1 00:00:16,040 --> 00:00:22,220 Hello, everybody. First of all, I'd like to thank the organisers of the conference, which is part of Oxford photo, 2 00:00:22,220 --> 00:00:26,600 which this year is exploring the history and presence of women in photography. 3 00:00:26,600 --> 00:00:32,600 Special tasks and Karen task for inviting me in can forgive me, great technical assistance. 4 00:00:32,600 --> 00:00:42,020 And hello, everyone, and thank you for coming. Coming into photography in Britain in the early seventies, as I did, was to enter a very male world. 5 00:00:42,020 --> 00:00:49,130 Women photography students were rare. Only a few women photographers found a place in major shows and collections. 6 00:00:49,130 --> 00:00:56,990 The writings of U.S. and European collectors and photo historians influenced very much what photography should 7 00:00:56,990 --> 00:01:04,400 be exhibited and where the presence of almost all male photo agencies such as Magnum Photos was important, 8 00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:10,820 as they were one of the first photo groups to really use PR and exhibitions to disseminate their work. 9 00:01:10,820 --> 00:01:17,840 The fact that women were rarely given Magnum membership meant that women documentaries and photo reporters were left out of the 10 00:01:17,840 --> 00:01:27,590 expansion of photography in the 70s and 80s as the medium became more and more a part of museum and gallery programming in the U.K., 11 00:01:27,590 --> 00:01:36,620 where women rarely find a platform from the 1970s onwards with some theoretical, political and autobiographical writing about photography. 12 00:01:36,620 --> 00:01:39,710 But I'd like to return to that later. 13 00:01:39,710 --> 00:01:49,150 When I began to work on the other observers, my book and exhibition about women photographers in the 1980s was against this background. 14 00:01:49,150 --> 00:01:58,390 The post-war collecting establishment, which included Beaumont Newhall, Helmut Sunshine, John Tokarski and some stuff to name only a few. 15 00:01:58,390 --> 00:02:06,980 Many active in the US was immensely powerful. Both gun shy and Newhall wrote influential photo histories. 16 00:02:06,980 --> 00:02:15,750 Neither included many women photographers. Women photo curators at major institutions were not unusual in the seventies and eighties, 17 00:02:15,750 --> 00:02:23,150 as photography struggled to carve out a place in the highly stratified museums of the US, UK and Europe. 18 00:02:23,150 --> 00:02:32,360 Young women curators sensed an opportunity, but the presence of these women didn't necessarily mean that more women photographers would be exhibited. 19 00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:34,490 A few women, including Yvonne Arnold, 20 00:02:34,490 --> 00:02:42,120 were members of Magnum or had contributed to an iconic project such as the Farm Security Administration in the US. 21 00:02:42,120 --> 00:02:51,530 See Dorothea Lange and Marian pose Woolcott or had become war correspondents, for instance, Margaret White or Lee Miller or in fashion, 22 00:02:51,530 --> 00:02:59,090 say, Sarah Moon or Deborah Turbeville all received exposure during the post-war re-emergence of photography. 23 00:02:59,090 --> 00:03:04,940 Some, like Diane Arbus and later Nan Goldin, became major museum and gallery exhibitors. 24 00:03:04,940 --> 00:03:11,820 But these were the exceptions. So why was so little women's photography seemed to be important? 25 00:03:11,820 --> 00:03:16,160 Well written about or exhibited, there isn't one answer to this, 26 00:03:16,160 --> 00:03:21,650 but one way of thinking about it could be to think about the way that creative or art photography, 27 00:03:21,650 --> 00:03:26,150 for want of a better term was considered in the post-war period, 28 00:03:26,150 --> 00:03:30,140 and especially in the 1960s and 70s, 29 00:03:30,140 --> 00:03:39,530 in the attempt to retain regain the cultural credence that photography had lost since its heggie innovative days of the into war period. 