A show of her own - photography by women, various artists, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New York

At the George Eastman House, 56 photographs by dint of 45 women comprised "Insight: Women's Photographs from the Collection." wherefore mount an exhibition of photographs made sole by women? A show limited to male photographers would be considered sexist. individual answer to this comes from ongoing research and publications. Historians of that kind as Naomi Rosenblum have documented the fact that women photographers have been consistently view from aboveed under-studied, under-exhibited and under-collected, the pair in the past and commonly Often their achievements were credited to male spouses or colleagues. Thus the 75th anniversary of women's right to devoted marks a time to make the previously invisible visible in Rochester, fresh York, hometown of Susan B Anthony. alone now can it be determined if the work of women photographers equals that of their male counterparts in quality and creativity, or if certain bring under rules are more significant to them.

First the numbers game: of the approximately 8000 photographs in the Eastman House collection, about 1000 or 125 % are by the agency of women. This compares to paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection, in which sole five percent are by women Women have fared comparatively well in photography, in part because it was easier for nineteenth-century women to acquire and master a camera than to go into a life drawing class. notwithstanding although nearly as many women as men use cameras, and almost as many obtain advanced steps in photography, women are consistently exclud from histories of the medium as art, in prices upon the commercial market and in museum acquisitions and exhibitions.

What was shown by the agency of this modest exhibition? (Rosenblum's History of Women Photographers [1994] examines the work of 240 women five times the number featured at the Eastman House.) Certainly that diversity of control and technique are universal, not sex specific. Subjects ranged from women's issues to portraits and self-portraits; from the industrial landscapes and abstractions of Margaret Bourke-White to the still-life abstractions of Florence Henri, to the light abstractions of Barbara Morgan.

As for photographic processe albumen, platinum and gelatin silver prints - more [i]or[/i] less straight, some toned, some hand-colored and a certain number of manipulated - were represented. Also included were photogravures, cyanotypes, color prints upon Plexiglas, Kwik prints, Cibachromes, Ektacolor prints, slip lithographs, photo silk-screen prints, dye-diffusion transfer and computer generated and digitized prints.

Works that might be considered "feminine" included Imogen Cunningham's 1929 Calla Lilies (although Edward Weston compos similar close-up of organic shapes); Chris Enos's dead flowers (Untitled, 1980); Eva Watson-Schutze's Woman with Lily (1903); and Doris Ulmann's moving portraits of black women of Appalachia. Marie Cosindas's tiny Dolls I (1961) have the appearances quintessentially feminine - although admittedly, my grandson plays with dolls and Cosindas's oeuvre contains a wide variety of control matter. Olivia Parker's Saturday (1980) is a haunting composition featuring a corsage of dead flowers and a torn and battered delight in letter. Elaine O'Neil recorded the up and downs of her relationship with her young daughter in Tiger Balm Gardens, Hong Kong (1987) In Untitled (1970-71) Betty Hahn enhanced her gum bichromate print upon fabric of a barn and landscape with a stitched and embroidered rainbow. (Very hardly any male photographers embroider.)

Subjects that address "feminist" belong tos included Donna Ferrato's depiction of the desperation of battered wives in First Night in Shelter (1987) in which a mother and baby are depicted sleeping peacefully at last. Self-portraits are for a like reason numerous that one considers sum of two units options: that women are more introspective or that they perhaps find it easier and les expensive to photograph themselves. Notable self-portraits include those by dint of Joan Lyons (1974), Ilsa Bing (1899) and Alma R Lavenson (1932) As a 13-year-old runaway, Nan Goldin mov from feed care to communes and took up photography while enlisted in an alternative school; the stark Nan and Brian upon the Bed, NYC (1983) is from her series "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" Anne Noggle took up photography after careers as a Women's Air Force service pilot, dwarf pilot and crop duster. Her work, exemplified by means of Untitled #3 (1975), a portrait of a woman with face-lift stitches surrounding her organ of visions contemplates aging in women and the prevailing conventional wisdom that dictates that men gaze better as they age, while women ne face-lifts to remain attractive. Joyce Neimanas also explores this issue in her computer-generated color inkjet print Face Lift (1993) from her series "Legend of the Powerless." Joan Myers, also displeased with the way older women are defined and portrayed, created Buttocks and June (both 1993) as her answer The resemblance of June to the bring under rule of Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936) a 32-year-old pea picker who direct the eyes decades older than her age, is startling.