The Influence of Women in Photography

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little.  People have to be their own learners.  They have to have a certain talent”.Imogen Cunningham

 Unit:   H4KT 76  -   Contextual  Imagery  - Outcome 1:

 Analyse factors that influence photographers and their work by:

 Investigating the influence of major historical, scientific, social and cultural factors  on photographers and their work

 Analysing the specific impact of these factors on photographers’ work and practice

 Expressing justified personal opinions on the photographers’ work.

My response to this outcome is detailed in the essay below:-

The Influence of Women in Photography

Since its invention in 1839, recognition of the role played by women in the history of photography has been marginal compared to that of the male photographer. Early examples contradict photography being totally a male domain at its inception, e.g. Constance Fox Talbot (1811-1880), wife of Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) the inventor of the positive/negative process, had herself tried out the process as early as 1839  (Buckland, 1980).

Peter E Palmquist (1936-2003), founder and curator of the Women in Photography International Archive (Palmquist 1976) cites that in the nineteenth century 10% of all American West photographers were women, this increasing to 20% by 1910.  Though many women were amateur photographers, some worked along with their husbands as print-finishers or camera operators and any woman working for money was seen as rather bold  (Palmquist, 1976).

Within the context of these factors, this focus is on two renowned women photographers and the influence of their work - Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976).   Cameron worked in the genre of straight portraiture in addition to allegorical, historical or mythical themes, while Cunningham’s variety of photographic styles embraced the genres of Fine Art, nude, f/64, portraiture and documentary street photography.

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)

Julia Margaret Cameron took up photography, aged 48, receiving a camera as a gift in 1863 on returning from Ceylon to England. “It may amuse you Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.” (Gernsheim, 1948).  She began to experiment with the wet collodion process, which involved wet chemicals and made it difficult and hazardous to work with these combustible materials in darkness. Cameron broke the rules of both composition and focus; as an amateur her unconventional efforts were regarded as experimental and technically flawed.  

Despite this criticism, in the short span of her photographic career, her commitment to soft-focus formed the basis for the Pictorialism movement at the beginning of the 20^th century, some twenty years after her death.  (Barber, 1999).

As well as mastering the complexities of the collodion process, Cameron’s use of the unwieldy large wood and brass camera should be, of course, evaluated in terms of the limited Victorian technology:

“It is about 8 cm (3”) in diameter, has a fixed stop of 5 cm, telling us it would have been virtually impossible with such a lens to get a close-up portrait in focus on the 28 x 23 cm plates used in Julia Margaret’s camera”. (Ford, 2003).

Cameron’s images portray great insight into her subjects’ personalities, as in Sadness - Ellen Terry aged 16 (1864), captured at Freshwater, Isle of Wight:

  

I believe that Cameron has successfully captured the unhappiness of the young 16-year old bride, realising her mistake in marrying the much older painter George Frederic Watts (1817-1904).  Ellen Terry (1847-1928) a successful Shakespearian actress would be skilled in adopting this pose, but Cameron has caught her contemplative stare and sets a dreamy scene with the cameo style print. She catches the emotional mood effectively, by using soft lighting, shadow and soft-focus at the edges.  I think the placing of the subject’s hand on her necklace may symbolise the wealth and status brought by Terry’s marriage though her face reflects impending doom. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) English writer and Cameron’s great niece wrote the amusing satire Freshwater in 1923, the plot being the real-life story of the departure of Terry from her one year-old marriage.

In The Red and White Roses - Kate and Elizabeth Keown (1865), Cameron’s subjects are shown as tragic heroines - sad, beautiful and pure.

I personally enjoyed its viewing in the exhibition at National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, November 2015 as part of the Photography: A Victorian Sensation. Cameron’s subjects filled the frame giving a direct, close image with limp poses and faraway looks. The soft light (in the glasshouse studio, formerly a henhouse) and soft-focus made me feel its spiritual and theatrical quality. I learned that the roses are a metaphor of youthful beauty shown by the young girls, flowering in summer and then withered by winter or age and am of the opinion that by showing her subjects out of focus, Cameron creates a melancholy mood. (The two girls were Kate and Elizabeth Keown, the daughters of an artillery officer living near Cameron's house at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight).  Cameron’s works are compatible to “tableaux vivants” or living pictures and became esteemed for their eccentric and artificial qualities (Lynden, 2015).

