sexy middle-aged subjects, including a series of self-
portraits from 1975 of the artist recovering from a
face-lift. Like most women photographers of their
generation, both Dater and Noggle not only used
their female subjects as substitutes for themselves,
they also produced self-portraits throughout their
photographic careers. This interest in female sub-
jects in photography established an exploration of
female identity that would pervade feminist photo-
graphy for the remainder of the twentieth century.
As their imagery reveals, the impetus for their work
was often rooted in their own personal history.
Unlike later feminist photographers such as Cindy
Sherman and Barbara Kruger, the photographic
projects in this first generation of feminist photo-
graphy were not yet specifically conceived of or
discussed as political or cultural critique. In fact,
Dater and other women photographers of the time
were often quite ambivalent about politics and fem-
inism in particular. These women worked at being
considered photographers in their own right, not
‘‘women’’ photographers per se. Although their
work focused on women’s identity, their public atti-
tude was that gender itself was not the primary issue.
In stark contrast, the next generation of feminist
photographers would construct their work around
the very issue of gender.
A somewhat similar early history can be traced
in Great Britain, although from the start feminist
photography in Britain was a clearly political, fem-
inist enterprise. This was primarily due to its roots
in the social documentary tradition, originating
with the 1972 exhibitionWomen on Women,a col-
lective documentary project initiated by the Half
Moon Gallery in Whitechapel. The exhibition fea-
tured women photojournalists photographing wo-
men subjects and led to the formation of the
socialist, feminist group the Hackney Flashers in
- One of the major forces behind the group was
the photographer Jo Spence, who wrote and exhib-
ited extensively before her death in 1992 and
became a significant figure in the development of
twentieth-century feminist photography in Europe
and the United States. Rooted in a straight docu-
mentary photography tradition, Spence’s early
work in the 1970s and 1980s consisted mostly of
social documentary projects focusing on women,
work, and the domestic sphere. Diagnosed with
breast cancer in 1982, Spence, in collaboration
with Rosy Martin, developed ‘‘photo therapy,’’ a
healing technique, realized through a series of self-
portraits. Spence has become a major inspiration
for breast cancer survivors and a generation of
British women photographers, including the Irish
born Angela Kelly. Now living and working in the
United States, Kelly’s work, while focusing on the
problems of growing up female in a male-domi-
nated society, also reexamines the social documen-
tary tradition itself, questioning the nature of
realism and representation.Gender Discourse, 1970s–1980s
Thoroughly immersed in the new wave of ideolo-
gical investment in Freudian psychoanalytic, fem-
inist film, and predominantly French critical
theoretical models, the next generation of feminist
photographers working in the 1970s and 1980s
grappled with the nature of representation and
issues of sexual difference in their photographic
work. Often coming to photography from a con-
ceptual art, fine art, film, video, or commercial art
background, artists including Sarah Charlesworth,
Martha Rosler, Mary Kelly, Barbara Kruger, and
Cindy Sherman, examined the construction and
perpetuation of cultural myths and stereotypes
through visual images and the mass media. These
artists used photography as one tool in their crea-
tive repertoire. Sarah Charlesworth, for example,
came from a conceptual art background to inves-
tigate photography as a subject in itself. From her
Modern Historyproject in the late 1970s to her
Objects of DesireandDoubleworldprojects in the
1990s, Charlesworth explores how photography
functions as a play of symbols in our culture—
symbols that affect us individually and collectively.
Straddling the first generation of feminist photo-
graphy and the second, Martha Rosler has worked
in video, photography, performance, and installa-
tion since the late 1960s, creating politically moti-
vated works that challenge cultural and political
biases. Rosler’s engagement with media images
came directly out of her involvement in anti-war
protests and the women’s liberation movement.
Her Bringing the War Home series from 1967–
1972, was a response to the artist’s frustrations
with media portrayals of the U.S. military involve-
ment in Vietnam. Rosler used photographs from
mainstream American magazines to create photo-
montages that juxtaposed images from the war in
Vietnam with scenes of American domestic inter-
iors, creating a startling contrast. Rosler’s well-
known photo/text project, The Bowery in Two
Inadequate Descriptive Systems from the mid-
1970s, used text and images in order to rethink
the documentary photography tradition and
demonstrate the limitations of both pictures and
words as vehicles to reveal social realities. In her
video and performance work of the time, such as
herSemiotics of the Kitchen, 1975, Rosler commen-FEMINIST PHOTOGRAPHY