EXPOSING THE FEMALE GAZE
Women Photographers Capture the Street
Speaking of her time in India photographing street vendors, circus performers, and prostitutes, Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015) said, “My greatest advice to any young artist would be, photograph the world as it is. There is nothing more interesting than reality.”
Capturing reality “as it is” is the theme of “ A Female Gaze”, a new exhibition at the Howard Greenberg gallery in New York City that highlights the street photography of twelve prominent 20th century women. The exhibition’s forty-nine photographs span both the century and the globe, from Berenice Abbott’s (1898-1991) Changing New York series in the 1930s to the Jodi Bieber’s (1966-) documentation of South African youth living on the fringes of society in the 1990s.
As the press release for the exhibition notes, many women found street photography a more accessible genre to work in than the sometimes elitist and male-dominated realms of high fashion and portrait photography. Requiring only a camera and an intrepid eye for detail, many women found that working in street photography allowed them the creative autonomy often denied them in professional artistic spaces throughout most of the 20th century.
It’s no coincidence that the Photo League, one of the few creative cooperatives for photographers that allowed women equal prominence and access to leadership positions, included five of the twelve women featured in the Howard Greenberg exhibition. It is also likely not a coincidence that such a forward-thinking, non-hierarchical organization was suspected of anti-American sentiment and placed under watch by the FBI’s “Loyalty Review Board” in 1947.
What is striking about the eight press photos for “A Female Gaze”, provided to PROVOKR by the curators of the exhibition, is how central the dichotomy between strength and vulnerability is to the craft of street photography. Being out in public in an urban centre requires a certain level of nonchalance, even bravado – see the men striding confidently with their fedoras, coats, and suitcases, or the brash teenage boys carrying boomboxes larger than their torsos, or the South African street performers whose take-home pay will be commensurate with their level of bravado.
But perhaps more interesting are the moments of vulnerability that can also be found, more rarely, in public, and are all the more striking for that rarity: see the couple strangely embracing beneath the bright lights of a musical marquee, or the wistful stare of a woman boarding a train that is perhaps taking her somewhere she’d rather not be, or the faded grand dame, still veiled and coiffed in furs, flowers, and lace that look more appropriate for a 19th century tea party than a bench in the middle of rowdy Times Square.
A Female Gaze will be on view from January 19 through April 2, 2022 in the gallery’s new space on the 8th floor of the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street, New York City. For those who can’t make it in person, many more photographs, featuring the full range of work by all twelve photographers can be seen on the gallery’s website: https://www.howardgreenberg.com/exhibitions.
