Category: Articles

‘This is a real look into our lives’: the Maasai women photographing their people by Caroline Kimeu in The Guardian

Two Maasai photographers chronicle the daily challenges facing pastoralist women as the climate crisis increases their burden of care, and food, fuel and water become scarcer.

Metito and Naneu were among 14 women in Kenya and Ghana who took part in a programme by Lensational, a social enterprise that supports underrepresented women to learn photography and Read More

Direct Link →

Feminist Interview Project: Cassils in Conversation with Amelia Jones

The Feminist Interview Project, organized by Katherine Guinness and Jocelyn Marshall on behalf of CAA’s Committee for Women in the Arts, examines the practices of feminism by interviewing a range of scholars and artists, preserving oral histories while expanding the boundaries of what might be considered feminist. Throughout its interviews, this project reimagines the possibilities of feminist practice and feminist Read More

Direct Link →

Photography project inspires West African women to tell their stories at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

North Edinburgh News

A mentorship programme at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) has given six West African women the opportunity to tell their unheard life stories through the medium of photography.

Charting their individual physical, mental and spiritual journeys, the photographs will be on display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery until 8 January 2023.

Today (5 Read More

Direct Link →

Feminist Memory Project PHASE I: Telling lives / showing selves through photographs by Agastaya Thapa / ALKAZI FOUNDATION

“The explosive and often subversive power of photography has served many political and social movements, and of late, the quiet historical force of the photograph has been well understood and channelised by scholars, practitioners and cultural initiatives committed to the recuperation and re-inscription of women’s history all over the world. Photography has had an important Read More

Direct Link →

Magnum photographer defends images of teenage gang rape victim after humanitarian organisation removes them from website BY Tom Seymour / The Art Newspaper

After controversy on social media surrounding Newsha Tavakolian’s photographs of East Congo, Médecins Sans Frontières announces internal review

 

The celebrated Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian has defended herself against accusations of unethical practice after publishing a series of identifiable images of African teenage rape survivors made while on assignment for Read More

Direct Link →

Photography and the Representations of Women During the Emergency in India 1975-1977 by Dr. Gemma Scott

Changing forms of representation are fundamental to our understanding of the history of democracy. The Emergency in India – as well as its visual traces – imposed by Indira Gandhi’s Congress Government from 1975 to 1977, is widely held as one of the most controversial moments in the political history of the subcontinent since Independence. Read More

Direct Link →

The New Woman Behind the Camera by Andrea Nelson

Life without photographs is no longer imaginable. They pass before our eyes and awaken our interest; they pass through the atmosphere, unseen and unheard…They are in our lives, as our lives are in them. – Lucia Moholy

In her book A Hundred Years of Photography, 1839-1939, photographer and historian Lucia Moholy examined the social impact of Read More

Direct Link →

Female in Focus Winners Announced

From 1854 Media and British Journal of Photography, the Female in Focus award was conceived in response to staggering gender imbalance in photography. An open call to female-identifying photographers around the world, it is an annual initiative to promote and reward women’s work in an industry that disproportionately favours men’s.

From a pool of thousands of Read More

Direct Link →

Jerwood/Photoworks Awards: Heather Agyepong and Joanne Coates

Jerwood Arts and Photoworks are delighted to announce Heather Agyepong and Joanne Coates as awardees of the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards.

