March 15, 2025 • 43 mins
Why is photography still a male-dominated industry? Listen in to learn more about women's roles in the history of photography, including the work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, Margaret Bourke-White, Diane Arbus and other notable female photographer in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to Stuff I've Never Told You, a production of iHeartRadio,
and today we are bringing back an older Kristen and Caroline,
past host founder of Stuff we Never Told You, classic
(00:29):
around women and photography. Did you ever get really into photography, Samantha.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I did a whole little project which I kind of
want to talk about later, called the Purple Balloon Project,
in which a lot of it was featuring artistic pictures
and stories of women who survived domestic violence situations or
assault situations. And yeah, I really thought I was doing something.
Going back and look at it, I still think I
did pretty good. I think I could have been a photographer.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Maybe not, Yeah, yeah, I mean if this was a
different podcast, I would wax poetic about how I won
this free camera but it had all these limitations. But
I found the ways around the limitations. But also for
(01:19):
a while, for my job I did, I was a
part of my job. I would never say.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I I would never say I did anything amazing, but
I got pretty good at it.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, So I would love listeners, if you're into photography,
if you have any tips, if you would like to
share with listeners. I would love to hear from all
of you. I do have a really good friend who
is a photographer, and she does great work. And every
time I see a picture she's taken. Wow, so good,
(01:55):
so good. But yes, in the meantime, please enjoy this
class episode. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from
HowStuffWorks dot Com.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Let's offer a snapshot of Women and photography, a portrait
of women's contributions to the field of photography.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Caroline filtering the knowledge for you.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
This won't be an Instagram Wait, okay, I don't have
a pun for Instagram. It's too bad. Yeah, we're going
to talk about women in photography, which is a huge subject,
but we're going to offer some historical highlights and also
talk about gender and photography today. More behind the lens,
(02:52):
not stuff so much in front of the camera in
terms of what people are taking pictures of, but talking
about the women behind the camera. So let's go back
in history to eighteen thirty nine.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
Yeah, Frenchman Louis de Guerre perfects his dageriotype, the world's
first form of photography, and women were involved from the
get go. But let's talk a little bit more about
the technology. So in eighteen eighty eight we have the
introduction of the mass marketed Kodak box camera, and part
of marketing this Kodak camera and this Kodak technology was
(03:28):
the Kodak Girl. In eighteen ninety three, the Kodak Girl
appears in the company's national advertising, a character embodying independence
and travel.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
And the whole Kodak Girl thing was so significant for
women in photography at the time, in the same way
that we talked about in the podcast recently on Secretaries
of how typewriters were initially marketed to women. It was
this brand new technology, and Kodak was like, you know what,
women would love, this new handheld, easier to use camera,
(04:04):
and their advertising images showed women shooting pictures at home,
out with friends, having a great time, just snapping their
old timey photographs.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
You know, you mentioned the Secretary episode and the typewriter,
and I actually was thinking the same thing as I
was reading this stuff, but in regards to a new
industry developing, so there was no precedence for it as
far as what gender it was aligned with, because you know,
obviously we talked about in the Secretary episode how it
was new. The typewriter was new, and so women could
(04:34):
just get into those jobs. It wasn't considered a male pursuit.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
It was kind of the same with photography.
Speaker 6 (04:39):
Yes, there was technology and you were outside, and these
were two things that were not typically associated with women.
But as the photography industry really got going, I mean
there were a ton of women who got involved.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
Yeah, And in nineteen hundred, when Kodak released its first
Brownie camera, which was lightweight and more inexpensive, this also
revolutionized things for women. And I like how Kodak advertised
it by saying there's a new pleasure in every phase
of photography, whilst showing a woman having lots of pleasure
(05:12):
holding a Brownie camera.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
Just carry it around, like when hipsters wear fake glasses.
That's women just carrying brownies around.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
I'm gonna start carrying around a nineteen hundred brownie Yeah, yeah, sure,
Who needs an iPhone and Instagram when you have a
camera that won't work.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
My thoughts exactly?
Speaker 6 (05:32):
Yes, all right, So you know we're talking about women
being outside and following different hobbies and things.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
In the mid to late.
Speaker 6 (05:40):
Nineteenth century, we get bicycles and bicycle clubs, and then
photography clubs and photography bicycle clubs.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Yeah, I love this. In the mid eighteen nineties, the
whole combination of cameras plus bicycles, plus the emergence of
the new woman who is more emancipated because she's riding
a bicycle and she's taking pictures of things outside that
she sees, is like this huge craze for a bit,
and it seems a little dangerous because I could imagine
(06:10):
that wielding a camera while riding a bicycle.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Hopefully they stopped.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
Yeah, I assume that they stopped, but still. It was
kind of a sign of the times, though, that women
were wielding this new technology and getting around on their
own on bicycles.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
And people who were debating it at the time were saying, like, well,
it seems a little risque, but I guess it's an
acceptable form of women getting their exercise.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
And photography in general exploded. I mean ever since you
know dea guare perfected, the Daguerreo type studios were popping
up everywhere.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Yeah, especially out west.
Speaker 6 (06:45):
According to found SF San Francisco dot org, photography became
an emancipator of women out on the western frontier, and
a lot of times these women would go out there
following husbands, brothers, fathers, and pick up the trade from
the men in their lives and continue to work the studios.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
So it really wasn't weird.
Speaker 6 (07:06):
I mean, it was like, okay, well, it's weird that
there's a woman out here on the frontier, but it
wasn't necessarily weird that a woman would be working at
a photo studio. So women were involved in photography, like
we said, from the very beginning, and particularly out west
during the gold Rush, they worked in all sorts of
related activities, not just shooting the actual photos. They worked
as studio photographers, traveling photographers, proprietors, gallery owners, retouchers, colorists,
(07:32):
and photo mounters, and they also joined the swelling ranks
of amateur art photographers. And these women who worked particularly
as like colorists and retouchers, could actually make a lot
more money than women could in other traditional female roles
at the time.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
In the same way, again echoing that secretary podcast, in
how early typists were earning a lot more money than
they could say as garment workers, which was one of
the most common ways for women to earn money outside
of the home, but in the West, which was mostly
dominated by men who were out there for the gold Rush.
(08:05):
From eighteen fifty to nineteen hundred, there were seventy seven
working female photographers and two hundred and five women earning
a living in related trades, along with fifty two women
who were documented as amateur or fine art photographers, which
sounds like a small group of women, but considering their
proportions in relation to the you know, the gold rush
(08:26):
population was very sizable.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
And one woman who advertised her services out there was
Julia Shannon, who in eighteen fifty put an ad in
the San Francisco Alta newspaper notice, dagueriotypes taken.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
By a lady. Lady is capitalized.
Speaker 6 (08:45):
Those wishing to have a good likeness are informed that
they can have them taken in a very superior manner,
and by a real life lady too, in Clay Street,
opposite the Saint Francis Hotel, at a very moderate charge.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Give her a cul gents.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Yeah, and I can imagine that Julias Shannon did quite
well for herself because she probably emphasized the fact that
your picture will be taken by a real live lady,
because there were not many real live ladies around in
gold rush California.
Speaker 6 (09:13):
Right, you've been panning for gold all day, Come in
and see a lady.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
But why, Caroline, were women able to pursue photography in
these early years. It wasn't just because of the Kodak
girl's that's that whole fact of the technology being brand
new and therefore not gender segregated yet.
Speaker 6 (09:34):
Yeah, and there was a lack of established schools basically
that could deny them admittant. So it's like definition by negative.
You know, there was nobody to say no. So they
just got involved. And you know, like I said, a
lot of them worked in family businesses and inherited the
trade from a husband or a father.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
And it really.
Speaker 6 (09:53):
Became the case that photography studios were one of the
first businesses that were okay for women to own and run.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
And in the West in particular, in this you know,
this frontier environment. It's interesting that photography became acceptable and
even desirable for women working in us AY San Francisco's
photo industry because social critics at the time argued that
adventurous women needed a suitable occupation, like being a studio
(10:23):
photographer that offered higher wages so that they wouldn't end
up in a life of vice. Keep women busy, or
else they will end up selling their bodies.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
God, that always happens every time I'm bored. It's true,
every time I'm bored. So by eighteen ninety there were
one hundred and forty one documented women working in the
photographic industry, and by nineteen hundred, women composed over twenty
five percent of America's professional registered photographers.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
But just because women were wielding the camera and you know,
exploring this new technology, did not mean that it was
necessarily easy for women to sell their photos, particularly for
the ad industry in the early twentieth century, because in
terms of taking portraits, doing studio photography or amateur fine
(11:12):
art photography, women were really finding their stride. But in
advertising that was something that was already an entrenched, male
dominated industry.
