May 6, 2013 • 41 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 photographers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From House to
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and let's offer a snapshot of
women and photography, a portrait of women's contributions to the
(00:26):
field of photography. Caroline filtering the knowledge for you. This
won't be an Instagram Wait, okay, I don't have a
punt for Instagram. It's too bad. Uh. Yeah, we're gonna
talk about women in photography, which is a huge subject,
but we're gonna offer some historical highlights and also talk
(00:47):
about gender and photography today, more behind the lens, 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. Yeah, Frenchman Louis de Gere
(01:08):
perfects his Daguerreo type, 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 we
have the introduction of the mass marketed Kodak box camera,
and part of marketing this Codak camera and this Kodak
technology was the Kodak girl in the Kodak Girl appears
(01:31):
in the company's national advertising, a character embodying independence and travel,
and the whole Kodak Girl thing was so significant for
women 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
(01:53):
brand new technology, and Kodak was like, you know what,
women would love this new hand called easier to use camera,
and their advertising images showed women shooting pictures at home,
out with friends, having a great time, just snapping their
old timey photographs. You know, you mentioned the Secretary episode
(02:15):
and the typewriter, and I actually was thinking the same
thing as I was reading this stuff, um, 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 just get into those jobs. It
(02:35):
wasn't considered a male pursuit. It was kind of the
same with photography. Yes, there was technology and 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. Yeah, and in n when Kodak released
its first Brownie camera, which was lightweight and more inexpensive.
(02:58):
This also revolutionize things for women. And I like how
Kodak advertised it by saying there's a new pleasure on
every phase of photography while showing a woman having lots
of pleasure holding a Brownie camera. Just carry it around,
like when hipsters wear fate glasses. That's women just carrying
(03:18):
brownies around. I'm going to 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 my
thoughts exactly, all right, So you know we're talking about
women being outside and and following different hobbies and things.
(03:38):
In the mid to late nineteenth century, we get bicycles
and bicycle clubs, and then photography clubs and photography bicycle clubs. 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 pick there's things outside that she sees.
(04:02):
Is like this this huge craze for a bit, and
it seems a little dangerous because I can imagine that
wielding a camera while riding a bicycle. Hopefully they stopped, 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, and people who were debating it at the
(04:24):
time we're saying, like, well, it seems a little risque,
but I guess it's a it's an acceptable form of
women getting their exercise. And photography in general exploded. I mean,
ever since you know, degere perfected the de guerreotype, studios
were popping up everywhere. Yeah, especially out west. According to
(04:45):
found s f 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. So it
really wasn't weird. I mean, it was like, okay, well,
(05:06):
it's weird that there's a woman out here on the frontier,
but it wasn't necessarily weird. Little woman would be working
a 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,
(05:31):
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. In the same way, again echoing that
Secretary podcast and how early typists were earning a lot
(05:51):
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 like by by men who were
out there for the gold Rush. From eighty nine hundred,
there were seventies seven working female photographers and two hundred
and five women earning a living in related trades, along
(06:13):
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 the gold rust population was very sizeable. Yeah. And
one woman who advertised her services out there was Julia Shannon,
(06:35):
who in eighteen fifty put an ad in the San
Francisco Alta newspaper notice di guariotypes taken by a lady.
Lady is capitalized. Those wishing to have a good likeness
are informed that they can have them taken in a
very superior manner, and by a real live lady too,
in Clay Street, opposite the St. Francis Hotel, at a
very moderate charge. Give her a collgence. Yeah, and I
(06:58):
can imagine that Julia Shannon 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. Right,
you've been panning for gold all day, Come in and
see a lady. But why, Caroline, were women able to
(07:18):
pursue photography in these early years. It wasn't just because
of the Kodak girl. Um, It's that's that whole fact
of the technology being brand new and therefore not gender
segregated yet. Yeah, and there was a lack of established
schools basically that could deny them admittance. So it's like
(07:38):
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. And it
really became the case that photography studios were one of
the first businesses they were okay for women to own
(08:00):
and run, and in the western particular, in this you know,
this frontier environment. It's interesting that photography became acceptable and
even desirable for women working in say San Francisco's photo industry,
because social critics at the time argued that adventurous women
needed a suitable occupation, like being a studio photographer, uh,
(08:24):
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. That always happens
every time I'm bored. Every time I'm bored. So by
one documented women working in the photographic industry, and by
nineteen hundred women composed ever of America's professional registered photographers.
(08:50):
But just because women were wheelding 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 or
(09:10):
fine art photography, women were really you know, finding their stride.
But in advertising that was something that was already an entrenched,
male dominated industry. Yeah, in the early twentieth century, agencies
for selling photographs, according to Jermaine Kral, seemed to have
been reserved for men. However, the increase in advertising in Germany,
(09:31):
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 Auerbach and Gret Stern, who were
praised for their quote inborn womanly instinct for the delicate
nuances of textiles, which sounds like a whole lot of
benevolent sexism, saying, Oh, you're so good at this because
(09:54):
you're a woman. You're so good at knowing what cloth
looks like because you're empathetic, but by that same regard
to 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 an advertising, fashion, and publicity photography, and
(10:17):
in a ninety five summary of photography related opportunities for women,
one commentator urge women to earn quote unquote pin money
by supplying magazines with pictures of domestic subjects between two
dollars and five dollars to 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
(10:41):
kinds of jobs were allowing women to earn more wages
than they would in other industries, they were still being
paid about half as much as men doing the same thing, right,
and another commentator on this 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.
