Subject:
Emancipation of Women in the 20th Century with special regard to
women photographers based on the topic from the proscribed list:
·
Representations of gender,
race and ethnicity in photography
Terms of reference
This review will discuss how women have been able to liberate
their lives from the drudgery of housework, childbirth and child rearing in the
20th century to develop their own careers but are still held back by
conventions from the 19th century.
It will be written with particular regard to women photographers.
Background
The socio-economic climate with regard to women in the
19th and 20th century was focused on women who were expected to make an early
marriage and rear children which was often shortened by this life style. Women who were born into privileged families
were often not much better educated and spent their adult lives running a
household, supporting their husbands and rearing children. Education came to the masses in the early
20th century when board schools were introduced. Even so, priority was given to boys who were
encouraged to go on to secondary and higher education as it was deemed unsuitable
for women to be educated, as they would ‘get above their station in life’. Women who were lucky enough to have siblings
and husbands who were into science were able to engage in hobbies and work
styles of their male relations. This allowed them to gain a form of education
which enabled them to pursue ideas and experiences well out of their normal
situations.
Constance Fox Talbot (1811–1880), wife of Henry Fox
Talbot, experimented with photography as early as 1839 under the tutelage of
her husband who was to became known in later years as the first person to
record a reprintable image. Julia Margaret Cameron, (1815-1879) only took up
photography at the age of 48 after bringing up her family, and was famous for
her portraits of Charles Darwin, Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Another Victorian woman photographer was Lady
Clementina Hawarden (1822-1865) a noted portrait photographer of the 1860s. She
first began to experiment with photography in 1857, taking stereoscopic
landscape photographs before moving to large-format, stand-alone portraits. Clementina married Cornwallis Maude, 4th Viscount Hawarden
in 1845 and had 8 children. She turned
to photography in late 1857 or early 1858, then aged 35 whilst living with her
family in Ireland. She moved to London in 1859 and this enabled her to set up a
fashionable studio in South Kensington.
Many women and girls took advantage of the First World
War when men were away fighting. Women occupied
various normally male only jobs and, when the war was over, refused to accept
that they were unemployable. After many
battles with authority, in 1920, women over the age of 21 were allowed to vote
in elections although it took many years to for them to be recognised as professionally
qualified people and take up responsible jobs. The Royal Photographic Society
was founded in 1853 but it took until 1958 for the first woman president, Professor Margaret F Harker, to be appointed.
Specific
women photographers’ lives condensed from biographies mainly from http://en.wikipedia.org
Lee Miller (born Elizabeth 1907 – 1977) was born in Poughkeepsie, New
York, of parents of German descent. Her
father Theodore often used Lee and her brothers as models in his amateur
pictures. She met the founder of Vogue
in New York when she was 19 and was launched into her modeling career. Over the next two years she was one of the
most sought after models in New York but her choice of modeling assignments
caused a scandal which effectively ended her career.
In
1929 Lee moved to Paris with the intention of becoming an artist’s model and
apprenticed herself to surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray, eventually
becoming his model, co-collaborator, lover and muse. Eventually Lee started her own photographic
studio covering Man Ray’s commissions whilst he concentrated on his paintings. She worked with Man Ray to rediscover
photographic solarisation techniques and also became an active participant
herself in the surrealist movement. She
left Man Ray in 1932 and returned to New York where she established a portrait
and commercial studio with her brother Erik.
In
1934 she married Egyptian Aziz Eloui Bay and lived in Egypt where she continued
her surrealist photography. By 1937 she
returned to Paris where she met Roland Penrose whom she later married. By the outbreak of World War II Lee was
living in London with Roland and embarked on a new career in photojournalism
becoming the official war photographer for Vogue magazine in 1942. She was accredited as official war
correspondent for Conde Nast Publications and travelled to France less than a
month after D-Day and recorded many significant events at the tail end of the
war including the liberation of Paris, the battle for Alsace and the Nazi
concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.