Speaker 6 (11:21):
Yeah, in the early twentieth century, agencies for selling photographs,
according to Jermaine Craull, seem to.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Have been reserved for men.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
However, the increase in advertising in Germany, in particular in
the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties made it
possible for women to make it in the field. The
writer lists Ellen Auerback and Gret Stern, who were praised
for their quote inborn womanly instinct for the delicate nuances
of textiles.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
Which sounds like a whole lot of benevolent sexism, saying, Oh,
you're so good at this because you are a woman.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
You're so good at knowing what cloth looks like. You're empathetic, but.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
By that same regard too. As women start making strides
in more of the business side of photography, it still
took a while for them to be taken seriously. From
the nineteen forties on, there were gains in advertising, fashion,
and publicity photography, and in a nineteen forty five summary
of photography related opportunities for women, one commentator urge women
(12:24):
to earn quote unquote pen money by supplying magazines with
pictures of domestic subjects at between two dollars and five
dollars of print, and speaking of the two dollars to
five dollars per print again, same as with secretarial work.
Around the same time. Even though those kinds of jobs
were allowing women to earn more wages than they would
(12:46):
in other industries, they were still being paid about half
as much as men doing the same.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
Thing, right, And another commentator on this nineteen forty five
summary of job opportunities for women photographers, it gets worse
than saying, well, they can get a little extra money
for their bobbles and things. Another guy dismissed women as
a handy photo gadget for their photographer husbands. So they're
just like an accessory.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Yeah. That is One thing that photo historians will point
out is that for even the more recognized male photographers
of the era, they had often wives with them who
were traveling and helping them develop their films, set up
their shots, doing all of this very integral work. But
(13:36):
during World War Two and that manpower drain as a
lot of men left their jobs to go fight, female
photographers got improved access to, especially women's magazines such as
Better Homes and Gardens, House, Beautiful House and Garden, and McCall's.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
And after the war, commissions were typically given to women
on other women and on minority groups topics that editors
consider less important.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
And that question of are women relegated to shooting women's
interest and domestic related subjects is something that we'll talk
about today because it's a debate that is still going
on for women in photography in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
Yeah, well, so do you want to talk about some
early pioneers before we get into the gender discussion.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Let's do it.
Speaker 6 (14:26):
Lady Clementina Howarden is one of Britain's first female photographers.
This is coming from her profile on the Telegraph. She
started shooting in eighteen fifty seven and in the eighteen
sixties some of her images that she shot of her
daughters were considered to be some of Britain's first fashion shoots.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
Yeah. She often shot her daughters Isabella Grace, Clementina and
Florence Elizabeth in romantic and sensual poses. She had pretty
iconic set dressings that were usually covered with gossamer curtains,
a freestanding mirror, a small chest of drawers, and Empire
star wallpaper. So she definitely developed a look. But even
(15:08):
though the look might seem kind of commonplace, you know
you're thinking, oh, curtains in a mirror, no big whoop.
Her themes were highly progressive for the time and they included,
as reported on in the Telegraph, identity otherness, the doppelganger
and here we go female sexuality, which for a Victorian
era female photographer, pretty progressive stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (15:32):
In eighteen sixty three and eighteen sixty four she won
silver medals from the Photographic Society, and she had admirers,
including Lewis Carroll and photography specialist Francesca Spickernell. In recent
times has said that the photography recognition she received was
a tremendous achievement. She said most photography was very masculine
(15:53):
and mostly architectural, so these elegant feminine shots really stood
out at that time.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Now, a contemporary of Hawardans was Julia Margaret Cameron, and
she's been highly praised, more so by contemporary critics than
her critics at the time she received her first camera.
I thought this was funny when she was forty eight
years old in eighteen sixty three and her kids essentially
(16:28):
like moved away and were like, here, mom, have a
camera to keep yourself entertained. And they all know what
happens to women who aren't occupied. Oh yeah, that's right,
and this camera might have otherwise ended up on the street.
But she was deeply religious, well read, and eccentric and
had some pretty famous friends such as Charles Darwin, Alfred
Lloyd Tennyson and Robert Browning, and Cameron immediately started taking
(16:54):
all sorts of pictures, especially portraits and figure studies on
literary and biblical themes, which was something that was unprecedented,
and she quickly became one of the most highly admired
Victorian photographers.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Yeah, she was a very quick learner. Within a year
and a half she'd sold eighty prints to the Victorian
Albert Museum. But she also went about in an entrepreneurial fashion,
rapidly copyrighting her work, exhibiting her work, and she even
established her own two room studio.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
But she did get snubbed, as I said, from some
of her critics of the time. In the Photographic Journal
in eighteen sixty five, someone commented that missus Cameron exhibits
a series of out of focused portraits of celebrities. We
must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at
the expense of all other photographic qualities. And not surprisingly
(17:50):
such criticism infuriated Cameron. But she pretty much got the
last laugh because, for instance, a lot of her information
about hers coming from the website of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, so she certainly put her stamp on art
history at large.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 6 (18:07):
Moving forward just a little bit, we have Francis Benjamin Johnston,
who's one of America's first and foremost women photographers. She
trained in Paris in art and in photography at the
Art Students League in d C. And opened her own
studio around eighteen ninety. And what really helped her out
is Johnson's family's social status that gave her access to
(18:29):
the First Family and leading Washington political figures. She actually
that helped her launch her career as a photojournalist and
a portrait photographer.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Yeah. For instance, thanks to a letter of introduction from
Teddy Roosevelt, no big deal, Johnston boarded Admiral Dewey's flagship
and interviewed him en route to the Philippines, Which I mean,
this is going on in the late eighteen hundreds, early
nineteen hundreds, and Johnston was a pretty pioneering woman in
general to be hanging out on a sh ship like that.
(19:01):
And there's this great iconic picture that she took. It's
a self portrait of her and she's sitting in a
chair hunched forward and she has her skirt pulled up
to reveal her petticoat, which is very risque at the time.
I want to see she's smoking a cigarette two and
she just it's a very masculine post. But you can
(19:23):
just tell from it that she gave no hoots about
what people thought of her.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
No hoots were given.
Speaker 6 (19:32):
And in nineteen hundred, Johnston was chosen as one of
two American women delegates at the International Congress of Photography,
where she spoke out on behalf of women photographers and
displayed pictures from thirty female colleagues around the US.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
Yeah, and she was really promotional of women getting into photography.
She wrote a series of articles, for instance in the
Ladies Home Journal, and there was one eighteen ninety seven
article she wrote called what a Woman Can Do with
a Cam in which she talks about the qualities that
you need to be a solid photographer, and she says,
the woman who makes photography profitable must have as to
(20:09):
personal qualities, good common sense, unlimited patients to carry her
through endless failures, equally unlimited tact good taste, a quick eye,
a talent for detail, and a genius for hard work.
And I think that that advice is probably still the
advice that would be given to women looking to pick
up the camera today. But the thing is in Johnston's
(20:32):
story points to one of the reasons why we wanted
to highlight women in photography is that even though at
the time she was this very important pioneer and had
a pretty high public profile, the first significant monograph of
her work didn't come around until nineteen seventy. She's one
of many female photographers who were making great strides during
(20:55):
the time, but who have been pretty much ignored in
photo history up until recent decades.
Speaker 6 (21:03):
Yeah, one woman who made a lot of waves was
Margaret Burke White, who's actually one of the most famous
photojournalists of the twentieth century. And she has a saucy quote,
if anybody gets in my way when I'm making a picture,
I become a rational I'm never sure what I'm going
to do, only that I want that picture. And so
she was born in the Bronx in nineteen oh four
and began work after college as a commercial photographer, but
(21:26):
she made rapid, exponential strides later in life, and in
nineteen twenty nine she became the first photographer for Fortune magazine,
and in nineteen thirty six, a black and white photo
of hers made the cover of the first issue of
Life magazine.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
Yeah, it was an image of the construction of the
Fort Peck Dam, which was a Public Works Administration project
to build the largest earth dam in the world during
the Great Depression. And in getting that gig, she was
the only female Life magazine staffer, and she invented the
photo essay for the magazine, and her work became very
(22:05):
famous at the time. And she began as a commercial
photographer documenting the achievements of corporation and then applied that
dramatic style that she owned with industrial and architectural subjects
to photo essays in places all around the world, including Germany.