(11:04):
Another guy dismissed women as a handy photo gadget for
their photographer husbands. So they're just like an accessory. 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 you know, often wives with them
(11:25):
who were traveling and helping them develop their films, set
up their shots, doing all of this very integral work. Um.
But 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
(11:47):
as Better Homes and Gardens, House, Beautiful House and Garden
and McCall's. And after the war, commissions were typically given
to women on other women and on minority groups topics
that editors considered less important. And that question of our
women relegated to shooting women's interests and domestic related subjects
(12:09):
is something that we'll talk about today because it's a
debate that is still going on for women in photography
in two thousand thirteen. Yeah, well, so do you want
to talk about some early pioneers before we get into
the gender discussion. Let's do it. Let's do it. Lady
Clementina Hawarden is one of Britain's first female photographers. This
(12:29):
is coming from her profile in 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. Yeah.
She often shot her daughter's Isabella, Grace, Clementina and Florence
Elizabeth in romantic and sensual poses. Uh. She had pretty
(12:54):
iconic set dressings that were usually covered with gossamer curtains,
a freestanding her, a small chest of drawers, and Empire
star wallpaper. So she definitely developed a look. But even
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,
(13:17):
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. In eighteen sixty
three and eighteen sixty four she won silver medals from
the Photographic Society, and she had admirers including Louis Carroll
(13:39):
and photography specialist Frances get spickernell Um in recent times
has said that the photography recognition she received was a
tremendous achievement. She said, most photography was very masculine and
mostly architectural, so these elegant feminine shots really stood out
at that time. Now, a contemporary of how Arden's was
(14:01):
Juliet 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 like moved away and we're like, here, mom,
have a camera to keep yourself entertained, and they all
(14:23):
know what happens to women who aren't occupied. Oh, that's
right in this camera. M 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
(14:44):
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. Yeah, she was a very a quick learner.
Within a year and a half she'd sold eighty Prince
to the Victorian Albert Museum. But she also went about
(15:07):
in an entrepreneurial fashion, rapidly copyrighting her work, exhibiting her work,
and she even established her on two room studio. But
she did get snubbed, as I said, from some of
her critics at the time. In the Photographic Journal in
eighteen sixty five, someone commented that Mrs Cameron exhibits a
(15:28):
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 such
criticism infuriated Cameron. But she pretty much got the last
lap because, for instance, a lot of our information about
hers coming from the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
(15:51):
So she certainly put her stamp on art history at large.
That's exactly right. Moving forward just a little bit, we
have Francis Benjamin Johnston, who's one of America's first and
foremost women photographer. 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
(16:13):
really helped her out is Johnson's family's social status. They
gave her access to the First family and leading Washington
political figures. She actually that helped her launch her career
as a photojournalist and a portrait photographer. Yeah. For instance,
thanks to a letter of introduction from uh Teddy Roosevelt,
no big deal, Johnston boarded Admiral Dewey's flagship and interviewed
(16:36):
him and route to the Philippines, Which I mean, this
is going on in the late eighteen hundred's, early nineten hundreds,
and Johnson was, you know, a pretty pioneering woman in
general to be hanging out on a ship like that.
And there's this great iconic picture that she took. It's
a self portrait of her and she's sitting in a
(16:58):
chair hunched forward and she has her skirt pull up
to reveal her petticoat. She was very risque of the time.
I want to see she's smoking a cigarette too, and
she just it's a very masculine post. But you can
just tell from it that she gave no hoops about
(17:19):
what people thought of her. No hoots were given. And
in nineteen hundred, Johnston was chosen as one of two
American women delicates 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. Yeah, and
she was really promotional of women getting into photography. She
(17:40):
wrote a series of articles, for instance in the Ladies
Home Journal, and there was one articles she wrote called
what a Woman Can Do with a Camera 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 personal qualities, good common sense,
(18:00):
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 of the advice that would be
given to women looking to pick up the camera today.
But the thing is and and Johnston's story points to
(18:24):
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 the time, but
(18:45):
who have been pretty much ignored in photo history up
until recent decades. 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 and tree. 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
(19:07):
I want that picture. And so she was born in
the Bronx in nineteen o four and began work after
college as a commercial photographer, but she made rapid exponential
strides later in life, and in nine she became the
first photographer for Fortune magazine, and in nineteen thirty six,
a black and white photo of her has made the
(19:29):
cover of the first issue of Life magazine. 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 damn 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
(19:51):
the magazine, and her work became very famous at the time.
And she began as a commercial photographer documenting the Achievements
Corporation and then applied that dramatic style that she honed
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
(20:15):
at the time, and those pictures, I mean just shocked
audiences around the world. Um. 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 and you know,
took pictures of these these harrowing pictures of families who
(20:37):
were suffering at the time. And she was known for
her fearlessness in doing all of this. 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. Yeah, and I wish
there was some way. This is an audio podcast, and
so trying to describe photography in a very meaning full
(21:00):
way is a bit challenging. I wish there was some
kind of visual maybe with Google glasses, maybe you could
see a slide show right now of all of this photography. Um.
