It so happens that we see the war through men's eyes. When talking about war photography, most of us will think of the name Robert Capa, some may think of Don McCullin, some will mention James Nachtwey. But almost no one will name women's names. We decided to correct this situation, show a female perspective on the war and remember famous female photographers on the battlefields.
Gerda Tarot
In 2007, the treasures of the “Mexican suitcase” were presented to the public - about 4,500 lost negatives from the Spanish Civil War. These photographs made it possible not only to see previously unknown photographs of Robert Capa, but also to bring back his close friend, photographer Gerda Taro, from oblivion.
Gerda Taro, or Gerda Pohorille, was a German refugee of Jewish origin. From her youth, she was an activist in the communist movement and did not stop her activities until Hitler came to power. In 1933, she had to leave her homeland and settle in Paris, where she met the young photographer Andre Friedman, a refugee from Hungary. Andre taught her the basics of photography, and together they came up with a character on whose behalf they sold their photographs to newspapers - a young and successful American named Robert Capa. At that time, being American provided great opportunities, and Andre Friedman became truly successful thanks to this pseudonym.
The photographic career of Gerda Taro herself began during the Spanish Civil War and, unfortunately, ended there. Gerda was a fearless photographer and non-professional journalist. She went to war not as a neutral person, but as a political activist and, while on the battlefield, periodically invited the Republicans to attack. From her photographs you can see that she really studied with Capa and fully shared his maxim that closeness to the subject lies a good shot - she was not afraid to shoot even on the front line.
Ironically, her best photo essay turned out to be her last. In 1937, having arrived in agonizing Spain for the second time, Gerda Taro filmed a major battle - the Battle of Brunete. Having filmed a large report, Gerda rode in the car of the retreating Republicans. The car was involved in an accident and the photographer died from her injuries.
In Paris she was honored as a hero, Alberto Giacometti himself made her tombstone, and Pablo Neruda spoke in memoriam.
Margaret Bourke-White
Unlike Gerda Taro, Margaret Bourke-White consciously built her career as a photojournalist. Beginning in the late 1920s, she was active in photographing industrial themes, was one of the first Western photographers allowed into Soviet industrial sites, and eventually became the first female photojournalist for Life magazine.
In general, Bourke-White often became the first in something, so sometimes she is even called the first female war photojournalist. This is unfair both to Gerda Taro and to Helen Jones Kirtland, who filmed back in the First World War.
At the same time, Margaret Bourke-White became one of the first who began photographing the Second World War and the only Western photojournalist who managed to catch the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in Moscow. Here she took slightly surreal photographs of the night bombing, and then went to accompany the Allied forces in North Africa, Italy and Germany, made several reports about the life of American pilots at British bases and, most importantly, recorded the liberation of concentration camp prisoners.
“On that April day in Weimar, there was an atmosphere of some kind of unreality of what was happening, at least, it was this feeling that I stubbornly clung to. I kept telling myself that I would only believe in the indescribable horror when I could look at my own photographs. Using the camera provided some relief. She created a small barrier between me and the nightmare surrounding me.”
The horror of Buchenwald did not force Bourke-White to change her profession and a few years later she again found herself in the middle of a nightmare. This was the time of the division of the former “pearl of Britain” into modern India and Pakistan, a time of massive religious conflicts, “mass exercises in human torment” (as the photographer called those events).
But it didn't end there. Bourke-White willingly went to her second war. Now it was Korea, but here the photographer stumbled upon almost medieval events - the frame with the head of a North Korean prisoner became a terrible symbol of that fratricidal war.
Lee Miller
Until the 1980s, Lee Miller was mostly talked about in connection with her culinary work, and even her son learned that his mother was an eminent photographer only after her death.
Lee Miller had a difficult childhood: a family friend raped her and gave her gonorrhea when she was just seven, and her father filmed her naked for his experiments with stereoscopic photography from the age of 12. In the 1920s, the already adult Elizabeth moved to New York and worked as a fashion model, but she soon got bored with it and moved to Paris, where she became an assistant, lover and student of the famous Man Ray. She learned the solarization technique from the master, began taking photographs herself, and even completed several photographic works for him. Miller quickly managed to conquer the bohemian Paris of that time: the surrealists, Picasso, Cocteau and many other avant-garde artists were her good friends.
It is noteworthy that Lee Miller got to war thanks to accreditation from Vogue magazine. She arrived right on the heels of American troops and traveled with a Life magazine photographer through France and Germany, photographing the use of napalm at the siege of Saint-Malo, the Battle of Alsace, and the liberation of Paris, Buchenwald and Dachau. Miller took stunning photographs in these camps: a peacefully sleeping drowned SS man, guards begging for mercy, half-dead skeletal people. It seems that surrealism has overtaken her again.
