Women in Photography By: Adrienne Brown and Roche Fisher

Women have made significant contributions to photography

Women's Contribution to Photography

There has been women in photography since the origin of the process› Most were from Britain or France

They were either married to pioneers or had close relations with their families

› Women first entered the business of photography in Northern Europe Opened studios in Denmark, France,

Germany and Sweden from the 1840s

Women's Contribution to Photography (continued)

› Women in Britain developed photography as an art in the late 1850’s

› The first studios ran by women opened in New York in the 1890’s

While the work of English and French MEN involved in developing and pioneering the process of photography is well known and documented, the part played by WOMEN in the early days gets less attention

Constance Fox Talbot Wife of Henry Fox Talbot One of the key people in the

development of photography in the 1830’s and 1840’s

Had her self experimented with the process in early as 1839

The First Professionals Genevieve Elisabeth Disderi

› From France› An early professional in photography

business › Her and her husband, Andre- Adolphe-

Eugene Disderi, established a daguerreotype studio in Brest in the late 1840’s

› Once her husband left her in 1847 she ran the business alone

The First Professionals (continued)

Bertha Wehnert- Beckmann› Germany’s first woman photographer › Opened a studio in Leipzig with her

husband in 1843, ran the business by herself after his death in 1847

The First Professionals (Continued)

Emilie Bieber› Opened a daguerreotype studio in

Hamburg in 1852› Business started out slow but finally picked

up › In 1855 she transferred the business to her

nephew

Genevieve Elisabeth Disderi

Bertha Wehnert- Beckmann

Emilie Bieber

Surrealism A number of women used photography

as a medium for expressing their interest in surrealism› Surrealists did not rely on reasoned

analysis or sober calculation› The use of such procedures as double

exposure, combination printing, montage, and solarizaton dramatically evoked the union of dream and reality

Dora Maar (1907-1997) Performs a typical surrealist inversion,

making an ugly or even repulsive subject compelling and bizarrely appealing

Awards Emma Barton

› The first woman to be awarded the Royal Photographic Society Medal in 1903

› It was for a carbon print entitled: The Awakening

Virginia Schau› The first women to receive the Pylitzer Prize for

Photography › Photographed two men being rescued from a

tractor trailer cab as it dangled from a bridge in Redding , California

Resources http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/showbi

z/movies/alice-guy-blache-woman-director-kickstarter/index.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/floridamemory/3247282315/

http://sketch42blog.com/2012/08/self-portrait/