FEMINIST PHOTOGRAPHY
Twentieth-century feminism has been a richly di-
verse, multifarious, and hotly contested terrain. Fem-
inist artists, activists, and historians continue to
negotiate the terms of the debate, often with widely
different positions. There is no one definition of fem-
inism, but a web of occasionally conflicting theories
and practices emanating from changeable cultural
conceptions of sexuality and gender. Attempting to
categorize feminist photography is, therefore, an
even more slippery task. Suffice it to say that in the
wake of feminist political action in the 1960s and
1970s, a newfound interest in women’s photogra-
phy—both contemporary and historical—was sprea-
ding. Mirroring developments in the emerging fields
of women’s history and women’s studies, those work-
ing in this first wave of feminist investment in photo-
graphy began by re-situating and rescuing. Their
assignment was to re-situate the work of women
photographers within the history of photography
andrescuethosewomenphotographerswhohaddis-
appeared from the historical record. They also
worked in photographic images, publications, and
exhibitions, to present new ways of thinking about
and looking at representations of women. On the
heels of this initial interest in the idea of women and
photography, a new generation of feminist artists
and photographers began to emerge in the 1970s
and early 1980s. Although evolving at the same his-
torical moment as the first group of photographers,
what set this group apart was an active engagement
with feminist political and theoretical debates and the
fact that their enterprise was immersed in the devel-
oping fields of postmodern and feminist theory. The
work of this second generation of feminist photogra-
phers, particularly their keen examination of power,
privilege, and the formation of identities in contem-
porary culture, set the tone for a growing number of
women who entered the photography scene in the
late 1980s and 1990s, women from backgrounds
and orientations that had been previously under-
represented. Composed primarily of women artists
of color and lesbian artists, this third generation of
feminist photographers often challenged the tenets of
what they perceived to be the prevailing mainstream,
White, middle-class, straight feminist orthodoxy.
The Women’s Movement, 1970s
Two early traveling exhibitions in the United States
demonstrate the emerging overlap between femin-
ism and photography in the 1970s. On the West
Coast in 1975, the San Francisco Museum of Mod-
ern Art launched the exhibition and catalogue orga-
nized by Margery Mann and Anne Noggle titled
Women of Photography: An Historical Survey.This
exhibition surveyed the work of 50 women photo-
graphers; the catalog remains a significant source
on the work of women in photography. In New
York in 1979, the International Center of Photo-
graphy sponsored Margaretta Mitchell’s traveling
exhibition with accompanying catalog titledRecol-
lections: Ten Women of Photography. Mitchell
received a National Endowment for the Arts grant
in 1978–1979 to develop the project, thus demon-
strating the topical nature of such projects for the
art community and the nation in the late 1970s.
As these exhibitions traveled across the country,
a group of young women photographers including
Bea Nettles, Wendy Snyder MacNeil, Judith Gol-
den, Anne Noggle, and Judy Dater were gaining
significant exposure for their own photographic
work that consistently explored women’s issues.
Bea Nettles has created mixed-media photographic
pieces dealing with domesticity and women’s iden-
tity since 1970. Snyder MacNeil and Golden both
started in the early 1970s by photographing them-
selves and their own personal relationships. These
very subjects—domesticity, family, and issues of
personal identity—were key areas of inquiry for
those participating in the feminist movement in
the 1970s (and after), yet women photographers of
the time rarely used the term ‘‘feminist’’ in connec-
tion with their work. Dater and Noggle became
known for their direct, psychologically evocative
portraits, mostly of female sitters. The strong and
self-assuredly sexy women typically photographed
by Dater, such as her portrait ofLaura Mae(1973),
seemed to typify the newly defined liberated, young,
American female. In contrast, Noggle, who came to
photography as a return college student in her early
40s, turned her lens to less fashionable and not-so-FEMINIST PHOTOGRAPHY