30 00:03:39,530 --> 00:03:47,510 Photographers were modelled as Mistick figures. Poet Shame's almost divorced from the everyday myths developed. 31 00:03:47,510 --> 00:03:54,770 William Eggleston, the Pioneer colourist, was a gun toting Southern aristocrat with a whiff of danger. 32 00:03:54,770 --> 00:04:03,620 Minor. Why? It was a mystic guru and the documentary's guy Winogrand, a kind of voiceless high priest of imagery photography, 33 00:04:03,620 --> 00:04:10,430 had a masculine and intellectual glamour which could not easily encompass women's photographers lives. 34 00:04:10,430 --> 00:04:16,340 Helen Moss scrapped two politically driven and in her Swanage and later Oxford studios, 35 00:04:16,340 --> 00:04:24,140 managing a successful business and family, as well as producing some of the most innovative photographs of the anti-war years. 36 00:04:24,140 --> 00:04:33,380 Magilla Bond running a large London portrait studio with many employees while producing her remarkable goddess's portraits of society 37 00:04:33,380 --> 00:04:41,990 women dressed as mythological figures and writing an autobiography which portrayed it all as a roller coaster of fun and business. 38 00:04:41,990 --> 00:04:50,980 Born out of political consciousness and technical innovation, these kind of lives didn't really fit in. 39 00:04:50,980 --> 00:04:58,810 For the powerful if small scale photo networks, which had begun to form in the U.K. from the mid 1960s onwards, 40 00:04:58,810 --> 00:05:09,460 photography was a serious business and a historical trajectory was developed which income, compas formulas, desires and masculine poetics. 41 00:05:09,460 --> 00:05:17,580 See Bill Brandt, Raymond More, Chris it Ken Grant for an example of such a trajectory. 42 00:05:17,580 --> 00:05:26,370 In 1973, Vienna curator Mark Heyworth booth another youthful arrival on the British photo scene and he became a key figure, 43 00:05:26,370 --> 00:05:31,900 put together a group show called The Land with Bill Brandt as a guest selector. 44 00:05:31,900 --> 00:05:39,000 The land demonstrated the same interest in the revisioning of photography as meditative and poetic in 45 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:45,540 opposition to the notably business focussed and technologically innovative history of British photography, 46 00:05:45,540 --> 00:05:55,020 which was evidenced in the work of photographers such as Imagineer Bond, Dorothy Wilding to name only two experimental strategic. 47 00:05:55,020 --> 00:06:02,520 A woman's experience of life and work in Bond, for instance, remained an almost invisible for many years, 48 00:06:02,520 --> 00:06:14,610 with no major solo show of her work taking place until the British council's Be Original or Die, which took to 40 international venues in 2014. 49 00:06:14,610 --> 00:06:22,560 But for those who began to look in the 1980s, there were clues as to the existence of women's work in British photography. 50 00:06:22,560 --> 00:06:30,450 In Helmut's analysis, Gun Shine's Concise History of Photography, first published by Tamsen Hudson in 1965, 51 00:06:30,450 --> 00:06:35,460 and a very important and surprisingly innovative book of its time. 52 00:06:35,460 --> 00:06:44,130 There was a glimmer of work by women. The Gun Shine's embraced the idea that photography was not entirely a formalist or documentary act, 53 00:06:44,130 --> 00:06:48,870 but also an expression of Bohemia in the gun shine's history. 54 00:06:48,870 --> 00:06:56,610 I found the work of Winifred Kasson, the pioneering surrealist photographer who worked extensively with Summarisation, 55 00:06:56,610 --> 00:07:02,460 as did Helena Spratt and Barbara Casina in their UK studios. 56 00:07:02,460 --> 00:07:12,450 Kasson, pioneering surrealist photographer, was a clue to the women who lay beyond her out of sight but not out of reach. 57 00:07:12,450 --> 00:07:21,600 There were also substantial bodies of work by women in UK museums, which had been carefully conserved, if not much exposed for many years. 