Her photographs usually focused on females but she also took portraits of eminent males, among them the aforementioned painter George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), the scientist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and the

Poet Laureate Lord Tennyson (1809-92).  In  1865 Cameron began using a larger format camera, which held a 15 x 12 negative and began taking large-scale close-up heads, with her long lens/wide aperture (which would have been slow) as in

Lord Tennyson - Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate (1869).   I think the use of light, shade and dark background help to accentuate his face and contrasts with his long curly hair and facial beard. In studying the portrait, I get a sense of Tennyson’s impatience with the photographer. The collodion process used by Cameron required “long exposures” testing the patience of the subject by having to sit for an inordinately long time and causing frustration for the photographer.  I suspect this may apply here, as Tennyson is quoted as having remarked: “I can’t be anonymous by reason of your confounded photographs!” (Morrison-Law, 2015).

Cameron consciously set out to ensure that photography became an acceptable art form and achieved this when her work later became popular and inspired others, such as Imogen Cunningham, to start emulating her portraiture style.  Writing a letter to the British astronomer Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), who had introduced her to photography in 1842, she stated:-

“My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure it the character and uses of High Art”.  (Cameron, 1864).

Although defying the conventions of Victorian photography, Cameron indeed met these aspirations with this verified in her work being so widely appreciated, right into the 21^st century.

Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) 

Imogen Cunningham was one of the finest women photographers of all time, a pioneer of modern photography and contributing significantly to its being regarded as an art form. Born in Portland, to a freethinking father, she was encouraged to be independent and self-reliant.  In 1901 she acquired a 4 x 5 inch format camera with a rectilinear lens by mail-order and began her liberal explorations, resulting in some remarkable work in a variety of genres, in which she was active until she died, aged 93 years.   Steve Meltzer, writes for Imaging Resource how Cunningham drove through gender barriers to redefine modern photography:-

 “She photographed the world with a woman’s eye, from a viewpoint far different than that of the male dominated photographic world of her time and ours.  Cunningham was a true original….” (Meltzer, 2013).

She was a spirited person with many ideas and her photographic inventiveness led her to state, “You might say I invented the nude” (Lorenz, 1998).  This remark is perhaps justified in that Cunningham did a self-portrait of herself nude in a meadow in the year 1906 which was considered very daring.

She wrote her senior year thesis on the chemistry of photographic processes, after studying chemistry and botany at the University of Washington.  On discovering the work of the famous pictorialist Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934) Cunningham was inspired to become a photographer.  From 1907-1909, she worked as a darkroom assistant in Seattle for Edward S Curtis (1868-1952) making platinum paper prints and then went to Germany to study photography, something unheard of previously, returning in 1910 to open a portrait studio.  Drawn into the blurred, romantic aesthetics of Julia Margaret Cameron and Pictorialism at the beginning of the 20^th century, her first images were staged allegorical studies. Cunningham married Roi Partridge in 1915, a Seattle artist and they lived a Bohemian lifestyle, being more concerned with art form than with commerce and her nude photography including images of Roi were widely criticised as being vulgar, causing a scandal when printed in a Seattle newspaper. 

By 1917 when confined to home raising three young children, she took up gardening and photographed plant species in the modernist style with incredible clarity and detail, using her 5 x 7 inch Century view camera with sheet film.  By the 1920s she became a proponent of photographic modernism capturing sharp-focus pictures.  Edward Weston, (1886-1958) subsequently exhibited ten of her plant studies in the Film and Foto exhibition in Germany in 1929.

Included was the iconic Magnolia Blossom (1925) platinum print with its crystal

detail, which I think, clearly displays the art in nature.  To me, the photograph is appealing because of the closeness of the capture, with the single flower isolated from the surrounding plant life.  The use of light and shade and soft gentle curves in the solitary study make it a sensual photograph with the emphasis on the intimate core of the subject.   In my opinion, the bloom takes on an almost “human life form”.

Cunningham photographed widely in various forms, e.g. the “Shredded Wheat Tower” (1928) of an industrial structure resembling a plant or an abstract design. 

She also continued her nude studies, approaching the body as she did plant life.  In Triangles, (1928), a minimalist study of two friends (Jackie and Helen Greaves)

Cunningham makes the image abstract and almost out of context by using geometric shape along with light and shade. The perspective is quite transforming and I perceive it as classic and in good taste, especially for a subject which would have had men posing women in the nude and photographing them more for prurient interest than for any artistic gain at that time.  Evaluating this photograph makes me personally more open to the photographic potential of the physical world, including an appreciation of the human body.

