100 women use their cameras to capture public life
“Women Street Photographers,” edited by Gulnara Samoilova (Prestel)
When Parisian authorities issued a decree in 1800 requiring women to obtain a permit to wear pants in public, the French writer George Sand defied the order. She dressed in men’s clothes and walked from one end of Paris to the other, later writing about the exhilarating feeling of being able to go wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and not have anyone pay attention.
Melissa Breyer, a writer and photographer, recounts that bit of feminist history in an excellent introduction to a new book, “Women Street Photographers,” arguing that Sand’s “peripatetic explorations” of 1830s Paris helped pave the way for later generations of women who would use cameras, not pens, to chronicle their impressions of public life.
The book showcases the work of 100 women around the world today using cameras and cell phones to capture the lyrical moments of everyday life — what Henri Cartier-Bresson once called “the decisive moment.” The pictures —tender and funny, mysterious and unsettling — were curated by Gulnara Samoilova, a former Associated Press photographer and founder of the Women Street Photographers project.
Readers may wonder what, if anything, distinguishes this body of work from that of male documentary photographers? Probably nothing in terms of subject, composition or technique. What is unique are the hurdles that female photographers in the field have historically faced — not just cultural, ethnic and religious taboos, but also misogyny and the pervasive threat of sexual harassment and violence. In that respect, this book is more than an anthology; as Breyer notes in her introductory essay, it’s a celebration of hard-won freedoms.