She actually took pictures from one of the concentration camps
that was being liberated at the time, and those pictures,
(22:27):
I mean just shocked audiences around the world. She also
took pictures in the Soviet Union. She was I think
the first Western photographer to go to the Soviet Union.
She also documented the Midwest during the dust Bowl and
took pictures of these harrowing pictures of families who were
(22:47):
suffering at the time. And she was known for her
fearlessness in doing all of this.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Yeah, she was definitely no shrinking Violet. She was the
first female war correspondent and the first to be allowed
to work in combat zones during World War Two.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
Yeah, and I wish that there was some way. This
is an audio podcast, and so trying to describe photography
in a very meaningful way is a bit challenging. I
wish there was some kind of visual maybe with Google glasses,
maybe we could see a slide show right now of
all of this photography. And there are so many more
important female photographers that we aren't even able to touch
(23:25):
on in depth. I mean, they're women like Dorothea Lang,
Tina Badotti, image In Cunningham, Diane arbus Helen Levitt, Anny Leeboitz,
et cetera, et cetera. And those are only a few
of the women that we ran across. But we only
had time to offer, like we said, a snapshot of
women's photography. But we really want to now dig into
(23:46):
the issue of gender because we've established that women in
photography history have remained underrepresented, even though you have you know,
the Margaret Burke whites, but she and I would say,
in today's term, someone like Annie Leebwitz, or even like
Cindy Sherman. You know, we have these big names, but
it's just a handful of them, and some wonder whether
(24:10):
the industry still remains male dominated, because we've tried to
kind of go back and correct the record and give
women their due, but there's still more progress that needs
to be made.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
And as long as women have been in photography, women
have also been involved in trying to draw recognition to
their female colleagues.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
In the industry. This starts really early.
Speaker 6 (24:34):
In eighteen eighty nine, Katherine Weadbarnes, a New York amateur photographer,
petition for the Special Photography.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Awards for women to be eliminated.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
She said, and I might you know that might seem counterintuitive,
but she says that if the work of men and
women is admitted to the same exhibition, it should be
on equal terms.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
And that is a question that does come up with
not just in photography, but you can name any other industry.
It's this question of whether calling out women for doing
work in a specific field kind of undercuts progress because
are we saying that, oh, well, this is wonderful photography
(25:12):
by women, or should we just say, as Catherine Weed
Barnes would advocate for, oh what a wonderful photograph and
it doesn't matter. But the question is, then doesn't matter?
I mean, in the nineteen sixties and seventies, in the
wake of feminist political action, gender absolutely mattered. There was
a newfound interest that sprang up in women's photography, both
(25:36):
contemporary and historical, and some feminists sought to resituate the
work of women photographers within that larger history of photography
and rescue women photographers who had disappeared from the historical records.
So you probably did for that reason see things like
that nineteen seventy monograph of France's Benjamin Johnston's work, And
(25:59):
so in that regard you can argue that, yes, having
exhibitions that focus solely on work produced by women is
important because of a legacy of sexism.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
Well yeah, I mean, it's not that you look at
a photo and you say that was taken by a
woman or that was taken by a man. I guess
it doesn't matter if a great photo was taken by
one or the other. However, we can't forget that there
are very important women contributing to the field like that.
I think that matters more than knowing that a photograph
was taken by a woman or a man.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
Right, it's more of that educational aspect, and that's why,
you know, there was a movement in the seventies to
to highlight that kind of art. For instance, in nineteen
seventy five, there was at the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art an exhibition called Women a Photography, a historical
survey with fifty women photographers. In nineteen seventy nine, the
(26:49):
International Center for Photography sponsored recollections ten Women of Photography,
which was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Speaker 6 (26:59):
And it was around the time too, in the seventies
and moving into the eighties, that media savvy artists like
Barbara Krueger and Cindy Sherman did a lot of work
to undermine the authority of the male gaze and commercialism
and all that stuff. For instance, Krueger's Your Body is
a Battleground. She actually interpreted a lot of photography like
advertisements to sort of undermine the way that media looked
(27:20):
at women at the time.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Yeah, and we don't have a lot of time to
delve into feminist photography, but they definitely did spring up
in the seventies, eighties, nineties and a lot of it
was more political and examining like the women's female body
and the whole thing of the male gaze and sort
of playing with all of those concepts, sort of infusing
(27:45):
feminism with photography. And speaking though of Cindy Sherman, I
think it's pretty notable that in twenty eleven she sold
the most expensive photograph in history. It was a nineteen
eighty one self portrait called Untitled, and it's sold for
almost three point nine million dollars.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Geez.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
But in response to, oh, you know, someone's buying this
female produced piece of art, what does this mean? And
essentially art critics were like, it just means that art
is funny money. You know, you just plunk down a
lot of money. There's a weird kind of competition among
art collectors, and it's really no big deal that it
was produced by Cindy Sherman, as opposed to say, man
(28:27):
ray yeah.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
Moving forward to today, a photographer Paul Melcher started a
debate on the Black Star Rising blog when he was
talking about the importance or the unimportance of calling out
photographers genders and how that affected anybody. He says that
it seems that political correctness has now started to reach
(28:50):
the shores of the previously sexless island of photography. It
appears that some people with a highly developed social conscience
want you to know the gender of a photographer whose
picture you would as if it made any difference.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
And then Melissa Golden, who's a photographer who we actually
worked with at our college newspaper we did, made a
public response to Melcher saying, you know, like, essentially the
idea that the gender shouldn't matter is true. He's got
a good point. But she talks about how when she
was fighting her way into the often boys club of
(29:26):
professional photography, especially if you look at more veteran figures,
it is dominated by men, and she said, it took
me too long to figure out the drinking massive amounts
of alcohol and putting up with sexual harassment. We're not
the tests I had to pass to join the club.
And she said, I now know it took me so
long because I didn't have a strong senior female photographer
or editor willing to take me in and tell me
(29:48):
there's another better way. And this kind of brings up
the whole question of you know, like, is feminism still useful? Well, yeah,
it is, because we don't live in a society that's
free from sexism, and we're not living in this gender
equal utopias. So unfortunately, gender does still matter. I mean,
I wish that Melcher was right and that it is
(30:09):
just a sexless island, as he says, no.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
But the debate, it seems like the debate on whether
gender matters has been going on forever and it will
continue to do so because you have people like Princeton
Women's Studies and Art and Archaeology professor Carol Armstrong, who
says that male and female photographers have always ventured into
the same territory, but women do so with more empathy
for the subject. Then you have British writers slash critics
(30:35):
Griselda Pollock and Janet Wolf who asserted that there is
no intrinsic feminine or masculine essence, only complex networks of
culturally conditioned markers that construct what superficially appears to.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Be coherent gender identity.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
So essentially, what they're saying in the book Photography, a
Cultural History by Mary Warner Marian is that there are
no gender differences in how men and women approach photography right,
and that is echoed in a blog post on the
News Photographers Association of Canada blog by Renee Blackstone. She
(31:12):
interviewed a number of female photojournalists on the question of
whether gender differences exist because you do that issue of oh, well,
women have more empathy with their subjects. Women might be
able to approach a situation, a more sensitive situation, better
than a male photographer could. And some of the photojournalists said, yeah,
(31:34):
women might be better in situations where quote unquote a
kind of intimacy is required and a certain woman to
woman trust can be developed. But a lot of them said,
you know what, there's really no difference. Men and women
are both doing social documentary work and in the same
way that women can go into places that men can't.
I would say that men can probably go into plenty
(31:55):
of places that women can't. And I don't know, I
have a little bit of hesitation just saying that, you know,
what women bring to the table are more finely tuned emotions.
I think that while, yes, your emotions will influence your
art and your work, I don't know that that should
(32:15):
be you know, the platform on which we call for
equality or progress. Yeah, well, simply because I would think
that veteran male photographers would give no hoots to quote
myself about your emotion, especially in the workplace. Yeah, and
I'm also I mean, like we're sitting here speaking as
(32:38):
not experienced photographers or photojournalists. But you know, it does
make me wonder whether that's really a useful argument. And
I think that's one reason why if you do talk
to a lot of women about this, that there, at
the end of the day, there aren't really gender differences
in how women and men take pictures what we see
and don't see.
Speaker 6 (32:58):
I mean when I worked at the news paper, I
mean half of our staff, half of our pheto staff
was men, half was women, and.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
They were all brilliant.