Cunningham had a friendship with Ansel Adams (1902-1984) long before the Group f/64 was formed aiming to capture the reality of the modern world with hard-edged images. 

 Despite disagreement and differing personalities, (hers liberal, his conventional) she was invited by Adams to join him in the Art Faculty of the Californian School of Fine Arts in 1945 along with Dorothea Lange (1895-1965). 

It was then she started using the first of three Rolleiflexes, cameras she used increasingly for the rest of her life.  (Partridge, 2001). 

The Unmade Bed (1957) was Cunningham’s response to Lange asking students to photograph their surroundings, resulting in this atmospheric image.  I find it very attractive with the dark bedroom, the softly diffused light and the defined focus on the hairpins gaining attention. To me the formation of the crumpled sheets represents the curves of a female body while the absence of the person is thought provoking.  Cunningham has succeeded in making an ordinary every-day scene significant and extraordinary.  For me, the image evokes gentle and tender emotions making me irresistibly drawn to its timeless quality.

In 1964, Judy Dater (1941-) an American photographer met Cunningham, finding both her lifestyle and photography inspirational and resulting in a friendship lasting until Cunningham’s death.    In the biographical book published three years later, Dater writes:  “…. she was certainly a courageous woman, one with a mind of her own, who worked hard all her life.  The fact that as a young woman she chose to go into chemistry as an avenue to photography, both fields that were traditional male preserves apparently did not seem remarkable to her.” (Dater, 1979).

In 1975 Cunningham created a trust to continue the preservation and exhibition of her work, which is much revered today (Patridge, 1975).

Therefore, from the female perspective, Cameron and Cunningham were critical in shaping historical, cultural and social change, and also in influencing the evolvement of photography as an art form, which clearly impacts on today’s photography in the 21^st century.

Bibliography

Barber, K.  UCR/CMP staff. (1999) Artistic Portraiture: Julia Margaret Cameron. California Museum of Photography’s Women Photographers Independent Visions Exhibition. Available at: http://138.23.124.165/collections/permanent/object_genres/photographers/women/cameron.html                                                                                                                          (Accessed 15^th January 2016).

Buckland, G. (1980) Fox Talbot and the invention of photography. Michigan: D. R. Godine.

Cameron, J M.  (December 1864)  Letter to Sir John Herschel, discussing her aspirations as a photographer.   National Portrait Gallery archive document. NPG P201 (1a). Available at: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/about/primary-collection/documents-relating-to-primary-collection-works/npg-p201a.php    (Accessed 15^th January 2016).

Dater, J.  (1979) Imogen Cunningham: A Portrait.  Boston: New York Graphic Society.

Ford, Colin, (2003) Julia Margaret Cameron: 19^th Century Photographer of Genius. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications

Gernsheim, H. (1948) Julie Margaret Cameron: Her Life and Photographic Work. New York: Fountain Press.

Lorenz, R. (1998)  Imogen Cunningham: On the Body.  Boston: Bullfinch Press.

Lyden, A. (2015)  International Curator, National Galleries of Scotland. Photography: A Victorian Sensation – Amateur Photographers – Julia Margaret Cameron.  Available at: http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/collections-stories/science-and-technology/victorian-photography/victorian-photography-pioneers/   (Accessed 15^th January 2016).

Meltzer, S.  (23 August 2013) A Woman’s Eye:  How Imogen Cunningham drove through gender barriers to help redefine modern photography. Seattle: Imaging Resource article.  (Accessed 15 January 2016).

Morrison-Law, A.D. (2015) PHOTOGRAPHY A Victorian Sensation.  Edinburgh: NMS Enterprises Limited – Publishing.

Palmquist, P. E. Women in Photography Archive: Essays.  Available at: https://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/palmquist/Essays.htm#Preface        (Accessed: 15th January 2016). 

Palmquist, P. E. Women in Photography Archive: Essays.  Available at:  https://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/palmquist/Essays.htm#Preface    (Accessed: 18^th January 2016).

Partridge, M.  Official Site For The Imogen Cunningham Trust.  Available at: http://www.imogencunningham.com/page.php?page=about&menu=chronology                                                  (Accessed 15^th January 2016).

Partridge, R.  Official Site For The Imogen Cunningham Trust.  Available at: http://www.imogencunningham.com/page.php?page=provenance&menu=cameras (Accessed (15^th January 2016)