Women photographers--History--Exhibitions
"During the 1920s the New Woman was easy to recognize but hard to define. Hair bobbed and fashionably dressed, this iconic figure of modernity was everywhere, splashed across magazine pages or projected on the silver screen. A global phenomenon, she embodied an ideal of female empowerment based on real women making revolutionary changes in life and art--including photography. This groundbreaking, richly illustrated book looks at those "new women" who embraced photography as a mode of expression and made a profound impact on the medium from the 1920s to the 1950s. Thematic chapters explore how women emerged as a driving force in modern photography, bringing their own perspective to artistic experimentation, studio portraiture, fashion and advertising work, scenes of urban life, ethnography, and photojournalism. Featuring work by over 120 photographers, this volume expands the history of photography by critically examining an international array of canonical and less well-known women photographers, from Berenice Abbott, Dorothea Lange, and Lola Álvarez Bravo to Eslanda Goode Robeson, Tsuneko Sasamoto, and Homai Vyarawalla. Against the odds, these women produced invaluable visual testimony that reflects both their personal experiences and the extraordinary social and political transformations of the era"
Director's foreword / Kaywin Feldman -- Note to the Reader -- Preface / Andrea Nelson and Mia Fineman -- Introduction / Andrea Nelson -- "Such a way of life exists" : new women photographers in the studio / Andrea Nelson -- Modern children by modern women / Elizabeth Cronin -- Working in the margins : women and the rise of the picture press / Kristen Gresh -- Photographers on the move : women report from Africa / Kim Sichel -- Modern bodies / Elizabeth Otto -- Making the New Woman : female fashion photographers in Berlin between the wars / Mila Ganeva -- Notes -- Biographies / Kara Felt -- Acknowledgments / Andrea Nelson -- Lenders to the exhibitions -- Image credits -- Index of photographers.