Tag Archives: women in photography
30 For 30: Rapidly Multiplying Alternative Options
To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring items from the PWP Archives* each day on this blog. In looking back, we see not only where we started, but how far photography, women, and the world have come since 1975.
From the very beginning photographers have pushed the technical and artistic boundaries of their medium, seeking more choices and avenues of expression. When PWP was founded in the 1970s, serious photography meant black-and-white and gelatin silver prints, but enthusiasm was growing for other ways.
At the time, there was no Photoshop (the first stand alone version would launch in 1990), so people had to get creative with chemicals, brushes, and photo paints. Popular alternative processes as they were called included Polaroid transfer, xerography, Kwik prints, as well as older techniques like gum bichromate, cyanotype, and Van Dyke Brown printing.
One of the great experts in this area was a woman named Bea Nettles, author of Breaking the Rules: A Photo Media Cookbook which was published in 1977.
In the book, Nettles covered many of these processes, as well as magazine rubbings and lifts, photo screen printing, and how to use halftone screens and ortho film. It was very hands-on, and very different from standard silver printing. In this short audio clip, photographer Kay Kenny talks about her own discovery of alternative processes and her own tutorial with Bea Nettles: Kay Kenny Audio Clip on Alternative processes and Bea Nettles.
PWP sought to share some of these new ideas with its members. In the late 1980s, Joan Tedeschi wrote an article called “Manipulating the Medium” for the PWP Newsletter. In it she described the work of Diane Mitchell which involved “sandwiching negatives, creating montages of slides, or multiple exposures on one piece of film.” In a series of street scenes, different elements from different locations were combined to create “a place that is noplace (sic) and anyplace.” It sounds evocative, but laborious and imprecise.
PWP workshops began to include topics like Polaroid manipulation and hand-coloring:
But as Photoshop evolved with adjustment layers, filters that emulated film grain, surface texture, painting and lighting effects, modes for halftone and high contrast images, many looks once accomplished by chemistry and hands-on manipulation were easily done by computer. There were still plenty of PWP speakers pushing boundaries, only now they were pushing them with digital tools.
For all the manipulation possible in Photoshop, its best tools are often its most basic: sharpening filters, levels and curves to set black points, adjust color and contrast, allowing even the simplest photo to shine. Compare the vibrant color and varied typefaces of recent PWP invitations with the postcard from the 1975 FIT show:
It’s a brave new world, visually stunning, brimming with possibilities.
– Catherine Kirkpatrick
*The PWP Archives were acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library of Emory University
Links to all the 30 For 30 Women’s History Month blogs:
Help Me Please! Hopelessly Waiting…
Exhibition and Anger
Spreading the Word
Early Ads On Paper
Cards and Letters
A Lady, a Truck, a Singing Dog
Women of Vision
A Show of Their Own
Taking It To the Street
Sisters of Sister Cities
Sold!
Education and More
Face of a Changing City
Digital Enabling
Expanding Walls and Other Possibilities
A Wonderful Life–Lady Style
Branding–the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Great Change Sweeps In
PWP Goes Live!
Honoring the Upcoming
Continuity Through Change
Reaching Out
Eye a Woman Naked
Rapidly Multiplying Alternative Options
Women In the World, As Themselves
Kudos!
Friends Who Overcame and Inspired
Reversing the Gaze
Photography and More
Chicks Telling It Like It Is
Looking Back With Thanks
30 For 30: Eye a Woman Naked
To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring items from the PWP Archives* each day on this blog. In looking back, we see not only where we started, but how far photography, women, and the world have come since 1975.
In the 1970s, liberation was in the air. Women were waking up to their power, creativity and rights. They were pouring into the workforce and into professions long dominated by men–like photography.
Eager to promote their own, women photographers began to organize groups and shows. Before PWP, there was was Woman Photographers of New York, founded by Dianora Niccolini, who would become PWP’s first president.
Because there wasn’t a lot of gallery space devoted to photography in the 1970s, exhibitions were often held in offbeat spaces. This show by Women Photographers of New York was held at the Interchurch Center on Riverside Drive:
The exhibition was reviewed in the Vajority Report:
Tired of being portrayed solely through the male gaze, women photographers and artists were taking a look at themselves and showing new identities more in line with the reality of their lives. Doors long shut were being pushed open…or kicked in.
Full press release for Dianora Niccolini’s exhibition Eye a Woman Naked Am I at the Third Eye Gallery on Christopher Street in the 1970s or 80s:
– Catherine Kirkpatrick
*The PWP Archives were acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library of Emory University
Links to all the 30 For 30 Women’s History Month blogs:
Help Me Please! Hopelessly Waiting…
Exhibition and Anger
Spreading the Word
Early Ads On Paper
Cards and Letters
A Lady, a Truck, a Singing Dog
Women of Vision
A Show of Their Own
Taking It To the Street
Sisters of Sister Cities
Sold!
Education and More
Face of a Changing City
Digital Enabling
Expanding Walls and Other Possibilities
A Wonderful Life–Lady Style
Branding–the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Great Change Sweeps In
PWP Goes Live!
Honoring the Upcoming
Continuity Through Change
Reaching Out
Eye a Woman Naked
Rapidly Multiplying Alternative Options
Women In the World, As Themselves
Kudos!
Friends Who Overcame and Inspired
Reversing the Gaze
Photography and More
Chicks Telling It Like It Is
Looking Back With Thanks
30 For 30: Reaching Out
To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring items from the PWP Archives* each day on this blog. In looking back, we see not only where we started, but how far photography, women, and the world have come since 1975.