However, Lee Miller's most famous shot was not taken at Buchenwald or Dachau. It became a portrait in the abandoned apartments of Adolf Hitler in Munich. The photo was taken by David Sherman on April 30, 1945, the same day Hitler committed suicide in Berlin.
After the war, Lee began to suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and gave up photography.
Catherine Leroy
A Parisian from a good family, a fragile and petite girl named Catherine studied at a conservative Catholic school, studied music and planned to become a pianist.
Everything was as typical bourgeois parents from a prosperous area would dream, but when the Vietnam War began, young Catherine took her camera and bought a one-way ticket. It was quite an adventurous idea: 21 years old, no experience photographing war, no portfolio as a photographer. On the plane she met a friend of the American journalist Charles Bonney, through whom she received journalistic accreditation. Catherine begins filming, and after some time she manages to get a job at the Associated Press. She was paid only $15 per photograph, but her ability to take exclusive photographs made her work indispensable. In 1967, Catherine became the first paratrooper photojournalist and the only photographer to photograph Junction City, the largest operation of American paratroopers in Vietnam. A little later, she finds herself near the Khen Sanh base in the midst of the “battles for the heights”, where she takes her most famous photograph - “the suffering of an orderly”.
During the hostilities, Leroy is wounded and miraculously remains alive: several fragments of shrapnel fall into her Nikon, and the rest will remain in her body forever. But Catherine continues to film Vietnam and finds herself in territory captured by North Vietnam. At the same time, she not only avoids being captured, but also gets the opportunity to take photographs from the other side - her French passport helps her. Despite the roots of the Vietnam War, her French origin often helped her - during firefights she sang something in French so that they would not shoot in her direction.
After Vietnam, Katrin goes on a short vacation to New York, experiences post-traumatic syndrome and again goes to shoot in hot spots - the fall of Saigon, Northern Ireland, Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and even Cyprus during the Turkish invasion. In 1982, she again finds herself on the verge of death - militants kidnap her in Beirut and threaten to shoot her, but by some miracle she manages to escape.
Leroy became the first woman to receive the Robert Capa Medal, left many photographs from different parts of the planet and everywhere managed to show her fearlessness, which was so dissonant with her fragility.
Christine Spengler
A native of Alsace got into the profession almost by accident. At the age of 24, she was traveling with her brother in Chad when she suddenly came across a small group of barefoot rebels shooting into the sky in a desperate attempt to hit French helicopters. The wild and slightly strange picture made her not want to go far away, but to record everything on camera. Her brother was working as a fashion photographer at the time, and the camera was at hand. After the incident, Kristin realized what she was interested in in life, and her brother gave her his Nikon, which she worked with for most of her 30-year career. Before this, Spengler had never been interested in photography and did not even really know who Robert Capa was, which allowed her to have her own special, uncluttered look and constantly find special angles and events.
A case in point is the apocalyptic photograph “Bombing of Phnom Penh.”
While all her fellow photographers were relaxing by the pool, claiming that even military personnel relax on Sunday, Spengler succumbed to some instinct and captured one of the best shots of her career. Perhaps the same instinct forced her to choose special objects, to pay attention not only to fighting men, but to women and children, through whom we more clearly read the horror of military operations. From Northern Ireland to Eritrea, from Western Sahara to Afghanistan, from Iran to Cambodia, Spengler saw what others missed. She always stood out with her appearance. Spengler never wore helmets or body armor, only ordinary clothes. The photographer herself says that she was never afraid of death, and in 1973, after her brother committed suicide, she unsuccessfully searched for it for several years.
Francoise Demulder
Another French woman who was greatly influenced by the Vietnam War and the iconic photograph of children burned by napalm was Françoise Demuelder, nicknamed Fifi. She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy, worked as a model and, naturally, was a political activist. People like her are called “children of 1968.” But two years later, protests alone were not enough for her, and, inspired by the example of Catherine Leroy, she went on a trip to South Vietnam. Together with her boyfriend, she traveled through areas affected by military operations, took photographs and left them at the Associated Press office. Françoise was lucky: she fell under the wing of Horst Faas, a photographer and head of the AP photography department. She had the right fearlessness and that is why she was the only one who managed to photograph the very end of the Vietnam War. Her first photograph, which received cult status, “The Fall of Saigon,” depicts a North Vietnamese tank routinely entering the territory of the presidential palace in Saigon.
Besides Demulder, only Australian cameraman Neil Davis was able to capture these epochal seconds. However, they say that he did not stay in Saigon for this at all, but because he ordered a suit for himself and did not manage to pick it up in time.
Demulder had an amazing talent for being in the right place at the right time. Just a year after Saigon, she found herself in eastern Beirut and filmed the famous Quarantine massacre. The frame completely changed ideas about the situation in the Middle East - after it, many stopped believing in good Christian Phalangists and bad Muslim Palestinians, and realized that both of them could act as an aggressor. Thanks to this photo, she became the first female World Press Photo laureate and forever became friends with the defender of all Palestinians, Yasser Arafat.