And there are so many more important female photographers that
we aren't even able to touch on in depth. I mean,
they're women like Dorothea Lange, Tina Medote, Image and Cunning Hand,
(21:20):
Diane Arbus, Helen Levitt, Annie Leeboitz, etcetera, etcetera. 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. Um. But we really want
to now dig into the issue of gender because we've
established that women in photography history have remained under represented,
(21:44):
even though you have you know, the Margaret Burke whites,
but she and I would say, in today's terms, someone
like Annie Leebwitz or even like Cindy Sherman. Uh. You know,
we have these big names, but it's just a handful
of them. And some wonder whether the industry still remains
male dominated because we've tried to kind of go back
and correct their record and give women their due, but
(22:09):
there's still more progress that needs to be made. And
as long as women have been in photography, women have
also been involved in trying to draw recognition to their
female colleagues in the industry. This starts really early. In
eighty nine, Catherine Weid Barnes and New York amateur photographer
petition for the Special Photography Awards for women to be eliminated.
(22:32):
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. 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
(22:53):
of undercuts progress because are we saying that, oh, well,
this is wonderful photography by women, or should we just say,
as Katherine Weed Barnes would would advocate for, oh what
a wonderful photograph and it doesn't matter. But the question
(23:13):
is then doesn't matter? I mean, in the nineteen sixties
and seventies, in the wake of feminist political action, gender
absolutely mattered. There is a new found interest sprang up
in women's photography, both 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
(23:37):
disappeared from the historical records. So you probably did for
that reason see things like that nineteen seventy monograph of
Frances Benjamin Johnston's work, and 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
(24:00):
of sexism. 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, Right,
It's more of that educational aspect, and that's why you
(24:21):
know there 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 of Photography Historical Survey
with fifty women photographers. In nineteen seventy nine, the International
Center for Photography sponsored recollections ten Women of Photography, which
(24:44):
was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
And it was around this time too, in the seventies
and moving into the eighties, that media savy 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 uh interpreted a lot of photography
(25:06):
like advertisements to sort of undermine the way that media
looked at women at the time. 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 uh, female body and the whole thing
(25:29):
of the male gaze and sort of playing with all
of those concepts, sort of infusing feminism with photography and uh.
Speaking though of Cindy Sherman, I think it's pretty notable
that in two thousand eleven, she's sold the most expensive
photograph in history. It was a self portrait called untitled,
(25:49):
and it's sold for almost three point nine million dollars
je But in response to oh, you know, someone's buying
this female produced piece of are what does this mean?
And essentially our critics were like, it just means that
art is funny money. You know, you just plunked down
a lot of money. There's a weird kind of competition
among art collectors, and it's really no big deal that
(26:13):
it was produced by Cindy Sherman as opposed to say
man ray Yeah. 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 and how that affected anybody.
(26:36):
He says that it seems that political correctness has now
started to reach 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 admire, as if it made
any difference. And then Melissa Golden, who's a photographer who
we actually worked with at our college newspapers, We did
(26:58):
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 professional photography, especially if you look at more
(27:18):
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
were 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 editor willing to take me in and tell
me there's another better way. And this kind of brings
(27:41):
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 utopia. So unfortunately, gender does
still matter. I mean, I wish that Melcher was right
and that it is just a excellus island, as he says,
(28:02):
but no, 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
(28:24):
critics Griselda Pollock and Janet Wolfe, who asserted that there
is no intrinsic feminine or masculine essence, only complex networks
of culturally conditioned markers that construct what superficially appears to
be coherent gender identity. So essentially, what they're saying in
the book Photography, a Cultural History by Mary Warner Marian
(28:45):
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
blogged by Renee Blackstone. She interviewed a number of female
photojournalists on the question of whether gender differences exists because
(29:07):
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, women
might be better in situations where quote unquote a kind
of intimacy is required and a certain woman to woman
(29:30):
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
of places that women can't. And I don't know, I
I have a little bit of hesitation just saying that,
(29:53):
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 be you know, the platform on which
we call for equality or progress. Yeah, well, simply because
(30:14):
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 not experienced photographers or photojournalists. But um, you know,
it does make me wonder whether that's really a useful argument.
(30:37):
And I think that's one reason why if you do
talk to a lot of women about this that they're
at the end of the day, there aren't really gender
differences and how women and men take pictures. What we
see and don't see. I mean when I worked at
the newspaper, I mean half of our staff, half of
our photo staff as men, half as women. And they
were all brilliant. But they weren't. Maybe it's because we
(30:58):
were in a metropolitan newspaper and we aren't sending people
to a rack or anything to take dangerous pictures. But
it's like, you know, they went to their various fair
county fair assignments and 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. We need
to send you know, Mike to this one because he's
(31:18):
a boy. Jackie is going to the baby judging contests.
Jack's going to the NASCAR race. Go um. But numbers wise, though,
there are more men involved in photography um. According to
the National Endowment for the Arts Artists in the Workforce
Survey from thousand and five, forty two eight percent of
(31:41):
all the people who listed themselves as professional photographers were women,
so less than half, but this was also a compelling statistic.