Speaker 6 (33:07):
But they weren't Maybe it's because we were in a
metropolitan newspaper and we weren't sending people to Iraq or
anything to take dangerous pictures.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
But it's like, you know, they went to.
Speaker 6 (33:15):
Their various fair county fair assignments and you know, criminal
trial assignments and took pictures and I mean, they were
all brilliant. It wasn't a case of like we need
to send Jackie to this one because she's a girl,
and we need to send you know, Mike to this
one because he's a boy.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
Jackie is going to the baby judging contest, Jack's going
to the NASCAR race. Go but numbers wives though there
are more men involved in photography. According to the National
Endowment for the Arts Artists in the Workforce survey from
nineteen ninety to two thousand and five, forty two point
(33:50):
eight percent of all the people who listed themselves as
professional photographers were women, so less than half, but this
was also a compelling statistic. Sixty percent of those women
were under thirty five, meaning that men comprise a majority
of the veteran successful photographers. So photography is also one
(34:11):
area where you know, women are wondering whether or not
there is some kind of off ramp. Maybe it has
to do with, like Melissa Golden talked about, not having
you know, the senior editor to encourage her onward a
female mentor there's a question of why in a lot
of art schools, women might be out numbering men in
(34:32):
the student body in terms of who's studying photography, but
once they get out there seems to they seem to
thin out.
Speaker 6 (34:38):
Yeah, Well, what really thins out is pay for women,
because according to this report, there's a major pay gap
the median income for a male photographer is thirty five
five hundred dollars, for a woman it's sixteen three hundred.
Speaker 5 (34:54):
And I think maybe as a result of those of
a huge pay gap like that women photographers have, I've
really been honing in on certain areas like wedding photography
and the family portraiture, to which there was an article
over at The Grindstone talking about the ghettoization of female
(35:14):
photographers in weddings, saying, all, we can shoot our weddings,
it's all people tosses their weddings.
Speaker 6 (35:19):
Well, I don't think that's true, but you can. I
also know that you can make boku de bucks or
ok he as a wedding photographer.
Speaker 5 (35:25):
Well that's what I'm saying, in order to close up
that income gap, get into wedding photography. But but I
am curious to hear from female photographers out there whether
they are instantly assumed to be you know, if you're
a woman walking around with a camera around your neck,
you know, are you just assumed to be on your
way to a wedding?
Speaker 6 (35:45):
Well, you know, you talked about whether there were female
role models or mentors in the industry. Feon a Rogers,
who started the Firecracker Photographic Grant in twenty eleven to
support women photographers, says that well, there seems to me
to be an abundance of way and studying photography. Would
appear that a large percentage leave education and take on administrational,
(36:06):
organizational or nurturing roles within the visual arts. And she
goes on to say that Firecracker was established as a
way of supporting women photographers and linking them with a
wider public and industry audience.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Which is good. I mean it sounds like within the
industry there is a greater effort to link women up
with other women to offer more support. Women are also
making strides on their own. This is coming from the
British Journal of Photography. It was an article talking about
how women are really coming into their own with social portraiture,
(36:38):
which was traditionally male dominated, and they've been scooping up awards. Recently,
the Master's Photographers Association awarded its sole fellowship to photographer
Joe de Banzi, and that's such a big deal when
you consider that out of the sixty five fellowships ever
awarded by MPa, only eight have gone to women. And similarly,
(37:03):
Lisa Visser was awarded the British Professional Photographer of the
Year or in two thousand and eight. So I mean they're,
you know, obviously like women are doing very well at
their jobs and climbing up through the ranks. But it
seems like maybe it's just we're catching up from such
a long legacy. And by we, I mean female photographers,
(37:25):
not myself.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Right, I mean, I'll take pictures of my iPhone.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
But there have been a lot of sources, not just
this British Journal of Photography piece, but a lot of
other areas on the Internet are talking about how digital photography,
the ease of use, has made it possible for more
women to get into photography, and that makes my eyes twitch.
There was one comment on a blog I read where
(37:49):
this man who was like, look, you know, I'm young
and i don't have a lot of experience, but I'm
just saying that maybe from the early days of photography,
where cameras were highly technical and it was difficult, maybe
women just weren't interested. And now that things are digital,
women are interested because they just want to take pictures
of their kids. And I mean I pushed my computer
out the window after I read that, but that digital
(38:09):
photography discussion is something that's going on, and I think,
knowing some of the amazing female photographers that I do,
I think that's crap.
Speaker 5 (38:21):
Oh yeah, I mean again that it does bring up
I mean, that's kind of not so benevolent sexism saying
that since it's easier now, women want to do that.
And I feel like we could do and listeners, if
you have an idea of how we could do this,
I think we could do a whole episode on Instagram
because because it is so female dominated, women love it
(38:43):
and it is becoming this huge social media force and
I think it'd be interested interesting to look into that more.
But yeah, I mean I arguments like that make me
cringe that oh now we're now we're interested just because
it's simple men, you enjoy ease of use well and
a good user experience. Okay, So anyway, I want to
(39:06):
get riled up here, but I hope that we have
photographers listening. And again, I know that there were so
many notable women behind the camera that we did not
have time to talk about. Hopefully I can do like
a big blog round up maybe. Unfortunately, the challenging thing
about setting up galleries for photography to show women's work
(39:28):
is copyright issues, right, and we ain't going to violate them,
but I'll do my best to try to find pictures
that we can show of these women's incredible work. And
we haven't even talked very much to about younger contemporary
women who are climbing through the ranks as well.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
Right, So yeah, if you know any of that, please
give us a shout.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
Yeah, and shout out to photographer Lizzie if she's listening
to this podcast, your photos are amazing.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
And Melissa Golden, yeah, if you're listening, what up?
Speaker 5 (39:57):
And all the all the photographers out there, send us
emails though. Moms Stuff at Discovery dot com will be
curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this, and of course
you can find us on Facebook if you'd like to
send us a message that way, or tweet us at
Mom's Stuff podcasts. And before we get to a couple
of your letters, let's take a quick break, Caroline, and
(40:17):
then we'll come back. And now back to our letters.
Speaker 6 (40:33):
I have one here from Madeline talking about cleanliness and
same sex households. She says, I totally agree that men
and women don't have innate differences in cleanliness just culturally
impose differences. I am a bisexual woman and I've been
in monogamous relationships with men and women. In my experience,
there is just as much variation within men and women
(40:53):
in terms of how clean people are. I have been
with clean men, filthy men, clean women, filthy women, et cetera. However,
in my relationships with the opposite sex, there has been
that unspoken assumption that I will be cleaning up. This
can easily be remedied by dividing chores and letting your
boyfriend dude whatever do his chores in his own time.
(41:13):
With my same sex relationships, chre delegation has been smoother
since we have both been trained to constantly be.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Thinking about how we look.
Speaker 6 (41:21):
Luckily, my fiance and wife to be is in the
healthy middle ground of the slob OCD continuum.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Congratulations, Madeline, and thank you well.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
I've got an email here from someone who would like
to remain anonymous because she's writing in about her labia plasty.
She writes, I had a labia plasty at the age
of fifteen, and it dramatically changed my life for the better.
I was born with an enlarged labia minora that hung
out of my vagina, and it never bothered me until
dreaded puberty hit. The skin got longer and larger and
(41:53):
would rub on the inside of my underwear and become irritated.
So I got to the point to where I could
no longer do any vigorous exercise or pants that were
tighter than sweatpants. Noticing a drastic change in my life,
my mother asked what was going on, and I finally
admitted my problem, and she took me to the gynecologist.
I was booked for my Labiya plastis soon after and
was deeply satisfied with the results. I understand that most
(42:15):
women who go through the surgery do it simply for
cosmetic reasons, but I thought you should know that some
of us out there have done it out of necessity.
We don't just talk about it because it can be
quite embarrassing and require us a long backstory about our
misfit vaginas. I certainly don't share this at parties or
even with my closest friends. However, the anonymity of the
Internet has inspired me to share my surgery story to
(42:36):
let you know that I wasn't trying to please some man,
I was only horrified by the prospect of wearing sweatpants
and walking like an old lady for the rest of
my life. So thanks for sharing, because I think that
you know. It's stories like these that are important to
help drive home the point that every vagina is a
little bit different. And with that song, I think you Carol.
(43:00):
Send us your emails Momstuff at Discovery dot com. You
can also Facebook us or tweet us at mom Stuff podcast.
You can also follow us while you're at it on Tumblr.
We're at Stuffmomnever Told You dot tumblr dot com, and
we're now on YouTube. You can watch us. That's right.