Anya Niedringaus
The death of Anja Niedringhaus made a special impression on many. Firstly, according to the stories of her colleagues, Anya was a very cautious woman, she was a journalist, not an adventurer, and always thought about her safety. Secondly, the events involved a man in the uniform of an Afghan policeman who deliberately and cold-bloodedly shot at journalists.
“I stay close, but most of the time I try to be invisible. I think that's the trick."
Anya's career began at the age of 16 in her hometown of Hester. Anya was asked to write an article about the demonstration, but instead she brought photographs and insisted on publishing them. Since then, she has systematically built her career as a photojournalist. First there was the fall of the Berlin Wall and work at the German EPA, then a year of work in the former republics of Yugoslavia and the Associated Press, where she worked until her death.
In 2005, Niedringhaus won the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the war in Iraq, and a little later she took very special footage of a wounded American in Afghanistan. That was the time when she was reporting from a medical evacuation team’s helicopter: almost all seriously wounded soldiers pass through them, some die there during transportation. One of the wounded, a certain Brit Barness, caught Niedringhaus with something. During the flight, she took pictures of him and held his hand, and after that she could no longer get his name out of her head: how was he, was he alive?
After a lengthy search, Anya was able to find the young Marine; by that time, he had undergone numerous operations and even had part of his skull removed, but he recognized Anya and was terribly glad to see her. It's scary because he asked to look at his pictures. Anya took them with her and, as an experienced photographer, knew not to miss the moment. Niedringhaus took a stunning, almost recursive shot of Britt Barness looking at himself - he's alive, but he doesn't seem to understand how it happened.
Annie Leibovitz's works adorn the covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, New Yorker and Rolling Stone magazines; John Lennon and Bette Midler, Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore, Sting and Divine posed nude for her. At her request, a half-naked Arnold Schwarzenegger with a cigar in his mouth froze astride a white mare under the hot Malibu sun, David Beckham in a convertible revealed the secrets of his tattoos, and a naked Lance Armstrong pedaled a bicycle, NEWSru Israel notes.
The book of photographs "Women", created by Annie Leibovitz in collaboration with Susanna Sontag, the first publication of which took place more than six years ago, is still considered a bestseller in America. Her photo anthology, American Music, also continues to receive rave reviews from critics.
Anna-Lou (Annie) Leibowitz was born in Westport, a suburb of Waterbury, Connecticut on October 2, 1949. Her father was an officer, Samuel Leibowitz rose to the rank of colonel in the Air Force. Mom devoted her whole life to art; Marilyn Leibovitz studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and taught modern dance.
After graduating from high school in 1967, Annie Leibovitz also entered the San Francisco Art Institute. While studying in her third year, she decided to go to Israel. She lived in a kibbutz for about six months and worked on an archaeological expedition at excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Annie herself says that the decision to become a photographer came to her in Israel. Her friend once sent several issues of Rolling Stone magazine so that she would not get bored away from American shores. Leafing through these magazines, archaeologist Leibovitz, who dreamed of writing articles for serious publications, realized that she wanted to photograph musicians for Rolling Stone.
The very next year, she became a freelance photojournalist for Rolling Stone and worked for this publication for 13 years, eventually receiving the position of chief photographer. In 1983, Annie Leibovitz went to work for the most “star” magazine - Vanity Fair, and in the early 90s she opened her own studio in New York. She can rightfully be called the most famous and successful female photographer of our time.
Angelina Jolie and Maddox.
Whoopi Goldberg
Barack Obama
Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf
Catherine Deneuve
Scarlett Johansson, Tom Ford and Keira Knightley
Natalia Vodianova as Alice from "Wonderland"
World famous designers such as John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Tom Ford, Donatella Versace, Marc Jacobs also took part in the filming.
Jack Nicholson
Drew Barrymore as Bella from Beauty and the Beast - Vogue (2003)
Jude Law
Cate Blanchett
In 1983, Leibovitz went to work for the superstar magazine Vanity Fair, and a few years later she opened her studio in New York. Her photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in January 1981 - taken just hours before the musician's death in December 1980 - was voted the best magazine cover of the last 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Publishers. And in second place is her work for the cover of Vanity Fair magazine (August 1991) with a photograph of pregnant actress Demi Moore.
Not everyone perceives her work unambiguously. Someone says: “Sheer glamor”! Someone sighs enviously: “If only she weren’t popular, the stars are queuing up to take pictures with her!” or “Her work lacks depth.”
