To celebrate the publication of The Women Who Changed Photography, which tells the stories of fifty pioneering photographers and their work, author Gemma Padley spotlights five of the book’s brilliant practitioners who have contributed in significant ways to the development of the medium.
Shirin Neshat
Through her art, Shirin Neshat explores issues such as what it’s like to be an Iranian living in the United States of America, the loss and absence of home, and the trauma of separation. Neshat, who is based in New York City, has also made work about the female experience in Iran. ‘Women of Allah’ (1993–1997) draws on the experiences of Iranian women associated with the revolution. The multilayered artworks seamlessly bring together photographs with fragments of poems by contemporary Iranian writers, Tahereh Saffarzadeh and Forough Farrokhzad. In these works, Neshat explores themes that include feminism, religion, fundamentalism and the female body as a site of contention and oppression. In a turbulent world where oppression against women remains, not least in Iran, Neshat’s work is as fresh and vital as ever.
Pushpamala N.
One of India’s foremost artists, photo-performance artist Pushpamala N. interrogates the idea of the ‘Indian woman’, which she probes by wittily deconstructing and subverting common cultural stereotypes. She does this by channelling references from colonial-era ethnographic photography, art, cinema and other areas of popular culture to reconstruct elaborately staged scenes. In her well-known series, ‘Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs’ (2000–2004), the artist collaborated with British photographer Clare Arni to create a performative body of work that critiques ‘types’ of women familiar in Indian culture. At once playful and wryly humorous, the constructed images not only invite us to question received notions of Indian women, but also to consider the role photography plays in the construction of stereotypes.
Dafna Talmor
Tiptoeing along the edges between the imaginary and the actual, London-based artist Dafna Talmor invites viewers to enter spaces that look real but are, in fact, fabricated. Talmor works with cut negatives – initially using images of locations that have special personal significance – to make ‘constructed landscapes’. Pieces are carefully reassembled to form landscapes that exist only in the newly created images. On one level, Talmor’s work harks back to early pictorialist techniques of combination printing by photographers such as Gustave Le Gray and Oscar Gustave Rejlander. This approach involved photographing, for example, the sky and sea separately and then combining them in the darkroom to make a single (constructed) idealized image. Her work also nods to modernist experiments where artists interfered with the film or created multiple exposures. In an age of immateriality and digital manipulation Talmor’s work artfully draws attention to the handmade.
Julia Margaret Cameron
A woman whose name is synonymous with early portrait photography, Julia Margaret Cameron had a knack of capturing something indefinable in her images, an essence of something or someone. Cameron was 48 years old when she began making pictures, having been given a camera by her daughter and son-in-law. Living on the Isle of Wight at the time, Cameron threw herself into her new pursuit. Often staging biblical and allegorical scenes, she would fill the frame with her subject and experiment with soft focus, creating emotionally charged portraits that went against convention precisely because they were not aesthetically ‘perfect’. Although she received criticism for working in what some regarded to be an unconventional way, scholars have speculated that such ‘imperfections’ add to, rather than detract from, her photographic portraits, where the hand of the artist is clear for all to see.
Julie Cockburn
Working with found photographs and paintings, postcards, maps or indeed any object that catches her eye, Cockburn breathes life into forgotten images by embroidering and embellishing them. Scanning each photograph and initially working on the copy, Cockburn ‘sketches’ out an idea for how the artwork will look. Once she is happy with a design, she transfers it onto the original and begins stitching, collaging or adding other embellishments such as beads. Often working with formal studio portraits from a bygone era and generic landscape images, Cockburn is drawn to the stillness and space of such images, which are at once familiar and forgettable. It is within this space that Cockburn can add her own ‘magic’ or some kind of narrative. Engaging with issues to do with identity, memory and photography’s unique ability to freeze time, Cockburn plays with the physical nature of photographs and other found images to encourage viewers to look again.
MORE ABOUT THE BOOK:
Discover 50 groundbreaking female photographers and how to incorporate their styles and techniques into your own photography.
Often in the shadow of their male counterparts, these inspirational women developed new techniques, created their own signature styles and captured everything from war to fashion. From early pioneers to contemporary leaders, they paved the way for generations to come and continue to do so, inspiring them to pick up a camera and decide what type of photographer they want to be.
Featuring masters of the medium, such as Anna Atkins, Imogen Cunningham, Nadine Ijewere, Lee Miller, Shirin Neshat, Lorna Simpson, Cindy Sherman, Zanele Muholi and Ingrid Pollard, this book is beautifully illustrated with full-colour images of the photographers and their work. It tells the story of these groundbreaking women, how they changed the way we see the world today and helped shape the future of photography. It also provides expert advice on how you can celebrate these trailblazers in your own photography. Follow the instructions to master their techniques and recreate their styles in your own work.