Go to YouTube dot com slash stuff mom Never Told
(43:21):
You and click subscribe if you don't mind, and watch us.
We're coming at you three times a week over there,
and if you'd like to, you can still visit our
website too, it's how stuff Works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks dot com.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to Stuff I've Never Told You, a production of iHeartRadio,
and today we are bringing back an older Kristen and Caroline,
past host founder of Stuff we Never Told You, classic
(00:29):
around women and photography. Did you ever get really into photography, Samantha.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I did a whole little project which I kind of
want to talk about later, called the Purple Balloon Project,
in which a lot of it was featuring artistic pictures
and stories of women who survived domestic violence situations or
assault situations. And yeah, I really thought I was doing something.
Going back and look at it, I still think I
did pretty good. I think I could have been a photographer.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Maybe not, Yeah, yeah, I mean if this was a
different podcast, I would wax poetic about how I won
this free camera but it had all these limitations. But
I found the ways around the limitations. But also for
(01:19):
a while, for my job I did, I was a
part of my job. I would never say.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I I would never say I did anything amazing, but
I got pretty good at it.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, So I would love listeners, if you're into photography,
if you have any tips, if you would like to
share with listeners. I would love to hear from all
of you. I do have a really good friend who
is a photographer, and she does great work. And every
time I see a picture she's taken. Wow, so good,
(01:55):
so good. But yes, in the meantime, please enjoy this
class episode. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from
HowStuffWorks dot Com.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Let's offer a snapshot of Women and photography, a portrait
of women's contributions to the field of photography.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Caroline filtering the knowledge for you.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
This won't be an Instagram Wait, okay, I don't have
a pun for Instagram. It's too bad. Yeah, we're going
to talk about women in photography, which is a huge subject,
but we're going to offer some historical highlights and also
talk about gender and photography today. More behind the lens,
(02:52):
not stuff so much in front of the camera in
terms of what people are taking pictures of, but talking
about the women behind the camera. So let's go back
in history to eighteen thirty nine.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
Yeah, Frenchman Louis de Guerre perfects his dageriotype, the world's
first form of photography, and women were involved from the
get go. But let's talk a little bit more about
the technology. So in eighteen eighty eight we have the
introduction of the mass marketed Kodak box camera, and part
of marketing this Kodak camera and this Kodak technology was
(03:28):
the Kodak Girl. In eighteen ninety three, the Kodak Girl
appears in the company's national advertising, a character embodying independence
and travel.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
And the whole Kodak Girl thing was so significant for
women in photography at the time, in the same way
that we talked about in the podcast recently on Secretaries
of how typewriters were initially marketed to women. It was
this brand new technology, and Kodak was like, you know what,
women would love, this new handheld, easier to use camera,
(04:04):
and their advertising images showed women shooting pictures at home,
out with friends, having a great time, just snapping their
old timey photographs.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
You know, you mentioned the Secretary episode and the typewriter,
and I actually was thinking the same thing as I
was reading this stuff, but in regards to a new
industry developing, so there was no precedence for it as
far as what gender it was aligned with, because you know,
obviously we talked about in the Secretary episode how it
was new. The typewriter was new, and so women could
(04:34):
just get into those jobs. It wasn't considered a male pursuit.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
It was kind of the same with photography.
Speaker 6 (04:39):
Yes, there was technology and you were outside, and these
were two things that were not typically associated with women.
But as the photography industry really got going, I mean
there were a ton of women who got involved.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
Yeah, And in nineteen hundred, when Kodak released its first
Brownie camera, which was lightweight and more inexpensive, this also
revolutionized things for women. And I like how Kodak advertised
it by saying there's a new pleasure in every phase
of photography, whilst showing a woman having lots of pleasure
(05:12):
holding a Brownie camera.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
Just carry it around, like when hipsters wear fake glasses.
That's women just carrying brownies around.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
I'm gonna start carrying around a nineteen hundred brownie Yeah, yeah, sure,
Who needs an iPhone and Instagram when you have a
camera that won't work.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
My thoughts exactly?
Speaker 6 (05:32):
Yes, all right, So you know we're talking about women
being outside and following different hobbies and things.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
In the mid to late.
Speaker 6 (05:40):
Nineteenth century, we get bicycles and bicycle clubs, and then
photography clubs and photography bicycle clubs.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Yeah, I love this. In the mid eighteen nineties, the
whole combination of cameras plus bicycles, plus the emergence of
the new woman who is more emancipated because she's riding
a bicycle and she's taking pictures of things outside that
she sees, is like this huge craze for a bit,
and it seems a little dangerous because I could imagine
(06:10):
that wielding a camera while riding a bicycle.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Hopefully they stopped.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
Yeah, I assume that they stopped, but still. It was
kind of a sign of the times, though, that women
were wielding this new technology and getting around on their
own on bicycles.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
And people who were debating it at the time were saying, like, well,
it seems a little risque, but I guess it's an
acceptable form of women getting their exercise.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
And photography in general exploded. I mean ever since you
know dea guare perfected, the Daguerreo type studios were popping
up everywhere.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Yeah, especially out west.
Speaker 6 (06:45):
According to found SF San Francisco dot org, photography became
an emancipator of women out on the western frontier, and
a lot of times these women would go out there
following husbands, brothers, fathers, and pick up the trade from
the men in their lives and continue to work the studios.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
So it really wasn't weird.
Speaker 6 (07:06):
I mean, it was like, okay, well, it's weird that
there's a woman out here on the frontier, but it
wasn't necessarily weird that a woman would be working at
a photo studio. So women were involved in photography, like
we said, from the very beginning, and particularly out west
during the gold Rush, they worked in all sorts of
related activities, not just shooting the actual photos. They worked
as studio photographers, traveling photographers, proprietors, gallery owners, retouchers, colorists,
(07:32):
and photo mounters, and they also joined the swelling ranks
of amateur art photographers. And these women who worked particularly
as like colorists and retouchers, could actually make a lot
more money than women could in other traditional female roles
at the time.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
In the same way, again echoing that secretary podcast, in
how early typists were earning a lot more money than
they could say as garment workers, which was one of
the most common ways for women to earn money outside
of the home, but in the West, which was mostly
dominated by men who were out there for the gold Rush.
(08:05):
From eighteen fifty to nineteen hundred, there were seventy seven
working female photographers and two hundred and five women earning
a living in related trades, along with fifty two women
who were documented as amateur or fine art photographers, which
sounds like a small group of women, but considering their
proportions in relation to the you know, the gold rush
(08:26):
population was very sizable.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
And one woman who advertised her services out there was
Julia Shannon, who in eighteen fifty put an ad in
the San Francisco Alta newspaper notice, dagueriotypes taken.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
By a lady. Lady is capitalized.
Speaker 6 (08:45):
Those wishing to have a good likeness are informed that
they can have them taken in a very superior manner,
and by a real life lady too, in Clay Street,
opposite the Saint Francis Hotel, at a very moderate charge.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Give her a cul gents.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Yeah, and I can imagine that Julias Shannon did quite
well for herself because she probably emphasized the fact that
your picture will be taken by a real live lady,
because there were not many real live ladies around in
gold rush California.
Speaker 6 (09:13):
Right, you've been panning for gold all day, Come in
and see a lady.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
But why, Caroline, were women able to pursue photography in
these early years. It wasn't just because of the Kodak
girl's that's that whole fact of the technology being brand
new and therefore not gender segregated yet.
Speaker 6 (09:34):
Yeah, and there was a lack of established schools basically
that could deny them admittant. So it's like definition by negative.
You know, there was nobody to say no. So they
just got involved. And you know, like I said, a
lot of them worked in family businesses and inherited the
trade from a husband or a father.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
And it really.
Speaker 6 (09:53):
Became the case that photography studios were one of the
first businesses that were okay for women to own and run.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
And in the West in particular, in this you know,
this frontier environment. It's interesting that photography became acceptable and
even desirable for women working in us AY San Francisco's
photo industry because social critics at the time argued that
adventurous women needed a suitable occupation, like being a studio
(10:23):
photographer that offered higher wages so that they wouldn't end
up in a life of vice. Keep women busy, or
else they will end up selling their bodies.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
God, that always happens every time I'm bored. It's true,
every time I'm bored. So by eighteen ninety there were
one hundred and forty one documented women working in the
photographic industry, and by nineteen hundred, women composed over twenty
five percent of America's professional registered photographers.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
But just because women were wielding the camera and you know,
exploring this new technology, did not mean that it was
necessarily easy for women to sell their photos, particularly for
the ad industry in the early twentieth century, because in
terms of taking portraits, doing studio photography or amateur fine
(11:12):
art photography, women were really finding their stride. But in
advertising that was something that was already an entrenched, male
dominated industry.
