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Silver Print: The Artistic Eye of Truth


By Jessie Nace

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Photography has evolved since inception 176 years ago. From the Daguerreotype

(named for it inventor, Louise-Jacques-Mand’e- Daguerre) t the “selfie”. Who was taking the

pictures of importance has also evolved. In a time where men were dominating just about

everything women found their place in the photographers circle.

One of the first daguerreotype. The Louvre, 1839

One of the many “selfies” Molly 2015

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What many people don’t realize is that from the advent of the camera and photograph

women have shown that they have talent. They have surpassed the stereotypical idea that

photography is a man's world. They went above and beyond to tell a story, make a point to

show the world's struggles, success, beauty and ugliness. However many any talented women

photographers have been forgotten, their pictures stored in attics, basement, or lost forever.

An example is a women name Julia French who lived in San Francisco had a photo studio in

January of 1850. She took pictures of men who were panning for gold. She lost all of her

pictures in the fire of 1851. She just disappeared, nothing left to mention.

The artistic eye of women photographers during the 1930-1940 help the country

visualize the changes that were taking shape in economics, military, education and political

issues. These women were helping the world get the information they needed in new and

phenomenal ways. What I want to prove is that they had just as much talent as their male

colleagues. They were able to take on projects, assignment and anything that men could do to

get the picture taken. I will show the differences between the pictures men and women

photographers were taking. I will try and show that women were able to grasp the emotion

and capture it on film, they had the sensitivity to show natural raw feeling just by being more

spontaneous.

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History

1839-1890

The invention of the camera brought on a new and popular pastime for Victorian

women, however it soon became apparent that it would turn into something more. Like many

things in the nineteenth century, photography was considered a man’s job. The camera was too

heavy, the chemicals too messy and the idea was that most women wouldn’t want to deal with

it. The new invention was thought to be a novelty, one that wouldn't last. But despite this,

women were becoming more intrigued by this so-called novelty. “In 1843 a Mrs. Davis arrived

in Houston for a stay of two to three weeks, during which the local populace was invited to

obtain “accurate miniatures”; soon afterwards, a daguerreotype salon was opened by a male

resident." (pg. 43) Women were learning the trade, getting taught by men in the field, helping

in studios, setting up the “stage”, helping with lighting. Soon women were opening up their

own studios. Women saw photography as a way to bring in extra money.

Women had a way with capturing the sitter or subject, they could adjust the lighting just

right, get the backdrop perfect, they were able to make the picture look natural in a way that

men just could not be sensitive to, men just couldn’t visualize it in a way that women could.

Men’s pictures had a starchy, stiff feeling to them. Women were able to make their pictures

look almost spontaneous.

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For example look at the picture on the left taken by Matthew Brady in 1860, the young

girl looks posed, she is not smiling, which is the style. This was because just a small movement

could ruin the photo.

She is wearing black and seems to be just uncomfortable. She is made to look like a

small adult. The picture on the right by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1870 is a planned picture,

however looks more spontaneous. All three sitters look comfortable and happy, the children

look like they are having fun.

Photograph courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Meserve.1860.64

Each picture has light, but the one on the right uses natural light making the picture

more eye catching. Both of the children are wearing clothes that children wore during that

time. They are not dolled up, like the child on the left.

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Julia Margaret Cameron is known for the natural quality that her photographs seem to

have. She was able to blend the unorthodox technique and a spirituality sensibility in a gallery

of vivid pictures. One known photograph, one of her more religious pictures depicted a sitter

posing as the Virgin Mary. It is posed, however like many of her picture it looks so natural, like

she was just watching this woman and just decided to take her picture. What is interesting is

that Gertrude Kasebier, had a similar natural way of capturing the sitter. Like Cameron,

Gertrude’s photos seem to just have a natural quality. Gertrude has a photograph that is similar

to Cameron’s, titled “The Manger” that she took in 1899.

The photographs were taken nearly thirty years apart, but the similarities are

remarkable. Both women are wearing white, the light seems to give them an aura of innocence,

both babies are turned away from the camera, as if the mother is protecting them.

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The natural ability to capture the scene didn’t mean that these women photographers

jump on the famous train, in fact they still were not being recognized for their talent or artistry.

Even with these remarkable women to set a turning point to what women photographers were

able to do, women were still being slighted. In Naomi Rosenblum’s 2010 edition of A History of

Women Photographers it states “that until fairly recent times women’s work in photography

did not receive it due consideration”. So what did women have to do to be recognized?

