34 Women plus one

Today on Facebook, curator Peggy Sue Amison shared a link that so impressed me that I stopped writing the post I was preparing for today to share it with you. It might have been better to keep it to share tomorrow, which is of course International Women’s Day, but I may be too busy covering International Women’s Strike (IWS) events here in London to have time to think about writing anything.

Women in Photography: 34 Voices From Around the World by Time’s Kira Pollack and Katherine Pomerantz came about because Pollack, one of the jurors of the this year’s World Press Photo was stunned to learn that only around 15% of the entries were by women – and that this figure has been around the same over the last 10 years.

As a result, “TIME reached out globally to the most acclaimed female photojournalists, curators and directors of photography in the industry, asking them to select one female photojournalist that they believe is worthy of recognition” and the results are impressive, truly as they write and I agree “an astonishing collection of brilliant work from around the world. For me, this list includes many photojournalists I have never known, was delighted to learn about and excited to get to know more.” Among the 34 there are only two or three whose names I recognise, and it is truly a list from around the world.

One of many other woman photographers whose work impresses me is Abbie Trayler-Smith, and I recently watched a video interview with her on Lensculture, The Big O: A Female Photographer on Approaching Obesity. In it she looks at the benefits of being female when it comes to making intimate work, stating “I love being a woman, and I love the access that gives me as a photographer…”

I mentioned Trayler-Smith a couple of years ago, appropriately in a post about World Press Photo, Man Up?

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.