Speaker 6 (11:21):
Yeah, in the early twentieth century, agencies for selling photographs,
according to Jermaine Craull, seem to.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Have been reserved for men.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
However, the increase in advertising in Germany, in particular in
the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties made it
possible for women to make it in the field. The
writer lists Ellen Auerback and Gret Stern, who were praised
for their quote inborn womanly instinct for the delicate nuances
of textiles.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
Which sounds like a whole lot of benevolent sexism, saying, Oh,
you're so good at this because you are a woman.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
You're so good at knowing what cloth looks like. You're empathetic, but.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
By that same regard too. As women start making strides
in more of the business side of photography, it still
took a while for them to be taken seriously. From
the nineteen forties on, there were gains in advertising, fashion,
and publicity photography, and in a nineteen forty five summary
of photography related opportunities for women, one commentator urge women
(12:24):
to earn quote unquote pen money by supplying magazines with
pictures of domestic subjects at between two dollars and five
dollars of print, and speaking of the two dollars to
five dollars per print again, same as with secretarial work.
Around the same time. Even though those kinds of jobs
were allowing women to earn more wages than they would
(12:46):
in other industries, they were still being paid about half
as much as men doing the same.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
Thing, right, And another commentator on this nineteen forty five
summary of job opportunities for women photographers, it gets worse
than saying, well, they can get a little extra money
for their bobbles and things. Another guy dismissed women as
a handy photo gadget for their photographer husbands. So they're
just like an accessory.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Yeah. That is One thing that photo historians will point
out is that for even the more recognized male photographers
of the era, they had often wives with them who
were traveling and helping them develop their films, set up
their shots, doing all of this very integral work. But
(13:36):
during World War Two and that manpower drain as a
lot of men left their jobs to go fight, female
photographers got improved access to, especially women's magazines such as
Better Homes and Gardens, House, Beautiful House and Garden, and McCall's.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
And after the war, commissions were typically given to women
on other women and on minority groups topics that editors
consider less important.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
And that question of are women relegated to shooting women's
interest and domestic related subjects is something that we'll talk
about today because it's a debate that is still going
on for women in photography in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
Yeah, well, so do you want to talk about some
early pioneers before we get into the gender discussion.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Let's do it.
Speaker 6 (14:26):
Lady Clementina Howarden is one of Britain's first female photographers.
This is coming from her profile on the Telegraph. She
started shooting in eighteen fifty seven and in the eighteen
sixties some of her images that she shot of her
daughters were considered to be some of Britain's first fashion shoots.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
Yeah. She often shot her daughters Isabella Grace, Clementina and
Florence Elizabeth in romantic and sensual poses. She had pretty
iconic set dressings that were usually covered with gossamer curtains,
a freestanding mirror, a small chest of drawers, and Empire
star wallpaper. So she definitely developed a look. But even
(15:08):
though the look might seem kind of commonplace, you know
you're thinking, oh, curtains in a mirror, no big whoop.
Her themes were highly progressive for the time and they included,
as reported on in the Telegraph, identity otherness, the doppelganger
and here we go female sexuality, which for a Victorian
era female photographer, pretty progressive stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (15:32):
In eighteen sixty three and eighteen sixty four she won
silver medals from the Photographic Society, and she had admirers,
including Lewis Carroll and photography specialist Francesca Spickernell. In recent
times has said that the photography recognition she received was
a tremendous achievement. She said most photography was very masculine
(15:53):
and mostly architectural, so these elegant feminine shots really stood
out at that time.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Now, a contemporary of Hawardans was Julia Margaret Cameron, and
she's been highly praised, more so by contemporary critics than
her critics at the time she received her first camera.
I thought this was funny when she was forty eight
years old in eighteen sixty three and her kids essentially
(16:28):
like moved away and were like, here, mom, have a
camera to keep yourself entertained. And they all know what
happens to women who aren't occupied. Oh yeah, that's right,
and this camera might have otherwise ended up on the street.
But she was deeply religious, well read, and eccentric and
had some pretty famous friends such as Charles Darwin, Alfred
Lloyd Tennyson and Robert Browning, and Cameron immediately started taking
(16:54):
all sorts of pictures, especially portraits and figure studies on
literary and biblical themes, which was something that was unprecedented,
and she quickly became one of the most highly admired
Victorian photographers.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Yeah, she was a very quick learner. Within a year
and a half she'd sold eighty prints to the Victorian
Albert Museum. But she also went about in an entrepreneurial fashion,
rapidly copyrighting her work, exhibiting her work, and she even
established her own two room studio.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
But she did get snubbed, as I said, from some
of her critics of the time. In the Photographic Journal
in eighteen sixty five, someone commented that missus Cameron exhibits
a series of out of focused portraits of celebrities. We
must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at
the expense of all other photographic qualities. And not surprisingly
(17:50):
such criticism infuriated Cameron. But she pretty much got the
last laugh because, for instance, a lot of her information
about hers coming from the website of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, so she certainly put her stamp on art
history at large.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 6 (18:07):
Moving forward just a little bit, we have Francis Benjamin Johnston,
who's one of America's first and foremost women photographers. She
trained in Paris in art and in photography at the
Art Students League in d C. And opened her own
studio around eighteen ninety. And what really helped her out
is Johnson's family's social status that gave her access to
(18:29):
the First Family and leading Washington political figures. She actually
that helped her launch her career as a photojournalist and
a portrait photographer.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Yeah. For instance, thanks to a letter of introduction from
Teddy Roosevelt, no big deal, Johnston boarded Admiral Dewey's flagship
and interviewed him en route to the Philippines, Which I mean,
this is going on in the late eighteen hundreds, early
nineteen hundreds, and Johnston was a pretty pioneering woman in
general to be hanging out on a sh ship like that.
(19:01):
And there's this great iconic picture that she took. It's
a self portrait of her and she's sitting in a
chair hunched forward and she has her skirt pulled up
to reveal her petticoat, which is very risque at the time.
I want to see she's smoking a cigarette two and
she just it's a very masculine post. But you can
(19:23):
just tell from it that she gave no hoots about
what people thought of her.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
No hoots were given.
Speaker 6 (19:32):
And in nineteen hundred, Johnston was chosen as one of
two American women delegates at the International Congress of Photography,
where she spoke out on behalf of women photographers and
displayed pictures from thirty female colleagues around the US.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
Yeah, and she was really promotional of women getting into photography.
She wrote a series of articles, for instance in the
Ladies Home Journal, and there was one eighteen ninety seven
article she wrote called what a Woman Can Do with
a Cam in which she talks about the qualities that
you need to be a solid photographer, and she says,
the woman who makes photography profitable must have as to
(20:09):
personal qualities, good common sense, unlimited patients to carry her
through endless failures, equally unlimited tact good taste, a quick eye,
a talent for detail, and a genius for hard work.
And I think that that advice is probably still the
advice that would be given to women looking to pick
up the camera today. But the thing is in Johnston's
(20:32):
story points to one of the reasons why we wanted
to highlight women in photography is that even though at
the time she was this very important pioneer and had
a pretty high public profile, the first significant monograph of
her work didn't come around until nineteen seventy. She's one
of many female photographers who were making great strides during
(20:55):
the time, but who have been pretty much ignored in
photo history up until recent decades.
Speaker 6 (21:03):
Yeah, one woman who made a lot of waves was
Margaret Burke White, who's actually one of the most famous
photojournalists of the twentieth century. And she has a saucy quote,
if anybody gets in my way when I'm making a picture,
I become a rational I'm never sure what I'm going
to do, only that I want that picture. And so
she was born in the Bronx in nineteen oh four
and began work after college as a commercial photographer, but
(21:26):
she made rapid, exponential strides later in life, and in
nineteen twenty nine she became the first photographer for Fortune magazine,
and in nineteen thirty six, a black and white photo
of hers made the cover of the first issue of
Life magazine.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
Yeah, it was an image of the construction of the
Fort Peck Dam, which was a Public Works Administration project
to build the largest earth dam in the world during
the Great Depression. And in getting that gig, she was
the only female Life magazine staffer, and she invented the
photo essay for the magazine, and her work became very
(22:05):
famous at the time. And she began as a commercial
photographer documenting the achievements of corporation and then applied that
dramatic style that she owned with industrial and architectural subjects
to photo essays in places all around the world, including Germany.