Now in their fourth edition, the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards are a major commissioning opportunity supporting early-careerartists working with photography to make new work and significantly develop their practice.The awardees were selected from over 370 applications to a national Read More

Interview with Elina Brotherus for ELLES X Paris Photo

Born in Helsinki in 1972, Elina Brotherus today shares her time between Finland and France. A graduate of the Helsinki University of Art and Design, the visual artist has developed a body of work of photographic and moving images, influenced by the history of art, literature and architecture. Experimenting with self-portraits, she questions the relation Read More

Direct Link →

The Democratic Picture: Grace McCann Morley and Photography in the San Francisco Museum of Art BY Alexandra Moschovi / The Classic

The San Francisco Museum of Art1 opened its doors on the top floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building in 1935. A year later, in October 1936, its first Director, Dr. Grace McCann Morley, would write to the Resettlement Administration in Washington D.C. being “anxious” to stage an exhibition of Miss Dorothea Lange’s photographs that were Read More

Direct Link →

Nazik Armenakyan: About 4Plus, the pioneering documentary photography center in Armenia

Interview of Nazik Armenakyan, co-founder of 4Plus

by Mathilde Roger

 

“At that time [in 2002], you couldn’t see women photographers. It was something new, unexpected and it was a really male dominated sphere” explains Nazik Armenakyan. Starting her career as a photojournalist for “Armenpress” an Armenian news agency, she followed in 2004 a photojournalism course organized by Read More

Direct Link →

This Ugandan Photographer Is Challenging the Way the World Sees Women With Disabilities BY SARAH SPELLINGS / VOGUE

“As a documentary photographer, Esther Ruth Mbabazi is tasked with sharing an unflinching look at reality, whether she’s turning her lens on the objects South Sudanese refugees brought with them to northern Uganda or children in the country affected by a mysterious disease known as nodding syndrome. The Kampala-based photographer is known for capturing her Read More

Direct Link →

The Claire Aho Award for Women Photographers

The Claire Aho Award for Women Photographers – world first-ever winner announced

Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2021, the world’s leading awards for food photography, was delighted to announce, on Tuesday 27 April 2021, the first-ever winner of The CLAIRE AHO Award for Women Photographers in association with Aho & Soldan Photo and Film Read More

Direct Link →

Women Street Photographers: A new anthology shines a light on women’s remarkable contribution to a male-dominated art

To coincide with Female in Focus 2021, Gulnara Samoilova – one of last year’s judges – discusses her latest photobook, compiling the work of 100 women street photographers from around the world
Female in Focus is a global award recognising women’s extraordinary contribution to contemporary photography. Enter the 2021 edition now.

In the mountainous Adjara region of Read More

Direct Link →

The ‘male graze’: Guerrilla Girls to put up billboards across UK reasserting women’s place in art history

Anti-discriminative posters are part of festival Art Night 2021, where commissions this year will have a political tone.

Written by: Gareth Harris

The Guerrilla Girls will be spreading their anti-discrimination message across the UK this summer with a series of billboard works on show in cities such as Dundee, Birmingham, Leeds and Cardiff. The initiative from the Read More

Direct Link →

Anna-Stina Treumund’s practice in the context of lesbian, queer and feminist politics BY Airi Triisberg / Echo Gone Wrong

The text was published in the exhibition catalogue ‘Anna-Stina Treumund’,  Ed. Rael Artel. Tartu Art Museum, 2017.

“Entering the search term “lesbian feminism” into Estonian Google will give you less than ten results. They can be roughly divided into two categories: either anti-feminist rants on anonymous message boards or text fragments about the history of feminist Read More

Direct Link →

Freelands awards MK Gallery and Ingrid Pollard £100,000—and releases annual report highlighting art world’s glaring gender discrepancies

Are female artists still underrepresented in Britain? The answer is a resounding yes, according to the fifth Freelands Report into the representation of female artists in Britain, published last week. The report covers the year 2019 and according to its author, Dr Kate McMillan, her findings highlight “how far there is to go in recognising Read More

Direct Link →

Silence is Broken: Manifesto

Silence is Broken

We are legion. Legion who have experienced, word for word, dramatic situations close to those described in the investigation published in the Dutch newspaper NRC on October 30,2020.*

You knew, you knew but you stayed quiet.
Whatever his name was, you knew.
Let this be an earthquake.