When Anne was preparing for publication a collection of her photographs, “The Life of a Photographer 1990-2005,” her editor actually forced her to write an introduction to this publication. Anna resisted with all her might. The editor said: “You should do this, you should at least talk a little about what you do!” Like most people who observe other people - photographers, psychotherapists, authors - Anna has no great desire to show herself, she prefers to observe others. She knows how to turn a photograph into a drama, into a story, a full-fledged story about someone into whose inner world we can glimpse a little thanks to her camera. But after standing behind the lens for 35 years, Anne realized she really had to do this. The material collected in the book is much more than photographs of celebrities and photographs of Vanity Fair representatives. This is much more than the work of America's most successful and highest paid photographer. This book is her biography in photographs, it is a catalog of her own life. In its pages - Fame and Charm (Nelson Mandela, Nicole Kidman - and many others appear in this publication). Here are landscapes, photographs of Sarajevo, Egyptian pyramids, and the aftermath of 9/11.
Penelope Cruz
Inside this book are sometimes painful moments of her personal life. The birth of her first child Sarah - Anna was 51 years old. Her travels with Susan Sontag, with whom, in spite of all prejudices, she shared her life for 16 years. Here's a photo of her parents' re-wedding in 1992, re-taking their marriage vows. And this is her family, her five siblings. But Sontag died in December 2004, she died of cancer at 71. Six weeks later, Anne photographed her father's death. Nothing was missing, no detail seemed too personal for her not to raise her camera and take a photo.
Anne photographed herself pregnant, naked - just like Demi Moore in 1991. We can see the birth of Sarah in October 2001. But photographs of the dying Sontag - the disease has inflated, distorted her body beyond recognition. But here she is dead - in a coffin, in a dress bought in Milan. “I took these photographs in a trance,” admits Anne.
“There’s too much of my grief in the book,” Leibovitz says. “I couldn’t do anything about it—I couldn’t make another book. But it would never have happened if I had not met Sontag in 1988 and fell in love with her. “She came into my life when I was looking for someone to show me the direction of my future life. I have always been unsure of the results of my work, and I still don’t always think that my work was completed at the proper level. The fact that someone was interested in me and my work was nice to me. Her attention flattered me, even when Sontag criticized my work."
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Leibovitz, 57, conducted the interview in the boardroom of the Huntington Hotel, her favorite San Francisco hotel. She was wearing a black cotton shirt, black jeans and low-heeled Italian boots suitable for walking. She has a direct, intelligent, intent gaze and a wide gait reminiscent of Greta Garbo's manly stride in the film Queen Christina. But in life she is less impressive than in photographs or according to the reviews of the large army of assistants who assist her in creating complex works. I expected to see a “cool” photographer, but all I saw was a woman with a huge and not always joyful life experience, unsure of herself, but still finding the strength to cope with everything she encountered along the way.
We talked for an hour while all three of her children (she gave birth to her first at age 51; her twins were carried by a surrogate mother) were under the care of nannies. The rays of the hot “Indian” sun illuminated Anna, she spoke, but was restrained.
We talked about how Newsweek featured 16 pages of her work from A Photographer's Life and called Susan Sontag "the person who had been close to her for a decade and a half, her 'partner' and 'companion.' “With all due respect to Susan,” says Leibovitz, “I never liked those words—“partner” or “companion”—neither Susan nor I ever used them.” The couple never lived together, but they were undeniably bosom friends. “It was a relationship in all dimensions. They had ups and downs. I think we helped each other live. We are called "lovers." I like it, it's very romantic. I mean, I'm being sincere now. I loved Susan. I have no problem with this. The problem for me is when we are called “partners” and “companions.” It's like a union between two little old ladies."
The decision to include photographs of the hospitalized Susan - dying and later dying - was made after much thought. Leibovitz consulted Sontag's sister, Judith Cohen, and her agent, Andrew Wiley. “I wanted to make sure that each of them would approve of it. I haven't spoken to Sontag's son David Rief. “I don’t talk to David at all,” she says sadly with a slight frown: “Everyone goes their own way to death, but David was a bad chaperone.”
Half a mile from the interview site is the same Art Institute that she entered in 1967. At that time she did not have any special ambitions. “I wanted to become an art teacher.” Three years later, Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner published her photographs in this magazine - it was from that moment that her career as a photographer began. Anna lived in San Francisco for 10 years, opposite the Art Institute - Union Street. When Rolling Stone moved to New York in 1977, Leibovitz and most of the staff moved with the magazine.
The move was not a happy one. Leibovitz spent two months working as a tour photographer for the Rolling Stones, but moving to New York felt like hitting her head against a brick wall. “I had my own problems, and the only way to solve them was to stop participating in the tour... We were all taking drugs, and this accompanied my life for several years. Cocaine".
It wasn't until she met Sontag (while photographing her for the cover of her book AIDS and Its Metaphors in 1988) that she finally felt at home in New York. Sontag defended Anne's work, but pushed her to work harder, to create depth in her work, to make it more personal. When Leibovitz photographed a naked pregnant Demi Moore for the cover of Vanity Fair and suggested one of the photographs for the cover of Vanity Fair, it was Susan’s idea, who herself called the magazine’s editors. “When we discussed something with Sontag,” Leibovitz laughs, “it was like debating with a team of experts from Harvard. And Susan was always right. The further I go, the more I miss her. You know, I miss her very much, because she always had something to say about everything that happens in this world that she left. She chose the path along which to move forward. You looked at this path and said, “Oh, yes.”
