exhibition visit "Who are afraid by women photographer?" 1839-1919 museum de l'orangerie, Paris, november 2015, part 1

museum de orangeries, Paris, November 2015, part 1
The idea that photography, a physical and chemical reproduction medium, is simply a technical process and, therefore, the preserve of men, is deeply entrenched. Women have played a more significant role in the history of this particular medium than has been accorded to them in the field of the traditionally dine arts. This phenomenon is approached  here for the first time in France through its expression in both France and the Anglo-Saxon sphere during the first eighty years of its history. In order to investigate  the impact of sexual identity on photographic practice, masterpieces and unknown pictures will be considered, not through the optic of the existence of a supposed female vision, but in terms of territories and strategies:  territories of gender -physical and symbolics, strategies for critical or commercial success, for pushing the boundaries of the photographable. For the 75 women gathered in this exhibition, the choice for photography allowed that the expectations and prejudices surrounding their gender might not be experienced only as fetters. The image preserved today reveal the way in wich these women were often able to surpass their condition, or even take advantage of it to award themselves additional freedom of action and expression. The aim of this show is to appreciate how practice which has long borne the hallmark of feminity, actually revealed itself to be a potential vehicle for emancipation and subversion.

Becoming a gazing subject. 
   Norms and sociability

  Women's relationship with photography took root in a climate where relegation for the fringes of the art world was their common lot. The ideology of segregated spheres wich prevailed in the 19th Century society restricted more than ever the public area and the fields of creativity and intellectual endeavour to men while women belonged to the realm private life, reproduction and matters of the heart.It was against this backdrop that the birth of the new invention was officially announced in 1839. Situated a the interface of the arts, sciences and industry, photography transcended conventions. The technical training required and the practice of photography were not governed by structures comparable to the ones that had restricted access to careers in painting and sculptures for centuries on the basis of gender, age and class.
  Thus, from 1840's onwards, dozens and then hundreds of European and American women from a variety of social backgrounds were dawn to a common medium. Many of them seized the opportunity it offered to raise the standard of their sociability by becoming involved in the forums for interaction represented by emerging professional and amateur photography networks. Although they had very different aims, there activities still fell within collective and codifying framework reflecting conventional ideas of feminity. Wether they viewed the new medium mainly as a source of income or as a creative outlet, all of the female exponents grouped here found in it an  opportunity to exist beyond the realm of domestic responsibilities and to capitalise on their individual skills of observation and judgement
  Britain was then the cradle of an unrivalled female amateur phenomenon. Practicing photography was deemed particularly appropriate for ladies as it was enthusiastically supported by Queen Victoria. It was therefore added to the repertoire of suitable outdoor female pursuits such as watercolour painting, astronomy and botany. Encouraged to join photographic societies, many ladies in polite society circles sent portraits, rural landscapes and architectural views to the first exhibitions devoted to the medium. The latter revived the female tradition of making and decorating albums while reinforcing these women photographer's role as custodians of family history. This function is also evidenced in the appropriation of commercial portraits, although the art brut of photocollage remained first and foremost a vehicle for distinguishing themselves through the eye which the exponents brought to bear on the microcosm at whose centre they positioned themselves. In Paris and in several other cities in France, Europe and the United States, professional practice of photography by women is also evidenced from 1840'. The high risk of bankruptcy often forced female photographers to specialise in women and children's portraits, the reproduction of works of art, or decorative applications for photography. It was not enough merely to satisfy the aesthetic and technical conventions of a highly competitive market, women also had to ensure that interaction with the opposite sex, with all its inherent dangers, was kept on a respectable and neutral footing. Besides, the profession could only be pursued respectably outside the public space, which makes the very rare architectural and urban photographs which have been preserved all the more exceptional.

Investing intimacy and the female experience
   Photographic theatre and the theatre of gender

  Before it meant a predilection, the preponderance of women and child subjects in women's photography reflected women's protracted confinement to the domestic sphere. Within these confines, women  photographers discovered a locus for expression that was undreamed of by men or inaccessible to them, and ripe for exploration in portraiture or in the fiction of ''tableaux vivants''. As soon as interior shots became less technically challenging, some women distanced themselves from the family and social dimensions of amateur photography. A different type of photography became possible, which would take advantage both of the opportunity to work in private and the photographic potential of the intimacy experienced with models. Celebrating an ideal of beauty or the bonds of affection between women, glorifying maternity and through it the social role of mothers, capturing the charm of childhood...These were as many mobiles which often constituted the heart of female camera artist's strategy to achieve recognition, as they were aware of the aura of authenticity, and the added emotion and sensitivity that  their experience conferred on their pictures in the eye of the beholder. Feminity as a cultural and social construct is always a performance. With the cooperation of their models, however, these female exponents found in photography a means of reflecting the myth and potentially deconstructing it. Strong, thinking, independent figures... but also desiring yet sensuously inaccessible bodies: many images of women and even children in this last vein raise questions today about the paradoxical latitude granted to the women, simply on the basis of their sexual identity, status as mothers, or the myth of female asexuality.