She actually took pictures from one of the concentration camps
that was being liberated at the time, and those pictures,
(22:27):
I mean just shocked audiences around the world. She also
took pictures in the Soviet Union. She was I think
the first Western photographer to go to the Soviet Union.
She also documented the Midwest during the dust Bowl and
took pictures of these harrowing pictures of families who were
(22:47):
suffering at the time. And she was known for her
fearlessness in doing all of this.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Yeah, she was definitely no shrinking Violet. She was the
first female war correspondent and the first to be allowed
to work in combat zones during World War Two.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
Yeah, and I wish that there was some way. This
is an audio podcast, and so trying to describe photography
in a very meaningful way is a bit challenging. I
wish there was some kind of visual maybe with Google glasses,
maybe we could see a slide show right now of
all of this photography. And there are so many more
important female photographers that we aren't even able to touch
(23:25):
on in depth. I mean, they're women like Dorothea Lang,
Tina Badotti, image In Cunningham, Diane arbus Helen Levitt, Anny Leeboitz,
et cetera, et cetera. And those are only a few
of the women that we ran across. But we only
had time to offer, like we said, a snapshot of
women's photography. But we really want to now dig into
(23:46):
the issue of gender because we've established that women in
photography history have remained underrepresented, even though you have you know,
the Margaret Burke whites, but she and I would say,
in today's term, someone like Annie Leebwitz, or even like
Cindy Sherman. You know, we have these big names, but
it's just a handful of them, and some wonder whether
(24:10):
the industry still remains male dominated, because we've tried to
kind of go back and correct the record and give
women their due, but there's still more progress that needs
to be made.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
And as long as women have been in photography, women
have also been involved in trying to draw recognition to
their female colleagues.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
In the industry. This starts really early.
Speaker 6 (24:34):
In eighteen eighty nine, Katherine Weadbarnes, a New York amateur photographer,
petition for the Special Photography.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Awards for women to be eliminated.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
She said, and I might you know that might seem counterintuitive,
but she says that if the work of men and
women is admitted to the same exhibition, it should be
on equal terms.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
And that is a question that does come up with
not just in photography, but you can name any other industry.
It's this question of whether calling out women for doing
work in a specific field kind of undercuts progress because
are we saying that, oh, well, this is wonderful photography
(25:12):
by women, or should we just say, as Catherine Weed
Barnes would advocate for, oh what a wonderful photograph and
it doesn't matter. But the question is, then doesn't matter?
I mean, in the nineteen sixties and seventies, in the
wake of feminist political action, gender absolutely mattered. There was
a newfound interest that sprang up in women's photography, both
(25:36):
contemporary and historical, and some feminists sought to resituate the
work of women photographers within that larger history of photography
and rescue women photographers who had disappeared from the historical records.
So you probably did for that reason see things like
that nineteen seventy monograph of France's Benjamin Johnston's work, And
(25:59):
so in that regard you can argue that, yes, having
exhibitions that focus solely on work produced by women is
important because of a legacy of sexism.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
Well yeah, I mean, it's not that you look at
a photo and you say that was taken by a
woman or that was taken by a man. I guess
it doesn't matter if a great photo was taken by
one or the other. However, we can't forget that there
are very important women contributing to the field like that.
I think that matters more than knowing that a photograph
was taken by a woman or a man.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
Right, it's more of that educational aspect, and that's why,
you know, there was a movement in the seventies to
to highlight that kind of art. For instance, in nineteen
seventy five, there was at the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art an exhibition called Women a Photography, a historical
survey with fifty women photographers. In nineteen seventy nine, the
(26:49):
International Center for Photography sponsored recollections ten Women of Photography,
which was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Speaker 6 (26:59):
And it was around the time too, in the seventies
and moving into the eighties, that media savvy artists like
Barbara Krueger and Cindy Sherman did a lot of work
to undermine the authority of the male gaze and commercialism
and all that stuff. For instance, Krueger's Your Body is
a Battleground. She actually interpreted a lot of photography like
advertisements to sort of undermine the way that media looked
(27:20):
at women at the time.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Yeah, and we don't have a lot of time to
delve into feminist photography, but they definitely did spring up
in the seventies, eighties, nineties and a lot of it
was more political and examining like the women's female body
and the whole thing of the male gaze and sort
of playing with all of those concepts, sort of infusing
(27:45):
feminism with photography. And speaking though of Cindy Sherman, I
think it's pretty notable that in twenty eleven she sold
the most expensive photograph in history. It was a nineteen
eighty one self portrait called Untitled, and it's sold for
almost three point nine million dollars.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Geez.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
But in response to, oh, you know, someone's buying this
female produced piece of art, what does this mean? And
essentially art critics were like, it just means that art
is funny money. You know, you just plunk down a
lot of money. There's a weird kind of competition among
art collectors, and it's really no big deal that it
was produced by Cindy Sherman, as opposed to say, man
(28:27):
ray yeah.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
Moving forward to today, a photographer Paul Melcher started a
debate on the Black Star Rising blog when he was
talking about the importance or the unimportance of calling out
photographers genders and how that affected anybody. He says that
it seems that political correctness has now started to reach
(28:50):
the shores of the previously sexless island of photography. It
appears that some people with a highly developed social conscience
want you to know the gender of a photographer whose
picture you would as if it made any difference.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
And then Melissa Golden, who's a photographer who we actually
worked with at our college newspaper we did, made a
public response to Melcher saying, you know, like, essentially the
idea that the gender shouldn't matter is true. He's got
a good point. But she talks about how when she
was fighting her way into the often boys club of
(29:26):
professional photography, especially if you look at more veteran figures,
it is dominated by men, and she said, it took
me too long to figure out the drinking massive amounts
of alcohol and putting up with sexual harassment. We're not
the tests I had to pass to join the club.
And she said, I now know it took me so
long because I didn't have a strong senior female photographer
or editor willing to take me in and tell me
(29:48):
there's another better way. And this kind of brings up
the whole question of you know, like, is feminism still useful? Well, yeah,
it is, because we don't live in a society that's
free from sexism, and we're not living in this gender
equal utopias. So unfortunately, gender does still matter. I mean,
I wish that Melcher was right and that it is
(30:09):
just a sexless island, as he says, no.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
But the debate, it seems like the debate on whether
gender matters has been going on forever and it will
continue to do so because you have people like Princeton
Women's Studies and Art and Archaeology professor Carol Armstrong, who
says that male and female photographers have always ventured into
the same territory, but women do so with more empathy
for the subject. Then you have British writers slash critics
(30:35):
Griselda Pollock and Janet Wolf who asserted that there is
no intrinsic feminine or masculine essence, only complex networks of
culturally conditioned markers that construct what superficially appears to.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Be coherent gender identity.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
So essentially, what they're saying in the book Photography, a
Cultural History by Mary Warner Marian is that there are
no gender differences in how men and women approach photography right,
and that is echoed in a blog post on the
News Photographers Association of Canada blog by Renee Blackstone. She
(31:12):
interviewed a number of female photojournalists on the question of
whether gender differences exist because you do that issue of oh, well,
women have more empathy with their subjects. Women might be
able to approach a situation, a more sensitive situation, better
than a male photographer could. And some of the photojournalists said, yeah,
(31:34):
women might be better in situations where quote unquote a
kind of intimacy is required and a certain woman to
woman trust can be developed. But a lot of them said,
you know what, there's really no difference. Men and women
are both doing social documentary work and in the same
way that women can go into places that men can't.
I would say that men can probably go into plenty
(31:55):
of places that women can't. And I don't know, I
have a little bit of hesitation just saying that, you know,
what women bring to the table are more finely tuned emotions.
I think that while, yes, your emotions will influence your
art and your work, I don't know that that should
(32:15):
be you know, the platform on which we call for
equality or progress. Yeah, well, simply because I would think
that veteran male photographers would give no hoots to quote
myself about your emotion, especially in the workplace. Yeah, and
I'm also I mean, like we're sitting here speaking as
(32:38):
not experienced photographers or photojournalists. But you know, it does
make me wonder whether that's really a useful argument. And
I think that's one reason why if you do talk
to a lot of women about this, that there, at
the end of the day, there aren't really gender differences
in how women and men take pictures what we see
and don't see.
Speaker 6 (32:58):
I mean when I worked at the news paper, I
mean half of our staff, half of our pheto staff
was men, half was women, and.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
They were all brilliant.