Susan Sontag's influence on A Photographer's Life is clear. Of the 341 images in the book, approximately 2/3 are personal. Black and white, without any tricks or technical innovations, without melodrama and theatricality. The contrast between these two styles presented in the publication - almost glamor and a pass into one's inner world - is so striking that photographs of celebrities seem artificial. But Leibovitz believes that this disjunction makes the book more interesting. “There is absolutely no need for everything in it to be the same, smooth. I tried to make photo choices for the publication that Susan would approve of. I think it's an esoteric confusion." But in reality, Leibovitz has pushed herself into the background. The photographs of those around her are so deep and expressive compared to the works for magazines that it seems that this is the future in Leibovitz’s work. “I'm actually very interested in magazine photography, I love it and I want to be very successful at it,” she says. The book gave me the strength to try to do this kind of work even better.” This concludes the interview with Anne Leibovitz.
Annie Leibowitz
Antoinette, or Toni Frissell, is a photographer from the United States, famous primarily for military and fashion photography, as well as portraits of famous and prominent people in informal settings. She worked with Winston Churchill, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt and many other celebrities. The photographer is also known for her active stance on women's place in society, and many of her works have been used in campaigns for gender equality.
Frissell's special, free and lyrical view of models and shooting subjects helped her quickly achieve success in fashion photography, but she did not stop there. Among her contemporaries, and even today, Toni is known for her photographs of the Second World War. In them, terrifying planes and their pilots, nurses in hospitals and even orphaned children are photographed from a life-affirming positive perspective.
These are bright photographs that give a vivid feeling, even if we are talking about a London boy who returned from a walk and saw that his house was destroyed by a V-2 rocket. The photograph, which leaves no one indifferent, shows a child holding a toy in his hands - the little that remains of his home and family. IBM used the photograph for its exhibition many years later. The boy, who grew up to become a truck driver, saw her and recognized himself in her.
Toni Frissell has many famous photographs. In addition to the photo of the little Londoner, she was glorified by a shot taken in Florida in the spring of 1947. A poetic photo of a girl seemingly floating in water was used for the design of music albums by Bill Evans, The Beauvilles, This Ascension and other performers.
Another famous photograph of nuns collecting shells on a Long Island sandbar demonstrates Tony's interest in portraiture of women of all professions, ages and social groups. The photographer focused on it back in the 50s of the twentieth century, promoting freedom from social stereotypes. Toni preferred to conduct even fashion shoots of models in evening dresses outdoors in order to interest women and help them become more active.
A bright career in fashion photography, interrupted to work at the front
In solving “social problems” Frissell was helped by his talent and professionalism. She was taught by Cecil Beaton himself, for whom the photographer worked as an assistant in her youth, and gave her practical advice. Being among famous colleagues, she absorbed their knowledge and refracted it through her individual creative gaze. It brought Frissell professional recognition: at the age of 24, she already collaborated with American Vogue. After she was noticed by the director of a major fashion magazine, Toni got a job there, and a few years later she was already published in Harpers Bazaar and other glossy giants.
The author always signed her works with her maiden name, even after her marriage to McNeil Bacon, a Manhattan resident and committed socialist. Toni was a New Yorker herself. She was born in Manhattan in the spring of 1907 and lived in the Big Apple until her death in 1988. A photographer suffering from Alzheimer's disease died on Long Island, remembered not only as an outstanding photographer, but also as a brave, selfless woman.
When World War II began, Toni said that she was “sick and tired” of fashion photography and decided to prove to herself and others that she could be a real front-line photojournalist. She volunteered to join the American Red Cross, transferring from it to the Eighth Air Force. As an official photojournalist for the Women's Corps, she flew twice to Europe on the Western Front, where she took several thousand photographs of soldiers on the front lines, women soldiers and nurses, and civilians suffering the horrors of war. Her powerful and graphic photographs were widely used for propaganda purposes, including during the African-American struggle for racial equality.
After the end of hostilities, Antoinette Frissell-Bacon (this is the full name of the photojournalist) was already a well-known socio-political author. This allowed her to switch to working with the “powers that be.” At the same time, Frissell collaborated with major American magazines specializing in public life - Life and Sports Illustrated. As one of the first (and few) women to pursue sports photography, Toni has once again demonstrated her willingness to overcome social barriers and rise to professional challenges.
Sports Illustrated's first-ever full-time female photojournalist also explored changing societal attitudes toward the role of the fair sex. Since 1953, Frissell has paid a lot of attention to reportage photography of its representatives from all social strata. In the photographs, women are presented in all the fullness of their emotions, in different life situations.