Also during this time Lee covered stories in Vienna, post-war Hungary
and the execution of Prime Minister Laszlo Bardossy. She continued to work for Vogue for two years
after the war ended.
Lee
married Roland in 1947, aged 40, when she discovered she was pregnant with
their son Antony and lived in East Sussex from 1949. During the 1950s-60s their farmhouse became
an artistic Mecca to many famous artists including Man Ray, Henry Moore,
Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst. Lee
continued to work for Vogue occasionally but she gave up photography to
concentrate on becoming a gourmet cook.
After
returning from the war Lee suffered from what would now be known as Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder and suffered from severe bouts of clinical
depression. She died of cancer in 1977
aged 70. Her work disappeared from view
until her son Antony catalogued and showed her work to interested spectators in
their farmhouse in East Sussex.
Fay Godwin (17 February 1931 – 27 May 2005) Fay
was well known for her black and white photographs of the British countryside
recording how the landscape was irreversibly changing during her lifetime.
Fay married in 1961 (aged 30) and
gave birth to two sons. She made her way
into photography by taking snaps of her family.
When she and her husband separated she was left to bring up her family
alone and decided to become a professional photographer. She gained experience by taking portraits of
many literary figures in the 1970s and 80s in England using natural light in
their own homes to use as publicity material.
Fay published many books;
mainly of countryside landscapes and she used her images to inform the general
public of her sense of ecological crisis present at that time in England.
Martha
Rosler (July 29 1943-) is an American photographer who was born in 1943 in Brooklyn,
New York and studied in the States for a BA and MFA. She spent her early years teaching in Germany
and at Rugers University in New Brunswick in New Jersey. She works in various media and questions the
relationship of the corporation, the state and the family. Using media information and the individual,
she exposes the objectification of women. She considered herself a pioneer and
used different media and combining them in innovative ways but she mainly
used photo-text and photo-collages.
Martha’s work mainly focuses
on highlighting people coming together to discuss important issues as well as
highlighting women’s everyday lives of ordinary experiences. Some of her most famous works are pioneering
videotapes spanning several decades dealing with the geo-political dilemma of dispossession
and entitlement. Martha’s pioneering
work has been displayed domestically in the USA and in major cities around the
world to high critical acclaim.
Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz (born October 2, 1949) is
considered on of America’s best portrait photographers, the rare female
photographer in a man’s world. Annie was
born in Connecticut in 1949 and enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute in
1967. Great photographers such as Robert
Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson influenced her studies and on graduation she
spent several years abroad building up her experience including working on a
kibbutz in Israel in 1969.
When Anne
returned to the States in 1970 she obtained a job at the Rolling Stone Magazine
as a staff photographer and is quoted as saying “Sometimes I find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is
whether you get them or get the soul – I don’t think it’s possible all of the
time”. Annie published the book
entitled ‘Women (1999) which was accompanied by an essay by friend and novelist
Susan Sontag. Each portrait in the book stands
alone but viewed together have nothing more in common in that they are all
women living in America at the end of the 20th century. Her book is a reflection of contemporary
American womanhood that mirrors both women’s accomplishments and the challenges
they still face individually and as a group.
She demonstrates her abilities as her work can be shot in the studio and
natural settings and in colour or black and white.
Annie waited until her early
50s to have a family finally giving birth to her daughter Sarah in 2001 when
she was 52 years old. Her twin girls
(Susan and Samuelle) were born by surrogacy in 2005. Annie has suffered many
setbacks including financial troubles and a troubled personal life but her work
is still highly acclaimed as she captures arresting images of today’s
celebrities.
1900s-2000s
Many people believe that women truly became free when
the contraceptive pill was made available to all women. This allowed them to have control of their
reproductive cycles and plan when they wanted to have children.
I came to photography late in life as I had my two
sons by the time I was in my early 20s.
