – a subject near and dear to my heart. It’s been fun researching them. One, Florestine Penault Collins, I wrote about last month.
One of the earliest women photographers I found was Julia Margaret Cameron. She was given a camera by her daughter in 1863, when she was 48, and this was her start. She wasn’t respected in her day. Her work was called “slovenly” and full of “mistakes”. But today she has had a strong impact on modern photographers. She is known for soft focus and close crops. The image to the right is titled, Vivian and Merlin, created in 1874.
Also very early, Frances Benjamin Johnston was one of the first female press photographers of the United States. Her images are fascinating, showing life at the turn of the 20th century. In 1899 she was commissioned to photograph The Hampton Institute – a preparatory and trade school for African Americans and Native Americans. The school was to help them assimilate into the white Victorian ideal. Johnston’s images reveal the complexities of the school’s values. You can see some of those images here. She also photographed many famous people of the day, like President Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington and his family(to the left).
Dorothea Lange is one of my favorite photographers. She humanized the consequences of the Great Depression. Her images had an influence on the federal government and its policies. She is well known for her haunting image “Migrant Mother”. The image to the right was a store owner’s response to the anti-Japanese sentiment in 1942.
There are so many others. Lorna Simpson focuses on multi-culturalism, race, and gender identity. Diane Arbus highlighted people from marginalized groups. Anne Geddes is famous for her imaginative baby images, and Annie Leibovitz is famous for her celebrity portraits. A photographer that intrigues me, though, is Vivian Maier. She wasn’t a professional photographer, but rather a nanny. For years, she photographed, mostly street photography in NYC. She has a massive body of wonderful work, and it was all unknown until someone found the negatives after her death. I can’t post her work here because it’s not yet in the public domain, but I recommend you take a look at it.
Women have made a huge contribution to photography and to society, through their photographs. I hope that my photographs are at least making a valuable contribution to the families of those I photograph.