Over the decades of her career, Toni has published five books with photographic illustrations, which included a wide variety of photographs - from portraits of post-war orphans to spectacular photos of political leaders.
She was able to work equally well in all areas - this was confirmed by Frissell’s contemporaries and recognized by today’s viewers who enjoy getting acquainted with her work.
In early March, National Geographic announced an action to support women photographers around the world: their photographs will be selected and published in a special project in the American version of the magazine. Today, such actions are not uncommon in the United States: the women's rights movement is gaining momentum. Let's remember how it all began.
First changes
Despite the fact that at the beginning of the 20th century, American women did not even have the right to vote, many of them participated in the active development of photography as a medium. In addition, at the end of the 19th century, the movement for the rights, professional development and emancipation of US citizens succeeded in spreading its ideas - some ladies were already applying for places at universities and relied on professional and intellectual development rather than on a successful marriage.
American women of the early 20th century with cameras, 1913
Photo from the Kodak catalogue, 1914
An important stage in the development of women's photography was the activity of the Kodak company. The latter significantly reduced the size of photographic equipment by releasing portable home cameras in 1888 and making them accessible to amateur photographers. “The Kodak revolution turned many enthusiasts into craftsmen and professionals, and it began selling cameras to the masses.
However, the most important role in the development of women's photography was played by the Kodak Girls advertising campaign. Kodak Girls posters depicted female travelers with handheld cameras, confident, happy and determined. The idea of a woman traveling alone and simultaneously realizing herself as a professional was almost revolutionary at the beginning of the 20th century and had a huge impact on the self-awareness of American women.
Transition to profession
Following changes in the late 19th century, the number of women photographers in America grew rapidly. If in the 1890s there were less than 300 of them, by 1920 there were about 5,000. Specialists appeared who dealt with strictly defined topics: the sisters Frances and Mary Allen, for example, photographed New England architecture and scenes of rural life.
Allen Sisters, How Are You?, circa 1901
Alice Austen, self-portrait, 1902
However, often women who achieved success in “secular” photography realized the power of the camera that fell into their hands and abruptly changed the vector. Thus, Frances Benjamin Johnston received the title of “American Court Photographer” for her photographs of the White House, elite events and portraits of celebrities, but her contemporaries hardly noticed her contribution to documentary photography: Frances published the first album of its kind of photo reports from American educational institutions.
Another American, Alice Austen, after a series of portraits of wealthy Staten Islanders and views of their luxurious estates, turned the lens towards the many immigrants and street vendors of Manhattan, becoming one of the first American social photographers.
Francis Benjamin Johnston, African American Children Learning to Work Cotton, 1902
Despite the significant gender oppression that prevailed at the turn of the 20th century, photography was a highly democratic field that provided creative, educational, and professional opportunities for many women. The photography industry, while still somewhat extravagant, even after becoming capitalist, gave almost everyone a chance to gain practical skills. This inspired women to take up photography at both the amateur and professional levels.
By the beginning of the 20th century, magazines appeared that gave practical advice on filming and supported women’s desire to study. Among them were American Amateur Photographer and Outing, thanks to which many Kodak girls turned into serious practitioners. However, training for women in real photography clubs, where live photography workshops were held, was not welcomed and American women were denied training. An important figure who changed the perception of women's photography in the American consciousness was Catherine Weed Barnes. She took up photography at the age of 35, setting up a dark room in her attic.
Catherine Weed Barnes, "Learning Japanese"
Cover of American Amateur Photographer, 1891
As one of the self-taught journalists, Barnes wrote the "Women's Work" column for the American Amateur Photographer, often making progressive statements for the 1920s: "Good work is good work and bad work is bad, whether done by a man or a man." woman." Ward gave a major impetus to the movement for the rights of American women photographers when she collected the work of 28 women from different states and presented them at the International Photographic Congress in Paris. The exhibition was a resounding success, and immediately after France, a series of 142 photographs traveled to St. Petersburg and Moscow, where they continued to demonstrate the scale, possibilities and power of women's photography.
Portraits and fine art photography
Despite the fact that American women began to succeed in the photographic field, patriarchal stereotypes were in no hurry to become obsolete. In the case of portrait photographs, this only played into the hands of the ladies: women, as sensual and emotional beings, were considered good portraitists, because thanks to their “girlish sensitivity” they could reveal the character of the person depicted and enhance the impression with an appropriate aesthetic composition.
“After all, they are accustomed to setting the table and decorating the living room, and their skills in dealing with children are invaluable,” the portrait painters were “praised” in a 1909 New York Times article on women’s photography.
Gertrud Käsebier, “The Ideal Mother,” 1899, photo from the Paul Getty Museum archives
Sarah Choate Sears, "Mary", 1907
In the 1910s, many women took up family photography, an activity encouraged by a patriarchal society and not considered “provocative” in the same way as the practice of artistic or social photography. On top of that, some housewives began to bring income into the family that competed with their husband’s wages, which, although it offended some Americans, could not help but please most of them.