Sixt of those women were under thirty five, meaning that
men comprise the majority of the veteran successful photographers. So
photography is also one area where you know, women are
(32:02):
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 your
onward a female mentor um. There's a question of why
in a lot of art schools women might be out
numbering men in the student body in terms of who's
(32:23):
studying photography, but once they get out there seems to
they seem to thin out. Yeah, Well, what really thins
out is pay for women, because according to this report,
there's a major pay gap. The median income from male
photographer is thirty five thou five hundred dollars, for a
woman it's sixteen thousand, three hundred. And I think maybe
(32:44):
as a result of those of a huge pay gap
like that, women photographers have really been honing in on
certain areas like wedding photography and the family portraiture um
to which there was an article hole over at the
Grindstone talking about the ghettoization of female photographers and weddings, saying, all,
(33:06):
we can shoot our weddings as all people tosses their weddings.
Well I don't think that's true, but you can. I
also know that you can make boku de bucks or
as a wedding photographer. Well that's that's what I'm saying
order to close up that that income gap. Get into
wedding photography. But I but I am curious to hear
from female photographers out there, whether there they are instantly
(33:27):
assumed to be you know, if there 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? Well, you know, you talked about whether there
were female role models or mentors in the industry. Fiona Rodgers,
who started the Firecracker Photographic Grant in twenty eleven to
support women photographers, says that well, there seems to me
(33:48):
to be an abundance of women studying photography. Would appear
that a large percentage leave education and take on administrational,
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, which is good. I mean,
it sounds like within the industry there is a greater
(34:11):
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. Um.
It was an article talking about how women are really
coming into their own with social portraiture, which was traditionally
male dominated, and they've been scooping up awards. Recently, the
(34:33):
Master's Photographers Association awarded its sole fellowship to photographer Joe
to Banzi, and that's such a big deal when you
consider that out of the sixty five fellowships ever awarded
by m p A, only eight have gone to women.
And similarly, Lisa Visser was awarded the British Professional Photographer
(34:55):
of a Year or in two thousand and eight. So
I mean there, 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, not myself, right, I mean, I'll take pictures
(35:18):
in my iPhone. But um, there have been a lot
of sources, not just this British Journal of Photography, uh 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. Um. There was one
comment on a blog I read where this man who
(35:39):
was like, look, you know, I'm 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 photography discussion is
(36:01):
something that's going on, and I think, knowing some of
the amazing female photographers that I do, I think that's crap.
Oh yeah, I mean again that it brings 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,
(36:22):
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
and it is becoming this huge social media force. Um,
and I think it would be interested interesting to to
look into that more. But yeah, I mean I arguments
(36:43):
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 as well and a good user experience. Okay,
So anyway, I want to get riled up here. Um.
But I hope that we have photo bographers listening. And again,
I know that there were so many notable women behind
(37:06):
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 is copyright issues, and we ain't going
to violate them. But I will do my best to
try to find um pictures that we can show of
these women's incredible work. And we haven't even talked very
(37:29):
much too about younger contemporary women who were climbing through
the ranks as well. So yeah, if you know any
of that, please give us a shout yeah, and shout
out to photographer Lizzie if she's listening to this podcast,
your photos are amazing. And Melissa Golden, if you're listening,
what up and all the all the all the photographers
(37:49):
out there. Send us emails though mom Stuff at Discovery
dot Com'll 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 Stuff Podcasts. And before we get
to a couple of your letters, let's take a quick break, Caroline,
and then we'll come back back to own letters. I
(38:12):
have one here from Madeline talking about cleanliness in sane
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's just
as much variation within men and women in terms of
(38:33):
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
doud whatever do his chores in his own time. With
my same sex relationships, toward delegation has been smoother since
(38:56):
we have both been trained to constantly be thinking about
how we look. Luckily, my fiance and wife to be
is in the healthy middle ground of the slab O
c D continuum. Congratulations, Medaline, and thank you well. I've
got an email here from someone who would like to
remain anonymous because she's writing in about her lady a Plasti.
(39:17):
She writes, I had a laby of plassy at the
age of fifteen and 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
dreatted puberty hit. The skin got longer and larger and
would rub on the inside of my underwear and become irritated.
So I got to the point to where I could
(39:37):
no longer do any vigorous exercise or were pants that
were tighter than sweatpants. Noticing a drastic change in my life,
my mother asked me what was going on, and I
finally admitted my problem and she took me to the
gyna collegist. I was boked for my lady of plassy
soon after, and was deeply satisfied with results. I understand
that most women who go through this surgery do it
simply for cosmetic reasons, but I thought you should know
(39:58):
that some of us out there have on 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 let you know that I wasn't trying to
please some man. I was only horrified by the prospect
(40:19):
of wearing sweatpants and walking like an old lady or
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.
Thank you, Caroline. Send us to your emails Mom Stuff
(40:42):
at Discovery dot com. You can also Facebook us or
tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast. You can also follow
us while you're at it on Tumbler where it's stuff
mom Never Told You dot tumbler dot com. And we're
now on YouTube. You can watch us. That's right. Go
to YouTube dot com slash stuff mom Ever told You
and click subscribe if you don't mind, and watch us.