20 th Century

In the late 1920’s many women photographers were changing how they photographed.

They were branching out, trying to make a difference in the world. Finding any opportunity to

prove that they were just as good at what they did as any man. Many of these women were

doing things that got them noticed, because it was out of the norm for women to be doing.

They were hiking up their skirts, climbing buildings and getting dirty like men. They were doing

tasks they most career minded women would not do.

Advertising

Advertising was a way to bring merchandise out into the world, to provide the consumer

a visual aide in making a decision on what to buy. Although advertising may follow the same

idea that women had a sensitivity, a way to make the subject look appealing, natural. The

advertising industry was mainly men, with less than one women out of every ten people. For

long time this was how it would be. If a woman was in advertising she was in the secretarial

area.

It is important to mention that Margaret Watkins became one of the first women

advertisers in the field when she was hired by the Walter Thompson agency. She was known

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for organizing subjects in a striking way, making the everyday domestic tools, such as glassware,

pots and pans and kitchen sinks an abstract design.

This imagine surprisingly was a work of art. By shedding light on domestic task, usually

women’s work. Watkins was able to capture the ordinary and make it extraordinary. The

everyday items that women all over the world were using to maintain their households, were

being made more desirable by Watkins pictures. She could make anything look more appealing.

Many photographers were looking at the world through a whole new lens. The camera

had become portable, easy to maneuver, easier to use and easier to take picture outside where

things were happing. By this time women like Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Diana

Arbus and Toni Frissel were changing the way they saw things.

Fashion photography

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Fashion photography was another example, of how women were trying to mainstream

their talent. Louise Dahl-Wolfe had the eye for fashion and spend middle part of the twentieth

century taking picture for Harpers Bazar. The photograph below is of a young women looking

at herself in a mirror. She is natural, there is no idea that she is posing, and the photographer

gives the allusion that she has been photographed without her knowledge. Louise Dahl-Wolfe

had the eye to capture beautiful photographs of models in gowns made by designers such as

Dior like the one the young girl is wearing below. Fashion Photography, was like advertising a

way for women to get notice. The way the room is dark, except right in front of the mirror gives

the image a seductive, sultry feel. This is beauty in photography that the women behind the

camera can easily see.

Dior Ball gown Paris 1950

Photojournalism

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Photojournalism became popular in the 1930s, the slick pictures in magazines provided

an important outlet for documentary photographs. There were very few jobs for women in the

newspaper industry during the 1920s, photojournalism provided many women a place in

history. Many men in the industry recognized the talent in which many women had. “In a 1930

edition of US. Camera Annual which published images by Bourke-White and Lange, Frank

Crowninshield (editor of Vanity Fair) predicted: It may be women who will lead our coming

revolution for, already, many of them have shown amazing originality and depth of feeling”.

(pg. 179) Margaret Bourke-White spent a lot of her time taking pictures of structures,

architecture, but during the 1930 she became more interested in people. She joined up with

Erskine Caldwell on a non-fiction book about the southern sharecroppers. They didn’t work well

together, however it inspired her to branch out on her own. She took pictures of the suffering,

the despair and the overall sadness. She could capture the beauty amongst the ugliness.

“Utter truth is essential and that is what stirs me when I look through the camera”–Margaret

Bourke-White

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Maiden Lane, Georgia. This couple are farmers. It is all they know how to do. The anguish, despair and exhaustion that is captured here truly amazing. Picture was taken by Margaret Bourke-White in 1936. When she toured the southern states.


The first issue of Life magazine in 1936 featured a picture taken by Margaret Bourke-

White. This picture is of Fort Peck Dam, a WPA project started in 1933. The pictures that she

took for this assignment would spark up a lot of controversy, because she had gone to Montana

to take picture of the enormous dam, however she took more pictures of the people instead.

Bourke-White was able to see what others could not. The boom town that had sprung up

around the Dam, was her inspiration. While many of the photographers were focusing on the

dam, Bourke-White saw the potential story in the people. The magazine sold out with-in hours.

One of the most important aspect of my research was to show that women were able to

capture a story with their cameras. What I wanted to show below is the difference in each

picture. There is so much more depth in Dorothea Lange’s photo, that that of Walker Evans.