Sarah Choate Sears, "Julia Ward Howe", 1907
Sarah Choate Sears, "Photograph of Helen Sears with a Chinese Lantern", 1895
Many of the surviving family photographs from this period rival those of today: they reflect the ideals of the middle and privileged classes and brilliantly convey the personalities and relationships of people on a photograph or silver plate. Jane Rees, Willamina Parrish, Matilda Weil, Elizabeth Buchmann, Mary Bartlett and Gertrude Käsebier revolutionized the concept of depth in family photography when they first allowed models to strike relaxed poses and captured them in their natural state. It is worth noting that women dominate family photography to this day, winning international competitions and art selections.
Elizabeth Bowerman, untitled, 1906
Matilda Vale, "Across the Fields", 1901
In addition to portraits, women explored topics that were inaccessible to men or studiously avoided by them. Anne Brigman, for example, created a series of nude female figures against the backdrop of picturesque landscapes, showing female nudity in photography in a context previously unknown. Idaho's Emma Jane Gay, Kate Corey, and Laura Mae Armer excel at photographing Native Americans.
Anne Brigman, The Soul of a Lightning-Split Pine, 1908
The line between amateur and professional at the beginning of the 20th century was very blurred, and therefore even young girls who started shooting could influence the formation of artistic photography.
Women changed their views on studio photography, creating works in the style of pictorialism, which was gaining momentum at that time. Adherents of this trend strived for pictorial, that is, pictorial, imitating painting, image and achieved this with the help of typically feminine techniques of that time, inherited from the most prominent female photographer of the last century, Julia Margaret Cameron: soft focus and increased exposure time.
Many women by that time had achieved the opening of their own studios; for example, Zaida Ben-Yusuf ran her business on Fifth Avenue - this place was a Mecca for studio photographers, and getting there was not easy. She created artistic photographs that combined pictorial poses with intricate patterns and allusions to ancient myths. Many members of the American elite visited Zaida, and her works hung in the most prestigious houses of New York at the beginning of the 20th century.
Zayda Ben-Yusuf, "The Aroma of Pomegranate"
Zaida Ben-Yusuf, self-portrait
Shot at a very close, almost intimate distance, portraits of Eva Watson-Schütze's friends, taken in Philadelphia and Chicago, have earned recognition in wide circles of art photography. Watson-Schütze and Gertrud Käsebier became two of the female founders of the Photo-Secession movement. Led by Alfred Stieglitz, Photo-Secession participants sought the inclusion of photography in the list of art forms.
Schütze's colleague Gertrud Käsebier was one of the key figures of photographic pictorialism at the time: her portraits and soft-focus images of mothers and children received national recognition.
Eve Watson-Schütze, "Rose"
Gertrude Käsebier, Mina Turner and her cousin sucking lollipops
Gertrude Käsebier, "The Indian"
Although she left Stieglitz and Schütze in 1912, Käsebier spent the rest of her life promoting the merits of women photographers with sincere conviction. Thanks to her efforts, many of them became aware of the possibility of a career in photography for the first time and moved beyond their usual work routine. So, Doris Ullmann, the heiress of a wealthy New York family, started her business with a portrait studio in New York, where at first she photographed only celebrities: Albert Einstein, Anna Pavlova, William Yates. But she made her contribution to the development of photography as a medium later, creating a shocking series of portraits of the descendants of former slaves: Ullmann captured the dying craft culture of the “black” South of the United States, photographing impoverished communities in the Appalachian and Islands of South Carolina, where the aesthetics of pictorialism became part of the narrative.
Doris Ullmann, "Southern Pride", circa 1920
Doris Ullmann, "The Old Lady of Sunbonnet"
“I call an interesting person with traces of a difficult life, bearing the imprint of a certain stage of life, some bright quality or intellectual feature. The face of an elderly person, which according to strict canons may not be considered particularly beautiful, is usually more attractive than the face of a youth who has barely been touched by life,” Ullmann wrote.
She donated her fortune to poor artisans whom she photographed in the mountains, rewriting her will a few days before her death.
Modernism, advertising and fashion photography
While women were primarily concerned with the Pictorialist movement in the 1920s, subsequent decades expanded their field of activity. In the American West, the f/64 group photographers decisively turned away from the tenets of pictorialism and turned to modernist manifestos, nature and hard focus, in contrast to boring blurry images. The name f/64 itself means the extreme aperture value at that time, which made it possible to take an extremely clear focus frame.
The photographs of Alma Lavenson and Sonya Noskowiak and the botanical series of Imogen Cunningham in 1930 reflected an increased emphasis on graphics and formal elements. They are still on display today as classic examples of f/64 series photography. Laura Gilpin, who was not a member of the group, had been working on a series on the peoples and landscapes of the American Southwest since the 1930s. Edward Weston's student Tina Modotti took a formally rigorist approach to the movement, using the technique to create intensely social studies of the working class.