(41:03):
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. Does it how
stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From House to
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and let's offer a snapshot of
women and photography, a portrait of women's contributions to the
(00:26):
field of photography. Caroline filtering the knowledge for you. This
won't be an Instagram Wait, okay, I don't have a
punt for Instagram. It's too bad. Uh. Yeah, we're gonna
talk about women in photography, which is a huge subject,
but we're gonna offer some historical highlights and also talk
(00:47):
about gender and photography today, more behind the lens, 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. Yeah, Frenchman Louis de Gere
(01:08):
perfects his Daguerreo type, 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 we
have the introduction of the mass marketed Kodak box camera,
and part of marketing this Codak camera and this Kodak
technology was the Kodak girl in the Kodak Girl appears
(01:31):
in the company's national advertising, a character embodying independence and travel,
and the whole Kodak Girl thing was so significant for
women 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
(01:53):
brand new technology, and Kodak was like, you know what,
women would love this new hand called easier to use camera,
and their advertising images showed women shooting pictures at home,
out with friends, having a great time, just snapping their
old timey photographs. You know, you mentioned the Secretary episode
(02:15):
and the typewriter, and I actually was thinking the same
thing as I was reading this stuff, um, 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 just get into those jobs. It
(02:35):
wasn't considered a male pursuit. It was kind of the
same with photography. Yes, there was technology and 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. Yeah, and in n when Kodak released
its first Brownie camera, which was lightweight and more inexpensive.
(02:58):
This also revolutionize things for women. And I like how
Kodak advertised it by saying there's a new pleasure on
every phase of photography while showing a woman having lots
of pleasure holding a Brownie camera. Just carry it around,
like when hipsters wear fate glasses. That's women just carrying
(03:18):
brownies around. I'm going to 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 my
thoughts exactly, all right, So you know we're talking about
women being outside and and following different hobbies and things.
(03:38):
In the mid to late nineteenth century, we get bicycles
and bicycle clubs, and then photography clubs and photography bicycle clubs. 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 pick there's things outside that she sees.
(04:02):
Is like this this huge craze for a bit, and
it seems a little dangerous because I can imagine that
wielding a camera while riding a bicycle. Hopefully they stopped, 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, and people who were debating it at the
(04:24):
time we're saying, like, well, it seems a little risque,
but I guess it's a it's an acceptable form of
women getting their exercise. And photography in general exploded. I mean,
ever since you know, degere perfected the de guerreotype, studios
were popping up everywhere. Yeah, especially out west. According to
(04:45):
found s f 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. So it
really wasn't weird. I mean, it was like, okay, well,
(05:06):
it's weird that there's a woman out here on the frontier,
but it wasn't necessarily weird. Little woman would be working
a 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,
(05:31):
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. In the same way, again echoing that
Secretary podcast and how early typists were earning a lot
(05:51):
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 like by by men who were
out there for the gold Rush. From eighty nine hundred,
there were seventies seven working female photographers and two hundred
and five women earning a living in related trades, along
(06:13):
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 the gold rust population was very sizeable. Yeah. And
one woman who advertised her services out there was Julia Shannon,
(06:35):
who in eighteen fifty put an ad in the San
Francisco Alta newspaper notice di guariotypes taken by a lady.
Lady is capitalized. Those wishing to have a good likeness
are informed that they can have them taken in a
very superior manner, and by a real live lady too,
in Clay Street, opposite the St. Francis Hotel, at a
very moderate charge. Give her a collgence. Yeah, and I
(06:58):
can imagine that Julia Shannon 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. Right,
you've been panning for gold all day, Come in and
see a lady. But why, Caroline, were women able to
(07:18):
pursue photography in these early years. It wasn't just because
of the Kodak girl. Um, It's that's that whole fact
of the technology being brand new and therefore not gender
segregated yet. Yeah, and there was a lack of established
schools basically that could deny them admittance. So it's like
(07:38):
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. And it
really became the case that photography studios were one of
the first businesses they were okay for women to own
(08:00):
and run, and in the western particular, in this you know,
this frontier environment. It's interesting that photography became acceptable and
even desirable for women working in say San Francisco's photo industry,
because social critics at the time argued that adventurous women
needed a suitable occupation, like being a studio photographer, uh,
(08:24):
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. That always happens
every time I'm bored. Every time I'm bored. So by
one documented women working in the photographic industry, and by
nineteen hundred women composed ever of America's professional registered photographers.
(08:50):
But just because women were wheelding 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 or
(09:10):
fine art photography, women were really you know, finding their stride.
But in advertising that was something that was already an entrenched,
male dominated industry. Yeah, in the early twentieth century, agencies
for selling photographs, according to Jermaine Kral, seemed to have
been reserved for men. However, the increase in advertising in Germany,
(09:31):
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 Auerbach and Gret Stern, who were
praised for their quote inborn womanly instinct for the delicate
nuances of textiles, which sounds like a whole lot of
benevolent sexism, saying, Oh, you're so good at this because
(09:54):
you're a woman. You're so good at knowing what cloth
looks like because you're empathetic, but by that same regard
to 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 an advertising, fashion, and publicity photography, and
(10:17):
in a ninety five summary of photography related opportunities for women,
one commentator urge women to earn quote unquote pin money
by supplying magazines with pictures of domestic subjects between two
dollars and five dollars to 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
(10:41):
kinds of jobs were allowing women to earn more wages
than they would in other industries, they were still being
paid about half as much as men doing the same thing, right,
and another commentator on this 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.