Speaker 6 (33:07):
But they weren't Maybe it's because we were in a
metropolitan newspaper and we weren't sending people to Iraq or
anything to take dangerous pictures.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
But it's like, you know, they went to.
Speaker 6 (33:15):
Their various fair county fair assignments and you know, criminal
trial assignments and took pictures and I mean, they were
all brilliant. It wasn't a case of like we need
to send Jackie to this one because she's a girl,
and we need to send you know, Mike to this
one because he's a boy.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
Jackie is going to the baby judging contest, Jack's going
to the NASCAR race. Go but numbers wives though there
are more men involved in photography. According to the National
Endowment for the Arts Artists in the Workforce survey from
nineteen ninety to two thousand and five, forty two point
(33:50):
eight percent of all the people who listed themselves as
professional photographers were women, so less than half, but this
was also a compelling statistic. Sixty percent of those women
were under thirty five, meaning that men comprise a majority
of the veteran successful photographers. So photography is also one
(34:11):
area where you know, women are wondering whether or not
there is some kind of off ramp. Maybe it has
to do with, like Melissa Golden talked about, not having
you know, the senior editor to encourage her onward a
female mentor there's a question of why in a lot
of art schools, women might be out numbering men in
(34:32):
the student body in terms of who's studying photography, but
once they get out there seems to they seem to
thin out.
Speaker 6 (34:38):
Yeah, Well, what really thins out is pay for women,
because according to this report, there's a major pay gap
the median income for a male photographer is thirty five
five hundred dollars, for a woman it's sixteen three hundred.
Speaker 5 (34:54):
And I think maybe as a result of those of
a huge pay gap like that women photographers have, I've
really been honing in on certain areas like wedding photography
and the family portraiture, to which there was an article
over at The Grindstone talking about the ghettoization of female
(35:14):
photographers in weddings, saying, all, we can shoot our weddings,
it's all people tosses their weddings.
Speaker 6 (35:19):
Well, I don't think that's true, but you can. I
also know that you can make boku de bucks or
ok he as a wedding photographer.
Speaker 5 (35:25):
Well that's what I'm saying, in order to close up
that income gap, get into wedding photography. But but I
am curious to hear from female photographers out there whether
they are instantly assumed to be you know, if you're
a woman walking around with a camera around your neck,
you know, are you just assumed to be on your
way to a wedding?
Speaker 6 (35:45):
Well, you know, you talked about whether there were female
role models or mentors in the industry. Feon a Rogers,
who started the Firecracker Photographic Grant in twenty eleven to
support women photographers, says that well, there seems to me
to be an abundance of way and studying photography. Would
appear that a large percentage leave education and take on administrational,
(36:06):
organizational or nurturing roles within the visual arts. And she
goes on to say that Firecracker was established as a
way of supporting women photographers and linking them with a
wider public and industry audience.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Which is good. I mean it sounds like within the
industry there is a greater effort to link women up
with other women to offer more support. Women are also
making strides on their own. This is coming from the
British Journal of Photography. It was an article talking about
how women are really coming into their own with social portraiture,
(36:38):
which was traditionally male dominated, and they've been scooping up awards. Recently,
the Master's Photographers Association awarded its sole fellowship to photographer
Joe de Banzi, and that's such a big deal when
you consider that out of the sixty five fellowships ever
awarded by MPa, only eight have gone to women. And similarly,
(37:03):
Lisa Visser was awarded the British Professional Photographer of the
Year or in two thousand and eight. So I mean they're,
you know, obviously like women are doing very well at
their jobs and climbing up through the ranks. But it
seems like maybe it's just we're catching up from such
a long legacy. And by we, I mean female photographers,
(37:25):
not myself.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Right, I mean, I'll take pictures of my iPhone.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
But there have been a lot of sources, not just
this British Journal of Photography piece, but a lot of
other areas on the Internet are talking about how digital photography,
the ease of use, has made it possible for more
women to get into photography, and that makes my eyes twitch.
There was one comment on a blog I read where
(37:49):
this man who was like, look, you know, I'm young
and i don't have a lot of experience, but I'm
just saying that maybe from the early days of photography,
where cameras were highly technical and it was difficult, maybe
women just weren't interested. And now that things are digital,
women are interested because they just want to take pictures
of their kids. And I mean I pushed my computer
out the window after I read that, but that digital
(38:09):
photography discussion is something that's going on, and I think,
knowing some of the amazing female photographers that I do,
I think that's crap.
Speaker 5 (38:21):
Oh yeah, I mean again that it does bring up
I mean, that's kind of not so benevolent sexism saying
that since it's easier now, women want to do that.
And I feel like we could do and listeners, if
you have an idea of how we could do this,
I think we could do a whole episode on Instagram
because because it is so female dominated, women love it
(38:43):
and it is becoming this huge social media force and
I think it'd be interested interesting to look into that more.
But yeah, I mean I arguments like that make me
cringe that oh now we're now we're interested just because
it's simple men, you enjoy ease of use well and
a good user experience. Okay, So anyway, I want to
(39:06):
get riled up here, but I hope that we have
photographers listening. And again, I know that there were so
many notable women behind the camera that we did not
have time to talk about. Hopefully I can do like
a big blog round up maybe. Unfortunately, the challenging thing
about setting up galleries for photography to show women's work
(39:28):
is copyright issues, right, and we ain't going to violate them,
but I'll do my best to try to find pictures
that we can show of these women's incredible work. And
we haven't even talked very much to about younger contemporary
women who are climbing through the ranks as well.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
Right, So yeah, if you know any of that, please
give us a shout.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
Yeah, and shout out to photographer Lizzie if she's listening
to this podcast, your photos are amazing.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
And Melissa Golden, yeah, if you're listening, what up?
Speaker 5 (39:57):
And all the all the photographers out there, send us
emails though. Moms Stuff at Discovery dot com will be
curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this, and of course
you can find us on Facebook if you'd like to
send us a message that way, or tweet us at
Mom's Stuff podcasts. And before we get to a couple
of your letters, let's take a quick break, Caroline, and
(40:17):
then we'll come back. And now back to our letters.
Speaker 6 (40:33):
I have one here from Madeline talking about cleanliness and
same sex households. She says, I totally agree that men
and women don't have innate differences in cleanliness just culturally
impose differences. I am a bisexual woman and I've been
in monogamous relationships with men and women. In my experience,
there is just as much variation within men and women
(40:53):
in terms of how clean people are. I have been
with clean men, filthy men, clean women, filthy women, et cetera. However,
in my relationships with the opposite sex, there has been
that unspoken assumption that I will be cleaning up. This
can easily be remedied by dividing chores and letting your
boyfriend dude whatever do his chores in his own time.
(41:13):
With my same sex relationships, chre delegation has been smoother
since we have both been trained to constantly be.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Thinking about how we look.
Speaker 6 (41:21):
Luckily, my fiance and wife to be is in the
healthy middle ground of the slob OCD continuum.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
Congratulations, Madeline, and thank you well.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
I've got an email here from someone who would like
to remain anonymous because she's writing in about her labia plasty.
She writes, I had a labia plasty at the age
of fifteen, and it dramatically changed my life for the better.
I was born with an enlarged labia minora that hung
out of my vagina, and it never bothered me until
dreaded puberty hit. The skin got longer and larger and
(41:53):
would rub on the inside of my underwear and become irritated.
So I got to the point to where I could
no longer do any vigorous exercise or pants that were
tighter than sweatpants. Noticing a drastic change in my life,
my mother asked what was going on, and I finally
admitted my problem, and she took me to the gynecologist.
I was booked for my Labiya plastis soon after and
was deeply satisfied with the results. I understand that most
(42:15):
women who go through the surgery do it simply for
cosmetic reasons, but I thought you should know that some
of us out there have done it out of necessity.
We don't just talk about it because it can be
quite embarrassing and require us a long backstory about our
misfit vaginas. I certainly don't share this at parties or
even with my closest friends. However, the anonymity of the
Internet has inspired me to share my surgery story to
(42:36):
let you know that I wasn't trying to please some man,
I was only horrified by the prospect of wearing sweatpants
and walking like an old lady for the rest of
my life. So thanks for sharing, because I think that
you know. It's stories like these that are important to
help drive home the point that every vagina is a
little bit different. And with that song, I think you Carol.
(43:00):
Send us your emails Momstuff at Discovery dot com. You
can also Facebook us or tweet us at mom Stuff podcast.
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Go to YouTube dot com slash stuff mom Never Told
(43:21):
You and click subscribe if you don't mind, and watch us.
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on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks dot com.
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