Tina Modotti, Hands Resting on a Shovel, 1927
Tina Modotti, Workers' Parade, 1926
Meanwhile, American commercial photography was being used more and more in advertising. Canadian immigrant Margaret Watkins was the first to demonstrate a combination of modernist compositional elements and unusual lighting, for which she received recognition throughout the industry and began teaching photography to men at the Clarence and White School.
Tony Frissell and Louise Dahl-Wolfe began their careers in advertising photography, but by the 1930s they switched to fashion photography and virtually transformed fashion photography, challenging almost all of their competitors: they began photographing women in daylight, in non-magazine poses and natural conditions, making their work seem relevant and unusual even after 90 years.
Tony Frissell for Vogue, 1939
Louise Dahl-Wolf, Twins on the Beach in Nassau, 1949
While Dahl-Wolfe remained in fashion photography and significantly changed its vector, reforming the concept of color in gloss, Toni Frissell was tired of fashion photography by the early 1940s and went to the front as a volunteer: she worked for the Red Cross and photographed military operations . There she created her legendary series “Women's Military Corps,” in which she immortalized the services of American women in World War II.
Photography 1930s - 1940s
The 1930s brought important changes to fine art photography, but it was still left to its own devices: Franklin Delano Roosevelt was much more interested in the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in American history, which lasted from 1929 to 1939. The blows of the Depression, which left almost a quarter of the population unemployed, were all the more painful because they followed a time of unprecedented prosperity, when advertising began to establish “the world's highest standards of living” and successful businessmen became major cultural heroes. In 1935, Roosevelt created the FSA - Farmer Security Administration - to address economic problems. Under the auspices of the FSA, some of the country's most successful photographers were called into public service: they were tasked with documenting what was happening. One of the women who worked for this campaign was Dorothea Lange.
Dorothea Lange in 1936, photographer unknown
Dorothea Lange, Mother of Migrants, 1936
Dorothea Lange did not at all fit into modern ideas about brave documentary photographers. As a child, she suffered from an attack of polio, after which she began to limp on her right leg. “She shaped me, mentored me, guided me, helped me and humbled me,” Lange said of her altered walk. “I could never control her, but I felt her strength and power.” Disability was a difficult ordeal, which, however, revealed to Lange the depth of human tragedies, made her more sensitive to the sorrows of others and allowed her to create the most famous, poignant and expressive photograph of the Great Depression, which today has iconic status.
“I looked at this hungry, desperate mother and walked towards her, as if I was being attracted by a magnet. I don't remember how I explained my presence and my camera to her, but I remember that she asked me not to ask questions. I took five photos, walking closer and closer. I didn't ask her name or her story. She told me she was thirty-two. She also said that they live by eating vegetables from the surrounding fields and those birds that her children manage to kill. So she sat in this extension to the tent with her children who were crowding around her... And it seemed to me that my photographs could help her, and she helped me.”
Barbara Morgan demonstrated a completely different view of the 1930s. Morgan came to photography from painting: she wanted to combine creativity and motherhood, so she could only work at night, while daylight was needed for painting. Barbara stood at the origins of dance photography - once seeing a rehearsal of dancers engaged in modern choreography, Morgan realized that history was being made before her eyes: “Photographers and artists who documented the events of the 1930s of the Great Depression, in my opinion, focused exclusively on negativity and defeatist sentiments , instead of giving hope and encouraging people. And yet the incredibly lively dances of Martha Graham, Humphrey Weidman and Tamiris touched me deeply. Even though they were going crazy from hunger, they did not give up, and their creativity always brought relief to American society in times of stress and tension.”
Martha Graham, "Letter to the World"
Martha Graham, "The Victorious Trio"
It was in the 1930s that many American women and European immigrants in America began to build real careers at Life magazine, which was distinguished by its progressive policies and hired women. This inspired them to create the most important series in the history of photography.
Lisette Model actively developed street photography, introducing a feminine spirit into it. Having moved to the USA, she tirelessly ran through the streets with a camera, photographing passers-by, skyscrapers and everything that came her way. It has been called tough for its unprecedented themes and images. “The camera is a discovery tool. We photograph not only what we see, but also what we don’t know,” answered Lisette.
Lisette Model with her camera and flash, 1946
Lisette Model, portrait of an unknown woman
Berenice Abbott, like many other American women who began with portraits, was one of the first women to come to scientific photography. In 1939, Abbott wrote that photography should become “a friendly interpreter between science and the layman.” Berenice and her work became an important milestone in the movement to popularize science.
Proving the worth of female photographers beyond family photography, Helen Levitt put an end to the discussion. Just like many other female photographers, she photographed children, but her shots have nothing in common with family portraits - they are closer to street photography.