(11:04):
Another guy dismissed women as a handy photo gadget for
their photographer husbands. So they're just like an accessory. 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 you know, often wives with them
(11:25):
who were traveling and helping them develop their films, set
up their shots, doing all of this very integral work. Um.
But 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
(11:47):
as Better Homes and Gardens, House, Beautiful House and Garden
and McCall's. And after the war, commissions were typically given
to women on other women and on minority groups topics
that editors considered less important. And that question of our
women relegated to shooting women's interests and domestic related subjects
(12:09):
is something that we'll talk about today because it's a
debate that is still going on for women in photography
in two thousand thirteen. Yeah, well, so do you want
to talk about some early pioneers before we get into
the gender discussion. Let's do it. Let's do it. Lady
Clementina Hawarden is one of Britain's first female photographers. This
(12:29):
is coming from her profile in 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. Yeah.
She often shot her daughter's Isabella, Grace, Clementina and Florence
Elizabeth in romantic and sensual poses. Uh. She had pretty
(12:54):
iconic set dressings that were usually covered with gossamer curtains,
a freestanding her, a small chest of drawers, and Empire
star wallpaper. So she definitely developed a look. But even
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,
(13:17):
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. In eighteen sixty
three and eighteen sixty four she won silver medals from
the Photographic Society, and she had admirers including Louis Carroll
(13:39):
and photography specialist Frances get spickernell Um in recent times
has said that the photography recognition she received was a
tremendous achievement. She said, most photography was very masculine and
mostly architectural, so these elegant feminine shots really stood out
at that time. Now, a contemporary of how Arden's was
(14:01):
Juliet 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 like moved away and we're like, here, mom,
have a camera to keep yourself entertained, and they all
(14:23):
know what happens to women who aren't occupied. Oh, that's
right in this camera. M 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
(14:44):
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. Yeah, she was a very a quick learner.
Within a year and a half she'd sold eighty Prince
to the Victorian Albert Museum. But she also went about
(15:07):
in an entrepreneurial fashion, rapidly copyrighting her work, exhibiting her work,
and she even established her on two room studio. But
she did get snubbed, as I said, from some of
her critics at the time. In the Photographic Journal in
eighteen sixty five, someone commented that Mrs Cameron exhibits a
(15:28):
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 such
criticism infuriated Cameron. But she pretty much got the last
lap because, for instance, a lot of our information about
hers coming from the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
(15:51):
So she certainly put her stamp on art history at large.
That's exactly right. Moving forward just a little bit, we
have Francis Benjamin Johnston, who's one of America's first and
foremost women photographer. 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
(16:13):
really helped her out is Johnson's family's social status. They
gave her access to the First family and leading Washington
political figures. She actually that helped her launch her career
as a photojournalist and a portrait photographer. Yeah. For instance,
thanks to a letter of introduction from uh Teddy Roosevelt,
no big deal, Johnston boarded Admiral Dewey's flagship and interviewed
(16:36):
him and route to the Philippines, Which I mean, this
is going on in the late eighteen hundred's, early nineten hundreds,
and Johnson was, you know, a pretty pioneering woman in
general to be hanging out on a ship like that.
And there's this great iconic picture that she took. It's
a self portrait of her and she's sitting in a
(16:58):
chair hunched forward and she has her skirt pull up
to reveal her petticoat. She was very risque of the time.
I want to see she's smoking a cigarette too, and
she just it's a very masculine post. But you can
just tell from it that she gave no hoops about
(17:19):
what people thought of her. No hoots were given. And
in nineteen hundred, Johnston was chosen as one of two
American women delicates 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. Yeah, and
she was really promotional of women getting into photography. She
(17:40):
wrote a series of articles, for instance in the Ladies
Home Journal, and there was one articles she wrote called
what a Woman Can Do with a Camera 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 personal qualities, good common sense,
(18:00):
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 of the advice that would be
given to women looking to pick up the camera today.
But the thing is and and Johnston's story points to
(18:24):
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 the time, but
(18:45):
who have been pretty much ignored in photo history up
until recent decades. 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 and tree. 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
(19:07):
I want that picture. And so she was born in
the Bronx in nineteen o four and began work after
college as a commercial photographer, but she made rapid exponential
strides later in life, and in nine she became the
first photographer for Fortune magazine, and in nineteen thirty six,
a black and white photo of her has made the
(19:29):
cover of the first issue of Life magazine. 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 damn 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
(19:51):
the magazine, and her work became very famous at the time.
And she began as a commercial photographer documenting the Achievements
Corporation and then applied that dramatic style that she honed
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
(20:15):
at the time, and those pictures, I mean just shocked
audiences around the world. Um. 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 and you know,
took pictures of these these harrowing pictures of families who
(20:37):
were suffering at the time. And she was known for
her fearlessness in doing all of this. 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. Yeah, and I wish
there was some way. This is an audio podcast, and
so trying to describe photography in a very meaning full
(21:00):
way is a bit challenging. I wish there was some
kind of visual maybe with Google glasses, maybe you could
see a slide show right now of all of this photography. Um.