Dorothea Lange, who was on her way home after being on assignment for FSA,

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(Farmland Security Administration was found in 1932 and stay open till 1942. It was designed to help

relocate displaced agricultural farmers. Several photographers where hired to take pictures and use

those photo as documentation to help spread the word that help was needed.) drove past a camp of

displaced workers. She knew that there was a story there but she had been gone for a month

and just wanted to go home. She talked herself into turning around after a twenty minute

debate. What she found when she got there was a 32 year old mother of seven, who had just

sold their car tires for food. The picture below is of that mother. The mother Florence Owens

Thompson, asked no questions when Dorothea asked to take her picture. The picture was sent

to a San Francisco newspaper. The editor ran the article and notified authorities and with hours

twenty thousand pound of food was sent to the camp. This picture would not only show the

world was going on but also it was the inspiration for John Steinbeck’s novel “The Grapes of

Wrath”

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What we see in this picture is a women has had a hard life, she is worried about how to feed her babies, where they will go. The lighting, they positioning of all the sitters made this picture an Icon. It brought suffering out into the open. She is actually just sitting there when her photo is taken.


This picture of Ellie Mae was taking by Walker Evans in 1936 around the same time as

Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother”. Evans who also worked for FSA, asked the women to

pose. He also asked her to show several different emotions. This is contempt, and although

Evans is known, just as well as Lange, He just didn’t capture the despair, pain and need that

Lange was able to. It is hard to tell what this women is thinking, she is set up against the lean to

that her family were living in. This picture just doesn’t have the emotion that the other one

has. She is just standing there, like “okay take my picture”. Evans was a great photographer,

he just lacked the ability to get the emotion.

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World War II brought women photojournalist to the action, very different than World

War I, were no photographs were allowed by anyone let alone women. Women were

encourage to take on assignment previously given to men and war was no exception. By 1940

women were seen on the battlefront side by side soldiers getting pictures that would tell a story

of horror and sadness. In 1927 there were just over 5,000 women photographers and that

double by 1937. When the United States was called into the war in 1941 there were over

10,000 women photographers. One third of these women were African-American. The United

State government found that publicity would greatly help the war effort. Margaret Bourke-

White was again going above and beyond the barriers of women when she took an assignment

from Life to cover the bombardment of Moscow in 1941.

Conclusion

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In July 1941 a press photographer of "Life" magazine, Margaret Bourke-White, came to Moscow. When the war started, photography was under the vigilant surveillance - for unauthorized shooting or holding a camera people were put on trial. However Margaret managed to get a permission to take these shots as the Soviet authorities thought that they would show the USSR in the best advantage in the foreign magazine.

Margaret Bourke-White spent two months in Moscow and she was constantly accompanied, however it didn't prevent her from taking truly unique photographs”.


There is so much that I could say. I could add picture after picture, be analyzing for days

maybe longer. What I have shown is just a little of the talent that women had from the

beginning. They could have worked side by side with their male colleagues and had good

careers as colorist, stage setters, and secretary’s, but then the picture of the migrant mother

would never have been taken, things would never had set in motion for all those displaced

workers. Lange had the notability that gave her the credit to get that story told. The women I

have written about were able to capture the truth and reveal stories that wouldn’t have gotten

out there had a man taken the particular pictures. The story was about the emotion, the feeling

that the viewer got by looking at or reading the article. Women photographers eventually got

the recognition they deserved they were getting noticed. They were working alongside men,

doing the same thing if not more. Their pictures were making a difference education the world

on what was going on in a way that had people taking notice. They were also showing the world

that they as photographers were not going anywhere. They went to wars, they were on the

front line, getting stories with the soldiers a task that would not have happened in the past.

Women photographers are not to be forgotten what they have done throughout history. They

have given other women the tools they needed to succeed. By getting out there standing up for

each other and themselves the women photographers of the 19th and 20th centuries show the

world the beauty, ugliness, hope and despair of everyday life, extraordinary circumstances.

They paved the way for their daughters, granddaughters and all young women to have the

ability to capture the world through the camera.

References

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1. Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present. Completely

Rev. and Enl. Ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art; 1982.

2. Tucker, Anne. The Woman's Eye. New York: Knopf; [distributed by Random House],

1973.

3. Rosenblum, Naomi. A History of Women Photographers. 3rd ed. New York: Abbeville

Press Publishers, 2010.

4. Gover, C. Jane. "The Positive Image: Women Photographers in Turn of the Century

America." Woman's Art Journal Vol. 10, no. No. 2 (1989): P. 48.

5. Gawthrop, Louis C. "Dorothea Lange and Visionary Change." Society: 64-67.

6. http://time.com

7. http://englishrussia.com

8. http://animprobablelife.com/2012/06/22/

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http://animprobablelife.com/2012/06/22/

http://englishrussia.com/

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