What does it mean to report sexist or sexual harassment, Read More

PHotoESPAÑA Discoveries 2020: Selected participant Marilene Ribeiro

PHotoESPAÑA presents the 2020 Discoveries participants who have been selected through an open call.

The PHE Discoveries Week is a professional meeting for photographers that is held every year, coinciding with the Official Inauguration of PHotoEspaña, at the headquarters of PIC.A Escuela Internacional Alcobendas PHotoEspaña, at Espacio Miguel Delibes.

All participants will have the opportunity to be Read More

Direct Link →

1000 Words: Curator Conversations #15 Renée Mussai

Renée Mussai is Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial & Collections at Autograph, London. Mussai has organised numerous exhibitions in Europe, Africa and America, and over the past few years curated a series immersive gallery installations with contemporary artists, including Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness (2017–present), Lina Iris Viktor’s Some Are Born To Endless Night — Read More

Direct Link →

NMWA: Learn about gender inequity in the arts with some eye-opening facts

National Museum of Women in the Arts (USA) presents data on gender inequality in the arts

 

The Numbers Don’t Lie

The truth is that women have never been treated equally in the art world, and today they remain dramatically underrepresented and undervalued in museums, galleries, and auction houses. Counting and quantifying won’t solve discrimination, but statistics are Read More

Direct Link →

Artists in 18 Major US Museums Are 85% White and 87% Male, Study Says BY Hakim Bishara / Hyperallergic

“In response, artist and data journalist Mona Chalabi offered her version of what the composition of a museum collection should look like if it were to represent the entire population.

In recent years, museums in the United States have been moving toward diversifying their permanent collections to remediate the historical underrepresentation of non-male and non-white artists.

However, a Read More

Direct Link →

BBC: Coronavirus: Women photographers document lockdown

“The Association of Photographers f22 group aims to increase the visibility of women commercial photographers at all levels.

Formed in the 1980s, it was revived in 2019 to address inequality in the photographic industry.

And members have been documenting their experiences of lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Here is a selection of images, with descriptions by the photographers.”

To Read More

Direct Link →

Review of ‘Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain after 1933’ by Ellie Howard /Photomonitor

Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain 1933 – 1969 /

Reviewed by Ellie Howard 

27.02.20 – 02.05.20

Four Corners / London / England

__________

“A survey of Jewish émigré photographers, titled Another Eye: women refugee photographers in Britain after 1993, begins with poignancy. Slightly jaundiced and rumpled at the corners, the framed pages of Erika Koch’s album show photographs of relaxed Read More

Direct Link →

International Bursary: Awarded to Laura Dicken

GRAIN Projects, New Art West Midlands, Aarhus Center for Visual Art (AaBKC) and Galleri Image are delighted to announce that Laura Dicken has been selected as the successful recipient of the International Bursary 2020. Laura will now undertake a period of research in Aarhus, Denmark, in March 2020.

Laura’s research proposal was selected by representatives from Read More

Direct Link →

Kyrgyzstan launched its first ‘Feminnale’ for feminist art. Then the censors arrived / by Erica X Eisen / CALVERT Journal

Bishkek’s Feminnale kicked off a fight against the patriarchy. But with government censorship, the struggle is proving even more difficult than artists predicted.

“No one has ever censored her out before,” Kazakh artist Zoya Falkova says. “It’s just never happened.”

The “she” in question is Evermust, a sculpture composed of a black-and-red punching bag shaped like a Read More

Direct Link →

Decolonizing documentary photography: The RAWIYA collective in Palestine. By Sherena Razek / AWARE

“What can images that move do for people who cannot? What can documentary photography as a practice, form, and genre do in its ubiquitous, global circulation for those rendered immobile by colonial occupation?

