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naturally a rise in the number of women listed as propri-
etors of photographic studios in both the United States
and Europe. It appears that societal constraints were
lessened in the United States and that women were more
likely to set up businesses and travel independently than
in Europe. Hannah Maynard (1834–1918) set up a studio
in Victoria, Vancouver Island in 1862 and proceeded to
make a record of the landscape and people of Canada.
She also embraced a wide variety of photographic
techniques. These included montages, fi gures in motion,
photosculpture, multiple exposures, composite images
and the use of mirrors. She pioneered the use of these
artistic techniques to investigate the notion of the self
and her involvement with the spiritualist movement led
to the creation of unconventional and surreal images.
An African American woman, Mary E. Warren,
was listed in a Houston, Texas, directory for 1866 as
a photograph printer. In 1867 Marie Lydia Bonfi ls and
her husband Felix set up La Maison Bonfi ls in Beirut
where they had relocated to from France. The studio was
responsible for portraits and topographical views of the
Middle East. Lydia took many of the studio portraits and
continued to run the business after her husband’s death.
Clémence Jacob Delmaet was involved in the running
of the Delmaet & Durandelle studio which specialised
in architectural and engineering subjects and was active
between 1854 and 1890. Geneviève-Elisabeth Disdéri
worked separately to her husband to create views of the
countryside in Brest between 1852 and 1872. Swed-
ish studio photographers included Bertha Valerius
(1824–95) and Rosalie Sjöman (1833–1919). From 1890
the Letter-Verein Photographic School in Berlin taught
women a variety of photographic techniques. By the end
of the century, there were several very successful society
portrait photographers including Catherine Barnes Ward
in the United States and Christina Broom in England.
Broom was also considered to be England’s fi rst photo
journalist taking photographs of suffragist events and
specialising in photographs of London. Both women
were advocates and role models for professional women
within photography.
Women also found employment behind the scenes
in portrait studios. They were involved in routine work
on assembly lines where they were employed in ac-
tivities such as the cutting of cartes-de-visite images.
For example, the William Notman studio in Montreal
employed a large number of women as retouchers and
printers. Women worked as dressers attending to the
hair and attire of female sitters. They were engaged at
several levels within the studio either as receptionists
or as hand tinters. Portraits printed on albumen were
often over-painted in oils, watercolours or pastels.
These over-painted photographs were reminiscent of
the higher status portrait painting. Later women were
to be employed in the processing and production of
photographic materials in large scale factories, such as
those run by the Lumière Brothers and Kodak.
Pictorialism which imitated the conventions of fi ne
art, attracted American women such as Gertrude Käse-
bier and the Englishwomen Agnes Warburg and Emma
Barton. This international movement whose tenets were
debated by H.P. Robinson and Peter Henry Emerson
sought to create photographs which rivalled painting in
its expression of emotion and atmosphere. Some advo-
cates manipulated negatives or used the gum bichromate
process. American practitioners of the 1880s included
Mary F.C. Paschall, Mary T.F. Schaeffer, Eva Watson,
and Louise Deshong Woodbridge. The American Anne
W. Brigman was a central fi gure in this movement
photographing female nudes in the spectacular natural
surroundings of the of the Sierra Nevada mountains of
Northern California. She was a founder member of the
Photo-Seccession and infl uenced later photographers
such as Louise Dahl-Wolfe. Gertrude Käsebier opened
her New York studio in 1897 and her work repeatedly
explored the mother-child relationship and allegori-
cal themes. The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring was
founded in England in April 1892 and sought to advance
the fi eld of art photography, however, it did not admit
women until after 1900. Käsebier was the fi rst female
to be elected and was also a founder member of the
Photo-Secession. Her simple portrait style was widely
emulated. She also succeeded in coupling her artistic
ambitions with fi nancial success. Zaida Ben-Yusuf was
another successful fi ne art photographer who was active
from 1897 to 1907. Pictorialism also had an impact on the
work of the Dührkroop studios in Berlin and Hamburg
where Mina Dièz-Dührkroop worked with her father.
Female documentary photographers included Alice
Austen and Frances Benjeman Johnston in the United
States. Alice Austen was an avid amateur photographer
based in Staten Island. Her sharp focused images of
upper-middle-class life and those of immigrants at the
Hoffman Island quarantine station and on the Lower
East Side of Manhattan prefi gured later documentary
styles. Johnston combined studio portraits of notable
fi gures with prize winning documentary photographs
of the Washington School system. Jessie Tarbox Beals
worked in newspapers and as an itinerant photographer
in Massachusetts. Geraldine Moodie (1854–1945) pho-
tographed the life of pioneers in the Canadian West.
In addition to her mother and child portraits, Gertrude
Käsebier photographed Native Americans in the Picto-
ralist tradition.
For the most part images of Africa, Australia, and
Asia were constructed from a colonial viewpoint as
women photographers tended to be the European wives
or daughters of those employed in the maintenance of
Empire. One such woman was Lady Hariot Dufferin
(1843–1936), Vicereine of India, who recorded her ex-