And there are so many more important female photographers that
we aren't even able to touch on in depth. I mean,
they're women like Dorothea Lange, Tina Medote, Image and Cunning Hand,
(21:20):
Diane Arbus, Helen Levitt, Annie Leeboitz, etcetera, etcetera. 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. Um. But we really want
to now dig into the issue of gender because we've
established that women in photography history have remained under represented,
(21:44):
even though you have you know, the Margaret Burke whites,
but she and I would say, in today's terms, someone
like Annie Leebwitz or even like Cindy Sherman. Uh. You know,
we have these big names, but it's just a handful
of them. And some wonder whether the industry still remains
male dominated because we've tried to kind of go back
and correct their record and give women their due, but
(22:09):
there's still more progress that needs to be made. And
as long as women have been in photography, women have
also been involved in trying to draw recognition to their
female colleagues in the industry. This starts really early. In
eighty nine, Catherine Weid Barnes and New York amateur photographer
petition for the Special Photography Awards for women to be eliminated.
(22:32):
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. 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
(22:53):
of undercuts progress because are we saying that, oh, well,
this is wonderful photography by women, or should we just say,
as Katherine Weed Barnes would would advocate for, oh what
a wonderful photograph and it doesn't matter. But the question
(23:13):
is then doesn't matter? I mean, in the nineteen sixties
and seventies, in the wake of feminist political action, gender
absolutely mattered. There is a new found interest sprang up
in women's photography, both 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
(23:37):
disappeared from the historical records. So you probably did for
that reason see things like that nineteen seventy monograph of
Frances Benjamin Johnston's work, and 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
(24:00):
of sexism. 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, Right,
It's more of that educational aspect, and that's why you
(24:21):
know there 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 of Photography Historical Survey
with fifty women photographers. In nineteen seventy nine, the International
Center for Photography sponsored recollections ten Women of Photography, which
(24:44):
was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
And it was around this time too, in the seventies
and moving into the eighties, that media savy 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 uh interpreted a lot of photography
(25:06):
like advertisements to sort of undermine the way that media
looked at women at the time. 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 uh, female body and the whole thing
(25:29):
of the male gaze and sort of playing with all
of those concepts, sort of infusing feminism with photography and uh.
Speaking though of Cindy Sherman, I think it's pretty notable
that in two thousand eleven, she's sold the most expensive
photograph in history. It was a self portrait called untitled,
(25:49):
and it's sold for almost three point nine million dollars
je But in response to oh, you know, someone's buying
this female produced piece of are what does this mean?
And essentially our critics were like, it just means that
art is funny money. You know, you just plunked down
a lot of money. There's a weird kind of competition
among art collectors, and it's really no big deal that
(26:13):
it was produced by Cindy Sherman as opposed to say
man ray Yeah. 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 and how that affected anybody.
(26:36):
He says that it seems that political correctness has now
started to reach 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 admire, as if it made
any difference. And then Melissa Golden, who's a photographer who
we actually worked with at our college newspapers, We did
(26:58):
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 professional photography, especially if you look at more
(27:18):
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
were 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 editor willing to take me in and tell
me there's another better way. And this kind of brings
(27:41):
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 utopia. So unfortunately, gender does
still matter. I mean, I wish that Melcher was right
and that it is just a excellus island, as he says,
(28:02):
but no, 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
(28:24):
critics Griselda Pollock and Janet Wolfe, who asserted that there
is no intrinsic feminine or masculine essence, only complex networks
of culturally conditioned markers that construct what superficially appears to
be coherent gender identity. So essentially, what they're saying in
the book Photography, a Cultural History by Mary Warner Marian
(28:45):
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
blogged by Renee Blackstone. She interviewed a number of female
photojournalists on the question of whether gender differences exists because
(29:07):
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, women
might be better in situations where quote unquote a kind
of intimacy is required and a certain woman to woman
(29:30):
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
of places that women can't. And I don't know, I
I have a little bit of hesitation just saying that,
(29:53):
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 be you know, the platform on which
we call for equality or progress. Yeah, well, simply because
(30:14):
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 not experienced photographers or photojournalists. But um, you know,
it does make me wonder whether that's really a useful argument.
(30:37):
And I think that's one reason why if you do
talk to a lot of women about this that they're
at the end of the day, there aren't really gender
differences and how women and men take pictures. What we
see and don't see. I mean when I worked at
the newspaper, I mean half of our staff, half of
our photo staff as men, half as women. And they
were all brilliant. But they weren't. Maybe it's because we
(30:58):
were in a metropolitan newspaper and we aren't sending people
to a rack or anything to take dangerous pictures. But
it's like, you know, they went to their various fair
county fair assignments and 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. We need
to send you know, Mike to this one because he's
(31:18):
a boy. Jackie is going to the baby judging contests.
Jack's going to the NASCAR race. Go um. But numbers wise, though,
there are more men involved in photography um. According to
the National Endowment for the Arts Artists in the Workforce
Survey from thousand and five, forty two eight percent of
(31:41):
all the people who listed themselves as professional photographers were women,
so less than half, but this was also a compelling statistic.