58 00:07:21,600 --> 00:07:27,120 The photographs of Lady How Auden and Anna Atkins' in Vienna in the British Museum. 59 00:07:27,120 --> 00:07:30,670 The work of the World War One nurses. The Two Women of service. 60 00:07:30,670 --> 00:07:33,630 And from Farnborough, Florence Farnborough. 61 00:07:33,630 --> 00:07:42,380 An English nurse who rose early one morning to take photographs of sleeping soldiers on the Russian front and added them to her collection, 62 00:07:42,380 --> 00:07:44,970 all at the Imperial War Museum. 63 00:07:44,970 --> 00:07:52,680 Pockets of excellence existed elsewhere in the collection, which Terence Pepper was building at the National Portrait Gallery, 64 00:07:52,680 --> 00:07:59,960 including work by Barbara Casina and in Mock Health Foods support of the British artist Helen Chadwick. 65 00:07:59,960 --> 00:08:09,110 These were bold moves in the 1970s and 80s when so much of thinking, talking and collecting photography revolved around the Masters. 66 00:08:09,110 --> 00:08:13,430 Bill Brandt. Ansel Adams, only Cartier-Bresson. Walker Evans. 67 00:08:13,430 --> 00:08:18,560 Eugene Smith. William Eggleston. And others, too numerous to mention. 68 00:08:18,560 --> 00:08:23,660 Another major barrier had been broken in the 1960s when director Brian Robertson 69 00:08:23,660 --> 00:08:28,880 invited photography to car to show her work at the White Chapel Gallery in London. 70 00:08:28,880 --> 00:08:32,290 Their first photos show. 71 00:08:32,290 --> 00:08:40,960 Indeed, cause only London one until her retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery decades later, car show at the White Chapel. 72 00:08:40,960 --> 00:08:50,920 They the Foundation for Photography at the gallery, which was successfully continued by subsequent curators, most notably Nicholas Serota. 73 00:08:50,920 --> 00:08:56,350 Pockets of women's work existed all over the UK in family estates such as Walsh. 74 00:08:56,350 --> 00:09:02,260 It's his guardianship of his sister Edith two to Hart's photographs with the photographer herself. 75 00:09:02,260 --> 00:09:10,930 Barbara Casina, Helen Spratt, Margaret Monck. Or in unexpected places such as the National Museum of Labour History in Limehouse, 76 00:09:10,930 --> 00:09:20,050 which held detection of copy photographs by Nora Smyth, the suffragette photographer with the originals held at the University of Leiden. 77 00:09:20,050 --> 00:09:24,820 As well as being scattered, these archives can be difficult to explore. 78 00:09:24,820 --> 00:09:31,540 There aren't always sets of prints. Women photographers set busy lives and photography was not always central to them. 79 00:09:31,540 --> 00:09:40,690 Painter Vanessa Bell. Small snapshots are kept with their original kemmis on below title archive, together with other papers. 80 00:09:40,690 --> 00:09:46,750 They are regarded as part of the story of the life of a painter rather than a photographer. 81 00:09:46,750 --> 00:09:54,430 For me, the journey, the title character, Colin Ford, invited me to make an exhibition at the newly opened National Museum of Photography, 82 00:09:54,430 --> 00:10:06,370 Film and Television in the early 1980s was an exciting and revealing on full of stories, effort, imagination, business sense and experimentation. 83 00:10:06,370 --> 00:10:16,510 It could also be a melancholy experience of important archives who have no homes to go to or a lack of resources to fund their preservation. 84 00:10:16,510 --> 00:10:25,360 I was struck by the sadness of this, the fact that so many important bodies of work were being cared for by elderly women whose careers, 85 00:10:25,360 --> 00:10:30,160 as so many photographic careers are, were fragmented and scattered. 86 00:10:30,160 --> 00:10:38,560 Many of the women I spoke to, though, valuing the work they had done in photography, struggled to see how this could be of interest to others. 