Embracing sexual difference
   Photographic theatre and the theatre of gender

Whether a client, a friend or a spouse, dressed or naked, the model being photographed was in the presence of a woman, who was empowered to give through him her vision of virility. At a time when the surest way to prove  one' talent was to celebrate men - preferably famous- who stopped in front of the camera, pictures of men were not the first place to challenge the symbolic and social order of patriarchy. However, gender stereotypes were indeed being parallelly challenged. The private sphere was not exclusively female, and this is expressed in praise for fatherhood, the depiction of affective relationship between sexes, and the occasionally critical portrayal of the institution of marriage. The public one was not destined to remain exclusively masculine: transvestites and "New Women" smoking, drinking or riding bicycles are above all a falsely frivolous manifestation of the growing challenge to traditional social roles, and behavioural and dress codes. The climate was, moreover, auspicious for the first female incursions into the nude genre. This was the opening salvo in women's reappropriation of their body image, and the female art to the figure was, already, highly politicised.

Taking the route on main territories
   The street, foreign climes, public and political life

In the late 19th century, a combination of social and technological changes facilitated an unprecedented positioning of women vis-à-vis photography. The emergence of the progressive ideology of the Anglo-Saxon ''New Women" and the unhoped-for mobility offered by snapshot, in particular, inclined people to view the practice of the medium as a means of subverting the traditional use of the public space and pushing back the boundaries imposed by gender differences. This was the age of the first female traveller-photographers who, for a variety of reasons transcending archeological, ethnographic and tourist interests, expressed in pictures the freedom of body and mind fostered by the distance between themselves and their native climes. It was also the era of the rise of the illustrated press, which was paralleled by an increase in the number of women in professional fields: studio photographers and pioneers in photojournalism could get involved, though their practice, in issues related to social and ethnic minorities work, education and health. The same trend that saw women going into photography as means of gaining equality enabled them to conquest through the image the fields of political and military battles. It was the era of coverage of the fight for men's civil rights and the events of World War I. A time when, in the various forms of commitment to solidarity, the history of photography and women's history all converged.

Anna Atkins

Anna K Waever

Constance Talbot

Amelia Bergner

Georgiana Louisa Berkeley

Alexandra, Princesse de Galles

Amelia Guillot-Saguez

Maria Chambefort

Mme Gelot-Sandoz

              Franziska Möllinger

Mme Vandé Green

photo de l'époux de Genevieve Elisabeth Disderi

Genevieve Elisabeth Disderi (photo de son époux)

Angelina Trouillet

Sophie Macaire

Louise Laffon (a gentleman)

Mme Leghait
Mme Breton
Mary Emma Lynn
Lucy Fleming

Lady Henrietta Augusta Mostyn

Lady Caroline Emily Nevill

Thereza Mary Llewellyn et John

Lady Clementia Hawarden

Lady Frances Jocelyn

Lady Charlotte Bridgeman

Mary Dillwyn

Lady Mary Jane Matheson

Kate Edith Gough

Judith Margaret Cameron

Judith Margaret Cameron (devotion)

Judith Margaret Cameron

Judith Margaret Cameron

Judith Margaret Cameron (hypatia)

Gertrude Käsebier (Indian Sioux)

Eveleen Myers

Eveleen Myers (rebecca)

Gabrielle  Hibert

Celine Lagarde

Eva Watson Schütze

Eva Watson Schütze

Alice Hughes

Zaïda Ben-Yusuf

Zaïda Ben-Yusuf

Sarah Sears

Emily Pitchford

Jenny de Vasson

Jenny de Vasson

Alice Austen

Alice Austen

Frances Benjamin Johnston

Frances Benjamin Johnston

Frances Benjamin Johnston

Amelie Galup

Louise Deglame
Mme Hohmann

Minna Keene

Jessie Tarbox Beals

Jessie Tarbox Beals

Jessie Tarbox Beals

Christina Broom (Portrait of Christina Broom taken by her daughter Winifred Broom prior to the funeral of King Edward VII May 1910 (c) Museum of London)

Christina Broom (Group photograph with Irish  Guards on St-Patrick’s-Day Wellington-Barracks 1908 (c) Museum of London)

Christina Broom (Suffragettes taking part in a pageant organised by The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies 13 June 1908 (c) Museum of London)

Christina Broom (Women police officers and Inspector Mary-Allen a former suffragette at the Women’s War Work Exhibition London 1916 (c) Museum of London)

Adelaide Hanscom Leeson 

Adelaide Hanscom Leeson