A few years back, PWP member Andy Mars read an article about how children who’d had their picture taken by a professional photographer were more likely to be adopted than those who hadn’t. Realizing the good photography could do in the world, she began the PWP Community Service initiative.
Each year the committee would choose a deserving nonprofit to help with the gift of creative photography. The first organization selected was historic University Settlement House, founded in 1886 to help immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side.
The second organization the Community Service Committee worked with was Learning Leaders, an effort that culminated with images by the PWP photographers displayed in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum. When PWP began working with Women In Need (WIN), it not only photographed their events, but developed a mentoring program to teach photography to some of the children and their mothers.
– Catherine Kirkpatrick
*The PWP Archives were acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library of Emory University
Links to all the 30 For 30 Women’s History Month blogs:
Help Me Please! Hopelessly Waiting…
Exhibition and Anger
Spreading the Word
Early Ads On Paper
Cards and Letters
A Lady, a Truck, a Singing Dog
Women of Vision
A Show of Their Own
Taking It To the Street
Sisters of Sister Cities
Sold!
Education and More
Face of a Changing City
Digital Enabling
Expanding Walls and Other Possibilities
A Wonderful Life–Lady Style
Branding–the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Great Change Sweeps In
PWP Goes Live!
Honoring the Upcoming
Continuity Through Change
Reaching Out
Eye a Woman Naked
Rapidly Multiplying Alternative Options
Women In the World, As Themselves
Kudos!
Friends Who Overcame and Inspired
Reversing the Gaze
Photography and More
Chicks Telling It Like It Is
Looking Back With Thanks
30 For 30: Continuity Through Change
To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring items from the PWP Archives* each day on this blog. In looking back, we see not only where we started, but how far photography, women, and the world have come since 1975.
PWP meetings were modeled on the consciousness raising groups of Women’s Lib. The first ones were held in apartments, then at Photographics Unlimited, Eastman Kodak, the Photo District Gallery, Pratt School of Professional Studies, St. Paul the Apostle Church, and now at the Metropolitan Opera Guild.
Through changes of location and vast changes in the field, each month from September through June, PWP meets to conduct business and hear a prominent photographer, usually a woman, speak about their life and art. Early speakers included Lilo Raymond, Ruth Orkin, Frances McLaughlin-Gill, Via Wynroth, Patt Blue, and Maggie Sherwood of the Floating Foundation of Photography.
Recent luminaries include Elinor Carucci, Arlene Gottfried, Flo Fox, and Susan Meiselas who inspired all present with their words and pictures. (Note: Susan Meiselas was one of the photographers in the 1975 FIT exhibition Breadth of Vision from which PWP emerged.)
Meetings are casual and congenial, allowing members and guests to interact with some of the legends of photography.
– Catherine Kirkpatrick
*The PWP Archives were acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library of Emory University
Links to all the 30 For 30 Women’s History Month blogs:
Help Me Please! Hopelessly Waiting…
Exhibition and Anger
Spreading the Word
Early Ads On Paper
Cards and Letters
A Lady, a Truck, a Singing Dog
Women of Vision
A Show of Their Own
Taking It To the Street
Sisters of Sister Cities
Sold!
Education and More
Face of a Changing City
Digital Enabling
Expanding Walls and Other Possibilities
A Wonderful Life–Lady Style
Branding–the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Great Change Sweeps In
PWP Goes Live!
Honoring the Upcoming
Continuity Through Change
Reaching Out
Eye a Woman Naked
Rapidly Multiplying Alternative Options
Women In the World, As Themselves
Kudos!
Friends Who Overcame and Inspired
Reversing the Gaze
Photography and More
Chicks Telling It Like It Is
Looking Back With Thanks
30 For 30: Honoring the Upcoming
To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring items from the PWP Archives* each day on this blog. In looking back, we see not only where we started, but how far photography, women, and the world have come since 1975.
In 2005, under President Fran Dickson, PWP developed a Student Awards program to encourage and support young women interested in photography. “Not having a physical location,” she wrote, “we decided to offer cash awards to young women photographers….The program started with junior and seniors in NYC schools and soon expanded to all high school students in the New York metropolitan area.”
Though the development of camera phones allowed for constant casual snaps, the PWP Student Awards helped focus the young photographers’ attention, and gave them the chance, often for the first time, to see their work on a gallery wall.
Many of the early images were black-and-white, but soon exploded into vivid color:
The reception was always a joyous occasion, filled with pride on the part of the young photographers and their teachers.
– Catherine Kirkpatrick
*The PWP Archives were acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library of Emory University
Links to all the 30 For 30 Women’s History Month blogs:
Help Me Please! Hopelessly Waiting…
Exhibition and Anger
Spreading the Word
Early Ads On Paper
Cards and Letters
A Lady, a Truck, a Singing Dog
Women of Vision
A Show of Their Own
Taking It To the Street
Sisters of Sister Cities
Sold!
Education and More
Face of a Changing City
Digital Enabling
Expanding Walls and Other Possibilities
A Wonderful Life–Lady Style
Branding–the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Great Change Sweeps In
PWP Goes Live!
Honoring the Upcoming
Continuity Through Change
Reaching Out
Eye a Woman Naked
Rapidly Multiplying Alternative Options
Women In the World, As Themselves
Kudos!
Friends Who Overcame and Inspired
Reversing the Gaze
Photography and More
Chicks Telling It Like It Is
Looking Back With Thanks