More specifically this thesis asks: How do contemporary Middle Eastern women photographers working in Palestine, throughout the Middle East, and the diaspora contest Read More

Direct Link →

The Natural Woman : a violation of community guidelines by Emily Rose Larson / Foto Femme United

Social media’s censorship of women’s bodies is deeply problematic. The ever changing guidelines for what is and isn’t acceptable on platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are inherently sexist and arbitrary. The intense suppression of the female form harms artists and reinforces dangerous and warped ideas regarding value that women have been battling for Read More

Direct Link →

Report shows limited progress in representation of women artists in public institutions, whilst commercial galleries still favour men / A-N

Freelands Foundation survey of the UK’s art sector highlights incremental progress in the public sector, but commercial galleries are still lagging behind in their representation of women artists.

A new report by the Freelands Foundation has shown that there has been limited progress in the representation of women artists in public institutions, with career success in Read More

Direct Link →

Women battling sexism in photography – a picture essay

From equipment ‘designed by men for men’ to clients assuming they’re the makeup artist, female photographers are still fighting against the tide.

by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Push-ups and photography aren’t normal bed partners. But when Cybele Malinowski was starting out as a young photography assistant in 2005, she was told to do 100 push-ups a day. The reason? Read More

Direct Link →

Aperture & Paris Photo Photobook Awards Shortlist Announced

Aperture and Paris Photo have announced the shortlist for the 2018 PhotoBook Awards.

The shortlist selection was made by Lucy Gallun, associate curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art; Kristen Lubben, executive director of the Magnum Foundation; Yasufumi Nakamori, PhD, incoming senior curator of international art (photography) at Tate Modern, London; Lesley A. Martin, creative Read More

Direct Link →

Artist Candice Breitz Called Out a Düsseldorf Museum for Its Male-Dominated Show… BY Hili Perlson / ArtNet News

“An exhibition at Düsseldorf’s prestigious NRW Forum has become a lightning rod in the German art world and set off a tense debate over representation due to its sparse inclusion of women artists.

The row began on social media and gained steam after the Berlin-based, South African artist Candice Breitz and the Vienna-based curator Verena Kaspar-Eisert initiated Read More

Direct Link →

Memorial to all Women Edited out of History by Viktorija Rusinaite

Memorial to all Women Edited out of History

A staggering story is enfolding in Lithuania.

In 1965 Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre visited Nida, USSR. The main motive for the visit is said to be J. P. Sartre’s affair with Lenina Zonina* who was his translator and official interpreter during his numerous visits to USSR.

Writers Mykolas Read More

On ethics and good practice: an open discussion to be had in Africa / EYONART / by Christine Eyene

n Thursday 17 May 2018, South African writer and former Artthrob editor Matthew Blackman published an article announcing that an inquiry was being launched into the professional conduct of Mark Coetzee, the former executive director and chief curator of Zeitz MOCAA – Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town. The article speaks of “unconfirmed rumours” of “abuses Read More

Direct Link →

Indians Celebrating India at Houston FotoFest

Photography in India is a paradox. There are ample commercial opportunities, but few schools devoted to the medium. So, for the people of the world’s seventh largest country — with a population expected to overtake China — choosing a career in photography means either learning on the job or studying outside the country.

“There is very Read More

Direct Link →

Alfredo Jaar Is on a Mission to Photograph Inspirational Women Around the World by Sarah Cascone / Artnet News

“In 2011, Alfredo Jaar presented a modest exhibition, Three Women, at Paris’s Galerie Kamel Mennour. The show included three tiny photographs illuminated by six large paparazzi-like tripods. The contrast in scale was meant to draw attention to the fact that the subjects—all women activists with towering achievements—had been overlooked….