87 00:10:38,560 --> 00:10:45,580 The testimony, the testimony needs of five of them Helen Muskrat, Grace Robertson, Ursula Parry Slip, 88 00:10:45,580 --> 00:10:53,650 Barbara Asema and Margaret Munk recorded in the Channel four series five women photographers in 1986. 89 00:10:53,650 --> 00:11:02,170 At least one of these on Halema spread is viewable on Vimeo. And there is a search in my archive, which is at the Martin Parr Foundation. 90 00:11:02,170 --> 00:11:09,310 In that collection, the LCAC Education Unit also made a series of interviews based on the five women in 91 00:11:09,310 --> 00:11:15,580 the Channel four series and also included contemporary photographer Joy Gregory. 92 00:11:15,580 --> 00:11:24,160 Unedited versions of these tapes are also in the archive at the Pearl Foundation and the women in photography boxes in the archive, 93 00:11:24,160 --> 00:11:28,750 which contain manuscripts, posters, letters and tapes from the project. 94 00:11:28,750 --> 00:11:34,570 Photographers Jackie Taylor and Anna Escobar made use of this material when they constructed the exhibition, 95 00:11:34,570 --> 00:11:42,430 the other observers in 2017 as part of an LCAC internship. 96 00:11:42,430 --> 00:11:47,290 The combination of Channel four, Drago Krass, the National Museum of Photography, 97 00:11:47,290 --> 00:11:52,900 Film and Television and the London County Council was powerful and influential. 98 00:11:52,900 --> 00:11:57,400 And this meant that women's women's photography was increasingly discussed. 99 00:11:57,400 --> 00:12:03,220 Of particular interest to me in this period were Andrea Phishers 1987 book Let 100 00:12:03,220 --> 00:12:11,260 US Now Place Famous Women and John Munchy Salami Ashes 1985 book Viewfinders, 101 00:12:11,260 --> 00:12:15,460 Klaus-Peter B. Holmquist Camera Feeds and Kodak Girls. 102 00:12:15,460 --> 00:12:21,340 Strange title for a very interesting book which was published in the US in 1989, 103 00:12:21,340 --> 00:12:26,920 an anthology of short extracts of writing by early women photographers in America. 104 00:12:26,920 --> 00:12:35,590 Plus, Amy rules on cable analysis of the letters of Tina Dotti at the Centre for Creative Photography in Arizona. 105 00:12:35,590 --> 00:12:40,900 In the Fastforward conferences, which are co convened with Anna Fox and other partners, 106 00:12:40,900 --> 00:12:48,700 many fascinating women photographers that come to light and we can and can be seen in full on the Fastforward Web site. 107 00:12:48,700 --> 00:12:53,770 A special double issue of the Journal of Photography and Culture is coming up before Christmas, 108 00:12:53,770 --> 00:13:02,470 which takes some of these papers plus papers given at the Fastforward workshops held in Nigeria, Finland, India, Brazil and the UK. 109 00:13:02,470 --> 00:13:07,780 I'd also like to mention the great work of Four Corners and Monica BOEM for their recent 110 00:13:07,780 --> 00:13:14,440 exhibition and conference on women photography women refugee photographers in Britain. 111 00:13:14,440 --> 00:13:23,300 For me, the other observers project was the beginning of a three decade long exploration of women in photography, which hasn't yet concluded. 112 00:13:23,300 --> 00:13:30,470 In 1994 and Fox and I took the idea of the Woolworth's exhibition to mark with Booth that the BNA, 113 00:13:30,470 --> 00:13:37,730 this show explored women interrogating the aftermath of war and included the work of Hannah Collins, Sophie Wistful Haber lawyer, 114 00:13:37,730 --> 00:13:47,180 McIvor Elizabeth Williams Jew, and Judith Joy Ross, a group of women, including myself, Amanda Hopkinson, Shirley Reid, 115 00:13:47,180 --> 00:13:55,970 Grace Roberts and Gracetown and a fox had initiated the idea of signals, a nationwide festival of women's photography. 116 00:13:55,970 --> 00:14:00,260 The group came together and the commitment to women in photography and a feeling 117 00:14:00,260 --> 00:14:06,070 that things were not quick changing as quickly as they should in the museum sector. 