women photographers

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Take the Picture, Regardless

Photograph by Dora Maar

It’s ridiculous today to think of photography being regarded as an unusual choice of profession or means of artistic expression for a woman. But, as usual, it wasn’t that long ago that …

The concept keeps coming up for me, recently from four different sources, so I’m finding it worth some comment. Most intriguingly it arose in Cathy Macdonald’s new book Put on the Armour of Light, a mystery set in 1899 Winnipeg. She has a character, Rosetta Cliffe, based on a real life woman photographer who tried to make a go of it in those early days of the industry, named Rosetta Carr. Not much is known about Rosetta Carr other than as Cathy says in her afterword that she “plied her craft bravely in the male-dominated commercial photography business of 1890s Winnipeg.” Cathy needed to be tipped off to Rosetta’s existence by Elizabeth Blight, the former head of Still Images in the Archives of Manitoba. Rosetta’s is unfortunately not a name that has gone down in general history.

While Rosetta Carr would have stood out as socially unique in 1899 Winnipeg, my wife Renee, also a photographer, is having the exact opposite problem 115 years later in present day Winnipeg. Renee doesn’t do photography for a living, but she has taken her pursuit beyond the hobbyist stage. Renee uses photography as a necessary and serious means of artistic expression, something everyone should have in one form or another in their lives after they get home from their day jobs.

Photograph by Renee Beaubien

But the thing is, in today’s digital multimedia world, everyone’s taking pictures! I don’t know how many photographers were active in 1899 Winnipeg, male and female, but it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that there were less than 10. Today, practically anybody in a city of 700,000 who owns a phone …

Multiply that figure exponentially when you try to display your work on the Internet. Renee doesn’t hope to make money from her photography, but she would like to be acknowledged as someone taking the pursuit seriously and as a means of personal expression. So you can go from standing out as someone who is a true oddity because she takes pictures at all to wondering what you have to do to stand out and be noticed doing the same thing in the same city in a little over a century. Such are the wonders of technology.

Photograph by Renee Beaubien

Renee is cautiously approaching the Flickr delivery medium for photography. Stay tuned for further updates. For the moment, you can see what she’s done at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/128997372@N08/

In addition to this homegrown discussion of the subject, two other women photographers from the first half of the 20th Century recently came to my attention through books I read. They weren’t the central characters in either book, but maybe they should have been.

Photograph of Lee Miller

The first was Lee Miller, an American photographer who began as a successful fashion model in New York in the 1920s, until a scandal regarding her appearance in an ad for menstrual pads put an end to that. If you can believe it. She went to Paris in 1929 and hooked up with Man Ray to take an active part in the surrealist movement, developing her own artistic vision.

Photograph by Lee Miller of Charles Chaplin

After leaving Ray and Paris in 1932, she continued to live a life worth a few good movies at the very least. Then in World War II her career took an entirely new direction, as she became the official war photographer for Vogue magazine, documenting D-Day, the concentration camps, and the first use of napalm amongst her many other grittier achievements.

Photograph by Lee Miller

Why isn’t this woman a household name? She could be an icon for any number of movements.

Photograph of Lee Miller

The second artist was Dora Maar.

Photograph of Dora Maar

Dora was a Croatian who grew up in Argentina, moved to France, and in the 1930s became one of Picasso’s competing mistresses when she was 28 and he was 54, taking an active role in Picasso’s creation of his monumental work Guernica in 1937.

Photograph by Dora Maar

It’s been written she was the only one of Picasso’s women who was as intelligent as he was. Or maybe even smarter.

In 2006, one of Picasso’s portraits of Dora, Dora Maar au Chat, sold for $95,216,000 US.

Dora Maar au Chat - Pablo Picasso

Dora’s own work was often classified as street surrealism. She also painted and wrote poetry. However, as with so many others, her life is overshadowed by her association with Picasso’s. Maybe it’s time to correct that.

Photograph by Dora Maar

It may be harder than ever to stand out today, but that doesn’t mean anyone should stop trying. Or stop acknowledging those who may have gone before who should have been noticed despite their own problems being seen.

Self portrait photograph by Lee Miller

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week:

Continuing The Twitchy Gal with Chapter Thirty-Five posted on Monday and Chapter Thirty-Six coming on Friday, December 12th at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

The twitchiness builds to its ultimate expression of madness! And for that matter, what did happen to Deb?