After Jaar completed Three Women—which Read More

Direct Link →

Women Seen by Women

WOMEN SEEN BY WOMEN

A special award celebrating the 10th Edition of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers juried by Analy Werbin, Senior Curator of the Biennial of Fine Art & Documentary Photography

Selected among 720 entries from 42 countries, and after a preselection done by the curatorial team of the Photography Gala Awards, the Read More

Direct Link →

Representation of Female Artists in Britain in 2016 (Research paper No.1) by Charlotte Bonham-Carter

Research Paper No.1

Representation of Female Artists in Britain

Research compiled by Charlotte Bonham-Carter

The following report was commissioned by Freelands Foundation in order to establish current and objective data in relation to the representation of female artists. The intention of the report is to contribute to existing debates, as well as to aid the Foundation in making Read More

Direct Link →

Representation of Female Artists in Britain in 2016 (Research paper No.2) by Charlotte Bonham-Carter

Research Paper No.2

Representation of Female Artists in Britain in 2016

 

Research compiled by Charlotte Bonham-Carter

The following report was commissioned by the Freelands Foundation. The intention of the report is to provide up-to-date data on the representation of women in the art world, in order to sustain and provoke a critical awareness of gender parity in the Read More

Direct Link →

OPEN LETTER & CAMPAIGN: We are not surprised.

“We are not surprised.

We are gallerists, artists, writers, editors, curators, directors, arts administrators, assistants, and interns – workers of the art world – and we have been groped, undermined, harassed, infantilised, scorned, threatened, and intimidated by those in positions of power who control access to resources and opportunities. We have held our tongues, threatened by Read More

Direct Link →

Then and Now: Japanese Women Photographers of the 1970s and ’80s Revealed Through Their Photobooks by Russet Lederman

Then and Now: Japanese Women Photographers of the 1970s and ’80s Revealed Through Their Photobooks
Russet Lederman

The paper was presented firstly at Tate Modern conference “Fast Forward: Women in Photography” in 2015. Now it is published in  Volume 8Issue 1Art and Vernacular Photographies in Asia, Fall 2017

“In March 2014, the Hasselblad Foundation presented the Japanese Read More

Direct Link →

Remembering Sue Steward – writer, curator, picture editor and much more by Anne Braybon / BJP

“Sue was a well-known, respected, and liked figure in photography says Anne Braybon, photography historian and curator, and a close friend

Even Sue Steward, a writer who excelled in celebrating lives, might have struggled to write an obituary that unravelled the vibrant meshing of her own. She lived with ferocious energy and enthusiasm, and a genuine gift for friendship Read More

Direct Link →

ECHOES FROM THE VAULT – Archive at St Andrews University reveals the work of photographer Franki Raffles

READING THE COLLECTIONS, WEEK 47: CELEBRATING WOMEN: THE FRANKI RAFFLES PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION

Spectacular work by photographer Franki Raffles

Born in Manchester and raised in London, Franki Raffles was an alumna of St Andrews University (MA in Moral Philosophy, 1977). After graduating she made her home in Scotland, first on the Isle of Lewis and later in Edinburgh, Read More

Direct Link →

An Exhibition Offers a Visual Biography of Sylvia Plath, Including Her Little-Known Art by Allison Meier / Hyperallergic

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is opening a visual biography of the author Sylvia Plath, including her rarely-seen artwork.

“Since her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30, Sylvia Plath’s literary recognition has only grown, whether the ubiquitous assignment of her lone novel The Bell Jar in American high schools, or her posthumous Pulitzer Prize for poetry Read More

Direct Link →

The Problem of the Overlooked Female Artist: An Argument for Enlivening a Stale Model of Discussion by Ashton Cooper / Hyperallergic

The Problem of the Overlooked Female Artist: An Argument for Enlivening a Stale Model of Discussion

by Ashton Cooper for  Hyperallergic

“My intention here is not to call out museums or simplistic writing, but to point out the ways in which institutions and publications — both major and minor — are guilty of perpetuating a schematic and Read More

Direct Link →

Tales of Motherhood by Jennie Klein / ARTPULSE

“Feminist artists have not always been interested in motherhood. Helen Million Ruby, one of the founding members of the activist group Mother Art and a student at the Feminist Studio Workshop in the Los Angeles Woman’s Building, was told by Judy Chicago that she couldn’t be a mother and an artist-the two were mutually exclusive. Chicago’s Read More

Direct Link →

Article: Women Photographers / Young Photography Now

On the occasion of the international women’s day on 8 March. Young Photography Now publishes a special report on women photographers in the world today.