118 00:14:06,070 --> 00:14:14,630 Major Quileute shows still included many fewer women than men. We invited all institutions to take part and hundreds dead. 119 00:14:14,630 --> 00:14:21,830 New groups of women photographers swarmed all over the UK and woodblocks became a central part of the festival. 120 00:14:21,830 --> 00:14:25,940 It was the first all women photo exhibition at the BNA, 121 00:14:25,940 --> 00:14:32,950 and although the signals files were unfortunately destroyed after the group broke up, we were able to print catalogue. 122 00:14:32,950 --> 00:14:35,450 So the full programme has been preserved. 123 00:14:35,450 --> 00:14:43,190 It included Edwardian women photographers at the National Portrait Gallery and Jo Spence at the Royal Festival Hall. 124 00:14:43,190 --> 00:14:50,870 Also, some of the prostitutes of the time it become begun to come online in the independent journalist Jane Richards wrote. 125 00:14:50,870 --> 00:14:59,120 If the idea of a festival devoted to women photographers fills you with dread or strident feminist ideology and questionable exclusivity, 126 00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:05,900 the nationwide event signals coming your way soon promises to be a pleasant surprise. 127 00:15:05,900 --> 00:15:11,420 Interest in women's photography have grown throughout the late late 1980s and 90s. 128 00:15:11,420 --> 00:15:19,070 As someone who is writing about photography regularly, I was very interested in the ways that women wrote about themselves and their careers and the 129 00:15:19,070 --> 00:15:25,460 ways in which they had constructed sophisticated theories around photography and its history. 130 00:15:25,460 --> 00:15:29,780 The writer Alice Heron and I this was originally a member of Haply Flashes, 131 00:15:29,780 --> 00:15:35,750 compiled a 500 page anthology of women's writing on photography called Illuminations, 132 00:15:35,750 --> 00:15:45,410 ranging from the autobiographical Reflections of Margaret White to the theoretical writings of Abigail Solomon, Godchaux and Russell in Kreiss. 133 00:15:45,410 --> 00:15:57,350 Illuminations was published in 1996 by I.B. tourists and Duke University and was part of the same signals collective of effort. 134 00:15:57,350 --> 00:16:01,550 One of the most memorable pieces of writing illuminations out of many. 135 00:16:01,550 --> 00:16:05,570 For me was Mary Walter Marion's. What Should We Tell the Children? 136 00:16:05,570 --> 00:16:14,660 Photography and its textbooks, which looked at the ways in which influential post-war historians event for and emphasised notions of the master 137 00:16:14,660 --> 00:16:22,880 photographer and the master work at the expense of the social and cultural contextualisation of the medium. 138 00:16:22,880 --> 00:16:30,470 Women from the late 1960s onwards have explored the history and presence of women in photography in many different ways. 139 00:16:30,470 --> 00:16:39,500 Always a job for women. Increasing numbers of women practise photography professionally in a small pilot project I made last year, 140 00:16:39,500 --> 00:16:46,070 contrasting the careers of three women photographers in two years with three contemporary women photographers. 141 00:16:46,070 --> 00:16:53,760 There was surprising similarities patchworks of different projects from teaching to studio portraiture. 142 00:16:53,760 --> 00:16:59,160 Were a feature of both groups, women of all was trained to be photographers. 143 00:16:59,160 --> 00:17:09,210 I did by working with established practitioners or in more formal training, which many early practitioners undertook a technical college colleges. 144 00:17:09,210 --> 00:17:15,720 Photography has rarely been a hobby for women. Camera clubs have traditionally had a predominantly male membership. 145 00:17:15,720 --> 00:17:24,210 It has been a profession and a passion, a way to make living, to become independent, to circumvent the establishment. 146 00:17:24,210 --> 00:17:30,240 That's all for me. I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the day and your responses and questions. 147 00:17:30,240 --> 00:17:34,100 Thank you for listening.