I started again in my late 20s but really studied it and earned a living
from the mid 1980s. During the 1980s and
1990s, I worked for British Airways as a communications manager and later as a
professional photographer at Heathrow Airport. I had to work twice as hard as
any man to prove my worth. The airport
photographers who did corporate photography for Heathrow based airlines and airport
companies were, primarily men. When I
first started taking professional photographs I was the person they called when
no one else was available and when I left the airport in the late 1990s I was
often the first person contacted for photographic sessions. I had to be friendly and approachable with
the more successful airport-based photographers to ensure they would pass on my
name if they were unable to take on a commission.
It was always a case of being more imaginative, faster
worker and able to come up with the results quicker than anyone else to ensure
that I was chosen above the rest. One
woman photographer I worked with at the airport, who I felt, was thorough and
came up with good results, was criticized for being too slow. She took her time setting up her image but took
too long. I came in with a quicker eye
for detail and got some interesting commissions. This was before the age of digital
photography so everything was on film and took time to process. The quicker the pictures were shown to the
client the more likely it was that they would use you again.
Current
situation
The Google top 100 photographers in 20th century lists
only 13 women and the first woman in list is Diane Arbus at number 7 and Cindy
Sherman comes in at number 13.
Naomi Rosenblum, in her Introduction in the Women
Photographers at the National Geographic comments “In a photograph taken in 1967 and inscribed ‘greatest photographic team
in the world,’ 25 properly suited men
are gathered around the desk of National Geographic (NG) Editor, Melville Bell
Grosvenor. The image suggests that the
universal language of the photograph upon which this publication depends was
solely a contribution of the male eye and mind.
Such a conclusion would be misleading as women photographers had already
been making images NG for more than 50 years.
Men seem to be able to do both, single mindedly
travelling the world to pursue their careers, leaving their families at home
until they return. Women still have to
make the choice of marrying, having a family and working to pay the mortgage
then having a career later in life, or having a career in their early adult
life and putting off marriage and a family until their late 30s, early 40s or
even their 50s today. Some girls / women
have their family early in their lives and then go on to pursue their careers
in later life. This puts them at a
disadvantage to women who have single mindedly followed their careers from
leaving school as the job market is flooded with youngsters determined to make
their way as photographers.
Women who have a career and family have to be very
organised or have someone organising them.
Mumsnet website conducted a study on working mothers, according to the
Daily Mail newspaper dated 14 April 2014, where only 13% of working mothers
actually feel guilty about going to work.
With over 900 replies to their survey almost half of the responders
(48%) said they were happier having a paid job rather than being a stay at home
mum. Of those who replied 33% said they
would prefer to work and felt that staying at home made them feel undervalued.
At least the girls / women in the UK can expect to be
educated in relative safety. Not like Malala
Yousafzai who was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen in Pakistan in October
2012. All Malala wanted to do was to
have an education and was brave enough to speak out for girls like
herself. She now lives in Britain, as
she would very likely be murdered if she returned to Pakistan.
In an interesting turn of events this month (April
2014), the presidential elections in Afghanistan had a woman running for
vice-president. Habiba Sarabi is the
most prominent woman running in the Afghan election, which will choose a
successor to President Hamid Karzai. Sarabi once served as Afghanistan's first
female governor, and she is now seeking to become Afghanistan's first female
vice-president. Here, in a country where
10 years ago women were barely allowed to leave their homes there is a democracy
forming that is recognised in the western world.
Summary / Conclusions
Some things have changed for the better in that women
are now expected to receive compulsory education up until their 18th
birthday. Whether they want to pursue
further or higher education is now up to their own expectations and financial
situation. Grants and bursaries are
available for those who want to go into higher education.
Women, and women photographers in particular, still
have to make a decision as to whether they want to follow their dreams and make
a name in their chosen career and wait to have a family or choose a lesser job,
marriage, family and paying off the mortgage first. Some women choose the option to have a
marriage and a family early in their lives and then develop their chosen career
when their families are adults and able to fend for themselves. Whilst all women think things have changed,
it seems that history repeats itself and we go round and round the Zeus’ Ixiom
wheel repeating the same pattern of life in perpetuity.
