Being a creative professional takes a lot of time and effort to achieve success. Bennet Schwartz Sydney creative believes the photography sector can be difficult to enter for women in a male-dominated industry. Urth Magazine reports the vast majority of higher education graduates majoring in photography are women. The 80 percent of female graduates go on to make up just 15 percent of the workforce in the photography sector. Schwartz explains women have been pivotal throughout the development of photography from its earliest days to the latest technologies.
Regina Relang
German-born Regina Relang became an icon of fashion photography during the first half of the 20th-century. Relang had no formal training in photography but became a Vogue contributor. Relang was born in Germany in 1906 and had become a Vogue photographer by 1938. The fashion photographer began her career as a travel photographer but was encouraged to enter the fashion world after meeting Willy Maywalf. The respected Maywalf became a mentor for Relang in the early days of her career.
Regina Relang became an icon of photography for several reasons. Her fashion photography was innovative for the early and middle of the 20th-century. The main reason for her position as an icon of fashion photography is her documenting of the changing attitudes towards gender issues in the 1950s and 60s. Bennet Schwartz Sydney creatively believes the importance of Regina Relang is underappreciated in the modern world.
Nan Goldin
Nan Goldin is seen as the photographer who gave birth to the modern era of photography. Without Nan Goldin, photographers like Juergen Teller would not have been able to find the success they have in the 21st-century. Goldin was born in 1953 and rebelled against the sanitized view of the U.S. she found on TV and in films. By the 1980s, Nan Goldin had begun to capture images of the subcultures that remained beneath the surface of mainstream society following the Stonewall Riots. The Tate Gallery reports the most famous work of Nan Goldin is her 1986 work, The ballad of Sexual Dependency that remains a vital work in documentary photography.
Julia Margaret Cameron
An aristocratic Victorian woman may seem an unlikely person to change the photography industry, but Julia Margaret Cameron was no ordinary woman. Bennet Schwartz reports the work of Julia Margaret Cameron brought art into the photography sector and changed the way artists approach business. The Met Museum explains Cameron copyrighted her work to ensure she was credited and received royalties for her photographs.
Lorna Simpson
The photographer, Lorna Simpson, has been active since the 1980s when she began challenging traditional views on gender and race. Simpson is known for her works combining photography and text, which can make for uncomfortable viewing. Lorna Simpson’s work is conceptual, meaning it combines photography with other media to create a powerful message. Simpson allows her work to carry a message of equality and tolerance for those who are marginalized.
Diane Arbus
The story of Diane Arbus is one of the favorites of Bennet Schwartz because it transcends a single photographic genre. Diane Arbus was a New York-born photographer who had become a favorite of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar by the start of the 1940s. By the start of the 1950s, Arbus had become disillusioned with fashion and looked for authenticity on the streets of New York. Her work was ahead of its time because of the exploration of transgender and marginalized groups within society.
Margaret Bourke-White
The first photographic images were published in a book by English botanist Anna Atkins in 1843. Less than 100 years later, Margaret Bourke-White was making waves as a respected photographer of the early-20th-century. Breaking the mold of female photographers remaining in the fashion sector, Margaret Bourke-White led the development of documentary and photojournalism. The American photographer became a success by documenting the Great Depression and World War II. The photographer was among the first to make her way to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp to record images of the Holocaust. By becoming the first female photojournalist to accompany a U.S. Air Force combat mission, Bourke-White became a trailblazer for later generations of photographers.
Jill Greenberg
The contemporary photographer, Jill Greenberg, is famous for her willingness to include digital editing techniques in her work. The Canadian photographer has become popular with celebrities and politicians for her revolutionary work that combines commercial photography with high fashion. The success of Greenberg as a teen fashion photographer led to her starting work on a series of portraits of children and young people. End Times became her most famous work depicting the helplessness and isolation of modern society. Jill Greenberg uses digital editing techniques to manipulate the images she captures in the commercial and fine art sectors.
Bennet Schwartz Sydney creative believes women have always played an important role in photography. From the 19th-century to the present day, Schwartz explains women have been at the heart of the development of photography in all its forms.