Several events, publications and resources are gathered here to reflect the growing interest in women photographers and their recognition in the world of Visual arts. Women are very active in photography Read More

Direct Link →

Female Photographers Matter Now More Than Ever by Laura Mallonee / WIRED

Female Photographers Matter Now More Than Ever

by Laura Mallonee

“Zalcman just launched Women Photograph, a website featuring more than 400 (and counting) female photojournalists from 67 countries. “We need to make a better effort to find female photographers and photographers of color,” she say. “Because they exist. They’re there.”.[…] WIRED talked to Zalcman about her website, her experiences, Read More

Francesca Perry on female street photographers / Guardian

The female street photographers of Instagram – in pictures

by Francesca Perry

“The art of street photography was long dominated by men and the ‘male gaze’, but new project Her Side of the Street celebrates women’s role in the practice… Last year, American photographer Casey Meshbesher felt compelled to create a compendium of street photography by women Read More

Lauren Elkin on female flaneurs’ gaze / Guardian

A tribute to female flâneurs: the women who reclaimed our city streets

by Lauren Elkin

“The flâneur – the keen-eyed stroller who chronicles the minutiae of city life – has long been seen as a man’s role. From Virginia Woolf to Martha Gellhorn, it’s time we recognised the vital, transgressive work of the flâneuse…. It’s time to recognise Read More

On Gauri Gill by Inderpal Grewal: Fields of Sight

“Once in a while an artistic practice emerges that challenges viewers in new ways that cut through the noise, and offers something both deeply familiar and at the same time utterly new. Collaborative, creative, and experimental, Gill and Vangad, in Fields of Sight, provide a new language for art practices that address the politics and Read More

INSPIRING FILMS ABOUT WOMEN IN PHOTOGRAPHY

INSPIRING FILMS ABOUT WOMEN IN PHOTOGRAPHY

Here are three films about women photographers that all aspiring photographers must watch. Filmed in different settings and time, these films take us through the journey of women who break norms and stereotypes to find their voice through the lens. The films showcase their artistic pursuits, personal struggles and social concerns, Read More

La Toya Ruby Frazier

La Toya Ruby Frazier – this video is fascinating – she has just won a major MacArthur grand and has a new book out with Aperture

 

 

http://aperture.org/shop/latoya-ruby-frazier-the-notion-of-family-books

An Interview with Eva Stenram

Photoworks speak to self-proclaimed ‘photographic archaeologist’ Eva Stenram about the ideas and processes behind her practice and her use of found imagery.

http://photoworks.org.uk/interview-eva-stenram/

Norwegian magazine OBJEKTIV #12: Into the light

OBJEKTIV#12

Objektiv #12 is inspired by, and will be launched during the conference Fast Forward: Women in Photography at Tate Modern in November, 2015. Keen to contribute to this initiative, we have singled out three women whom we would like to fast forward into the light: B. Ingrid Olson, Marie Svindt and Lieko Shiga. Photographer and writer Read More

Common Ground

Issue Five

What makes a particular site ‘home’? Is it where our roots begin, or is it fluid and changing, existing as an unfixed place of comfort? Curated by Talia Smith, Issue Five of Common Ground brings together diverse works and words by women artists and writers to determine if home really is where the heart is.

Artists:
Rachael Ireland
Delena Nathuran
Ann Read More

New Book – DOROTHY BOHM: ABOUT WOMEN

About Women is Dorothy Bohm’s first book to focus exclusively on the subject of women. Taken throughout the world, from the late 1940s until the present day, her photographs range from images of ordinary women going about their everyday activities, to explorations of the role that representations of women, in the form of advertisements, posters Read More