10 groundbreaking female photographers
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10 groundbreaking female photographers

Photography is one of the most versatile art forms, harnessing the ability to freeze a moment in time, capturing something that will never be quite the same again. The medium is a vital part of our cultural language, conveying meaning across language barriers. Photographs have changed history and shaped how we think about the world around us.

Since photography became a widespread practice, a large chunk of the world’s most celebrated photographers have been white men. Of course, photographers like Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank are rightfully appreciated for their influential approaches to the medium. However, many female photographers of equal excellence have been all too frequently overshadowed by their male counterparts throughout art history.

Some of the earliest photographic pioneers were female, with many dedicating themselves to proving that photography can be an art form – not just a form of simple documentation. Elsewhere, women were pioneering new ways to approach their subjects or using the camera to explore issues of gender, performance and race.

From Claude Cahun to Dorothea Lange and Carrie Mae Weems, here are ten groundbreaking female photographers that deserve as much respect as their male counterparts.

10 groundbreaking female photographers:

Berenice Abbott

After working as Man Ray’s assistant in Paris, Berenice Abbott moved between the French city, New York and Berlin, becoming a prominent member in each of their artistic circles. Abbott photographed key figures of the early 20th century, such as James Joyce and Jean Cocteau, alongside social realist images of cities. She was also interested in science, photographing light beams and static electricity with the same intimacy as if they were human subjects.

Abbott was influential for her creative approach towards capturing the rise of modernism, from the rapid industrialisation of cities to the milieu of artists that informed the movement. Discussing her approach to photographing cities, she explained, “I want to show its contrasts and contradictions.”

Carrie Mae Weems

“In one way or another, my work endlessly explodes the limits of tradition. I’m determined to find new models to live by. Aren’t you?” declared Carrie Mae Weems. The American artist, known for her photography, visual installations and moving image, is a groundbreaking talent. Her work often explores gender, family, race, and identity, most notably demonstrated in her Kitchen Table series.

In this 1990 series, Weems appears in front of her camera, surrounded by friends or family, in a variety of different situations. She explained that these photos “respond to a number of issues: woman’s subjectivity, woman’s capacity to revel in her body, and the woman’s construction of herself, and her own image.”

Weems received her first camera in 1973, and by the following year, she was enrolled in San Francisco City College to study the medium. Since the 1970s, Weems has had an impressive career primarily centring around the experiences and depictions of black women.

Claude Cahun

French surrealist photographer and writer Claude Cahun pushed the boundaries of gender through her self-portraits. Alongside other members of the movement, such as Eugène Atget, Cahun was a bold, pioneering artist who utilised the photographic medium as a form of expression. She never intended to be recognised for her work, most of which went uncelebrated until decades after her death. 

Through self-portraits, where Cahun would take on different theatrical personas, often concealing her body to blur the lines between masculinity and femininity, she challenged the notions of gender and performance. Cahun was also an activist during World War II, leading to her arrest and death sentence, which she narrowly escaped.

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus was completely fascinated by her subjects, whom she befriended and photographed with the intention of destigmatising society’s outliers. Performers, heavily tattooed men, people with dwarfism, and others considered, at the time, to be outcasts populated Arbus’ photographs. Her work captures 1960s and 1970s America incredibly vividly, inspiring generations of photographers to come. She even influenced the depiction of the Grady twins in The Shining, who were based on one of her photographs of identical twins. 

In a 1972 issue of Time Magazine, Robert Hughes wrote, “[Arbus’s] work has had such an influence on other photographers that it is already hard to remember how original it was.” Arbus passed away in 1971 after committing suicide, yet her pioneering vision remains a primary source of inspiration for modern photographers.

Dorothea Lange

Even if you’ve never heard the name Dorothea Lange, you’ve undoubtedly seen her most famous photograph: Migrant Mother, which has come to epitomise The Great Depression. Born in 1895, Lange decided she wanted to be a photographer before she’d even held a camera, eventually studying the medium at Columbia University. After spending the early years of her career snapping wealthy people’s portraits, she took an interest in capturing the lives of the less fortunate, documenting migrant families with a compassionate lens.

In the Aperture Masters of Photography’s book Dorothea Lange, Linda Gordon wrote: “Dorothea Lange exerted, arguably, the single greatest influence on both the practice and concept of documentary photography. […] She came to believe that her photography was at its best when she had studied the place, the people, and even the economy that were her subjects.”

Gertrude Käsebier

Born in 1852, Gertrude Käsebier was an early pioneer of photography as an art form. As a pictorialist, Käsebier was preoccupied with creating dreamy images, typically featuring mothers and children, often editing her images in the darkroom to create unique effects. In the late 1800s, the artist’s work was the subject of many exhibitions, with her first taking place at the Boston Camera Club. Soon, she had her own studio in New York and even managed to sell her piece The Manger for $100, an important feat in the sale of photography in the art world.

Käsebier co-founded institutions such as the Women’s Federation of the Photographers’ Association of America. Her influence on photography as art was enormous, influencing other seminal photographers from the early 20th century, such as Imogen Cunningham.

Helen Levitt

Described by David Levi Strauss as “maybe the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time,” Helen Levitt was a pioneering street photographer who captured images of New York and its inhabitants beginning in the 1930s. According to photographer Siân Davey (via The Guardian), “She doesn’t just charge in like many male street photographers tend to. Instead, in her pictures, you sense a particular quality of contact between her and her subjects. There is tenderness and an absence of ego that tells you what kind of person she was.”

From her striking black-and-white images to her lucid colour snapshots, Levitt’s vast body of work was often quietly political. For example, her preoccupation with images of working-class people in the streets directly contrasted with the oppressive laws being passed to limit minorities from accessing public spaces.

Imogen Cunningham

In high school, Imogen Cunningham set out to be a photographer, beginning her career in 1901. Inspired by the work of Gertrude Käsebier, Cunningham created dream-like images, often using female subjects. She was also known for her female nudes and evocative images of flowers, which have the same lucidity as Georgia O’Keefe’s botanical paintings. Cunningham employed a specifically feminine gaze when taking photos, and her use of light was one of her most impressive skills.

In the 1940s, she took an interest in street photography, something she also excelled at. Cunningham was one of the most innovative photographers of her time, and she quickly became a highly in-demand artist, frequently employed by Vanity Fair.

Nan Goldin

Beginning in the 1960s, Nan Goldin immortalised her friends in celluloid, capturing the drag queens she befriended in LGBT communities, aiming to “show them with a lot of respect and love.” Her most notable work, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, is an evocative depiction of New York’s underground no-wave scene, gay communities and drug users, alongside confrontational portraits of her battered face – herself a victim of domestic abuse.

Her work is unashamedly raw, often brutal, yet there is always tenderness within each photograph. Goldin evidently loved her subjects and dedicated herself to depicting everything, no matter how uncomfortable. The photographer was not a voyeur of marginalised groups and pain, she was part of the world she vibrantly photographed. Few artists have exerted as much influence over the practice of confessional, personal documentary photography as Goldin.

Vera Jackson

Vera Jackson was a prominent African-American photographer, born in 1912, known for her documentary images that often captured her dedication to fighting for civil rights. She photographed protests and notable black figures, such as Dorothy Dandridge and Mary McLeod Bethune. Jackson was heavily involved in African-American newspapers, starting her career as a photojournalist with California Eagle, which was designed to stand in opposition to many white publications.

She was an advocate for black publications, stating in an interview: “There’s so much good in the black race that we must have black papers, black publications.” Through her stunning images published in these black-owned newspapers, Jackson paved the way for future photographers by demonstrating how photography can be used as activism, making the invisible visible.

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