Sixt of those women were under thirty five, meaning that
men comprise the majority of the veteran successful photographers. So
photography is also one area where you know, women are
(32:02):
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 your
onward a female mentor um. There's a question of why
in a lot of art schools women might be out
numbering men in the student body in terms of who's
(32:23):
studying photography, but once they get out there seems to
they seem to thin out. Yeah, Well, what really thins
out is pay for women, because according to this report,
there's a major pay gap. The median income from male
photographer is thirty five thou five hundred dollars, for a
woman it's sixteen thousand, three hundred. And I think maybe
(32:44):
as a result of those of a huge pay gap
like that, women photographers have really been honing in on
certain areas like wedding photography and the family portraiture um
to which there was an article hole over at the
Grindstone talking about the ghettoization of female photographers and weddings, saying, all,
(33:06):
we can shoot our weddings as all people tosses their weddings.
Well I don't think that's true, but you can. I
also know that you can make boku de bucks or
as a wedding photographer. Well that's that's what I'm saying
order to close up that that income gap. Get into
wedding photography. But I but I am curious to hear
from female photographers out there, whether there they are instantly
(33:27):
assumed to be you know, if there 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? Well, you know, you talked about whether there
were female role models or mentors in the industry. Fiona Rodgers,
who started the Firecracker Photographic Grant in twenty eleven to
support women photographers, says that well, there seems to me
(33:48):
to be an abundance of women studying photography. Would appear
that a large percentage leave education and take on administrational,
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, which is good. I mean,
it sounds like within the industry there is a greater
(34:11):
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. Um.
It was an article talking about how women are really
coming into their own with social portraiture, which was traditionally
male dominated, and they've been scooping up awards. Recently, the
(34:33):
Master's Photographers Association awarded its sole fellowship to photographer Joe
to Banzi, and that's such a big deal when you
consider that out of the sixty five fellowships ever awarded
by m p A, only eight have gone to women.
And similarly, Lisa Visser was awarded the British Professional Photographer
(34:55):
of a Year or in two thousand and eight. So
I mean there, 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, not myself, right, I mean, I'll take pictures
(35:18):
in my iPhone. But um, there have been a lot
of sources, not just this British Journal of Photography, uh 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. Um. There was one
comment on a blog I read where this man who
(35:39):
was like, look, you know, I'm 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 photography discussion is
(36:01):
something that's going on, and I think, knowing some of
the amazing female photographers that I do, I think that's crap.
Oh yeah, I mean again that it brings 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,
(36:22):
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
and it is becoming this huge social media force. Um,
and I think it would be interested interesting to to
look into that more. But yeah, I mean I arguments
(36:43):
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 as well and a good user experience. Okay,
So anyway, I want to get riled up here. Um.
But I hope that we have photo bographers listening. And again,
I know that there were so many notable women behind
(37:06):
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 is copyright issues, and we ain't going
to violate them. But I will do my best to
try to find um pictures that we can show of
these women's incredible work. And we haven't even talked very
(37:29):
much too about younger contemporary women who were climbing through
the ranks as well. So yeah, if you know any
of that, please give us a shout yeah, and shout
out to photographer Lizzie if she's listening to this podcast,
your photos are amazing. And Melissa Golden, if you're listening,
what up and all the all the all the photographers
(37:49):
out there. Send us emails though mom Stuff at Discovery
dot Com'll 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 Stuff Podcasts. And before we get
to a couple of your letters, let's take a quick break, Caroline,
and then we'll come back back to own letters. I
(38:12):
have one here from Madeline talking about cleanliness in sane
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's just
as much variation within men and women in terms of
(38:33):
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
doud whatever do his chores in his own time. With
my same sex relationships, toward delegation has been smoother since
(38:56):
we have both been trained to constantly be thinking about
how we look. Luckily, my fiance and wife to be
is in the healthy middle ground of the slab O
c D continuum. Congratulations, Medaline, and thank you well. I've
got an email here from someone who would like to
remain anonymous because she's writing in about her lady a Plasti.
(39:17):
She writes, I had a laby of plassy at the
age of fifteen and 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
dreatted puberty hit. The skin got longer and larger and
would rub on the inside of my underwear and become irritated.
So I got to the point to where I could
(39:37):
no longer do any vigorous exercise or were pants that
were tighter than sweatpants. Noticing a drastic change in my life,
my mother asked me what was going on, and I
finally admitted my problem and she took me to the
gyna collegist. I was boked for my lady of plassy
soon after, and was deeply satisfied with results. I understand
that most women who go through this surgery do it
simply for cosmetic reasons, but I thought you should know
(39:58):
that some of us out there have on 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 let you know that I wasn't trying to
please some man. I was only horrified by the prospect
(40:19):
of wearing sweatpants and walking like an old lady or
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.
Thank you, Caroline. Send us to your emails Mom Stuff
(40:42):
at Discovery dot com. You can also Facebook us or
tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast. You can also follow
us while you're at it on Tumbler where it's stuff
mom Never Told You dot tumbler dot com. And we're
now on YouTube. You can watch us. That's right. Go
to YouTube dot com slash stuff mom Ever told You
and click subscribe if you don't mind, and watch us.
(41:03):
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. Does it how
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