I have really struggled with this
assignment but have finally sent it to my tutor for marking. I'm hoping
to get the whole module in for the July assessment rather than the
November one which I thought might be achievable.
Here it is in total as sent to my tutor, a total of 2,189 words:
Subject: Emancipation of Women in the 20th
Century with special regard to women photographers
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 and develop their own careers. It will be written with particular regard to
women photographers.
Background
The socio-economic climate with regard to
women in the 19th and early 20th century was focused on women who were expected
to make an early marriage and rear children throughout their lives. Those women that were luckily enough to be born
into privileged families were not much better educated and they also spent most
of their adult lives running a household, supporting their husbands and rearing
children. Education came to the masses when
board schools were opened in the early 20th century and children had to
compulsorily attend. Even so, priority
was given to boys who were encouraged to go on to secondary and higher
education. It was deemed not suitable
for women to be educated, as they would ‘get above their station in life’.
Those women who were lucky enough to have
siblings and husbands who had enquiring minds into science were able to latch
on to hobbies and the work styles of their male relations 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
watchful eye of her husband who was to become known inn 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, Alfred Lord Tennyson and
others.
Another well-known Victorian woman
photographer was Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822-1865) who was 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 of her daughters. Clementina was one of five children of Admiral Charles
Elphinstone Fleeming and married Cornwallis Maude, 4th Viscount Hawarden in
1845 and the couple had eight 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 which allowed her to
set up a fashionable 1903 studio in South Kensington.
The mid 1800s proved a turning point for
women to become educated and in 1848 Queen’s College for women was opened and
many better-educated women were able to attend and gain a superior education.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first
woman to qualify as a doctor in 1883 but had to fight heavy prejudice
throughout her working life. Instead of
a direct route into medicine, Elizabeth had to qualify in various other
acceptable ways before forcing herself into medicine.
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.
Suffragettes started the battle for
equality in 1903 when the Pankhurst sisters held a meeting when it was decided
that women would need to pursue extreme measures of civil disobedience to instigate
change.
Many women and girls took advantage of the
First World War when millions of men were called up to fight. Women filled in those openings and, when the
war was over, refused to accept that they were unemployable. After many battles with authority women over
the age of 21 were allowed to vote in elections although it took many years to for
women to be allowed to be recognised as professionally qualified people and
take up responsible jobs.
Many people believe that women truly became
free when the contraceptive pill was available to all women. This allowed them to have control of their
reproductive cycles and plan when they wanted to have children.
1900s-50s
Specific
women photographers lives
Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907 – July
21, 1977), Lee married in 1984 and became stepmother to her husband’s daughter
and half sister. She divorced in 1999
later had a relationship with artist David Byrne from 2007-2011. Her later years were spent working on behalf
of women’s liberation and the environment.
Cynthia
"Cindy" Morris Sherman (born January 19,
1954) started her career in
photography after working as a model.
She married in 1934 and gave up her professional photographic
career. In 1947 she divorced and
remarried and bore a son at the age of 40 and gave up photography for gourmet
cooking.
Roni Horn (born September 25, 1955) unmarried lives in New York and often
travels to Iceland to gain inspiration for her work.
Anna-Lou
"Annie" Leibovitz (born October 2, 1949)
Annie
Leibovitz has three children. Her daughter Sarah Cameron Leibovitz was born in October
2001 when Leibovitz was 52 years old. Her twins (two girls) Susan and Samuelle
were born to a surrogate mother in May 2005.
Fay
Godwin (17 February 1931 – 27 May 2005)
Fay was an exception to rule in that she
married in 1961 and had two sons in ***.
Her early photographic work was taking pictures of her family but when
she moved into serious photography her husband supported her.
Martha
Rosler is an American photographer. Born July 29, 1943
she works in various media and questions the
relation of the corporation, the state and the family, media information and
the individual, and public and private, she exposes the internalized oppression
that underlies such cultural phenomena as the objectification of women. There is no record of her being married or
having a family, having concentrated on her professional life. http://www.eai.org/artistBio.htm?id=476
1960s-2000s
The ‘Contraceptive Pill’ changed everything
for women. At long last they were able
to control their fertility and make the decision when to have a family.
In the 1960s it has been quoted that men
were in charge and women were secretaries and the Office of National Statistics
showed that today 47% of women under 50 were married against 74% in 1979.
I came to photography late in life as I had
my two sons by the time I was in my early 20s.
I came back to photography 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
found that I had to work twice as hard as any man to prove my worth. The airport photographers who did corporate
photography for the Heathrow based airlines and relevant linked companies were,
more often than not, men. When I first
started earning a living taking photographs I was the person they called when
no one else was available. When I left
the airport in the late 1990s to take up a teaching post, I was often the first
person contacted for photographic sessions.
I had to maintain a friendly approachable persona with the more
successful airport based photographers to ensure they would pass on my name if
they were unable to fulfill a job request.
It was always a case of being more
imaginative, a faster worker and able to come up with the results quicker than
everyone else to ensure that I was chosen above all the rest. One woman photographer I worked with at the
airport who, I felt was thorough and came up with the requirements of any brief
she was given, was criticized as being too slow. She took her time setting up the background
scenario but took too long. I was able
to come in with a quicker eye for detail and get some interesting images. This was before the real age of digital
photography so everything was on film and took time to process. The quicker the pictures were back to the
client the more likely it was that they would use you again if the results were
satisfactory.
Current
situation
Sexism still happens today. There aren’t
many women on this earth who haven’t experienced sexism in one form or
other.
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, pursue
their careers single mindedly travelling the world, leaving the family at home
until their 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 or early
40s. 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.
One of the reasons cited for fewer mothers
working part-time or full-time was a lack of nursery places and the Mumsnet
website called on the government for longer opening hours at nurseries to
enable more women to take up jobs in the workplace.
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 killed 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 democracyforming
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 if they are pointed in the right direction.
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 and follow their hearts into 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 Ixiom wheel repeating the same pattern of life in perpetuity.
