Whether it’s magazine covers or war reporting, we are predominantly fed a visual diet of male perspectives. Yet women are at least as skilled with cameras as men – and have been for as long as photography has existed. Journalism, the creative industry and all of us need to take a look at ourselves and specifically seek out female perspectives. We have teamed up with the Berlin concept store White Label Project to show the perspectives of nine female photographers from around the world.
“The Women of Hollywood Speak Out” was the title of the New York Times Magazine a good ten years ago. Dozens of women graced the cover. This was later followed by the MeToo movement, which shed light on the darkest corners of Hollywood. So has everything gotten better for women in the creative industry since then? Far from it. A fundamental problem has already cast a shadow over the New York Times cover story: every single one of the portraits was shot by one and the same man. Before readers start arguing that he was probably a good photographer, perhaps even better than all the women, a few facts and figures are needed. An analysis by The Female Photo Club in 2022 looked at 928 covers from 72 magazines. They were pleased to find that the proportion of women shooting the covers had doubled. It was a paltry 25 percent compared to 13 percent in 2019. PhotoShelter analyzed 8 magazines and a total of 96 covers. 5.2 percent were shot by women – half of them by Annie Leibovitz. The problem becomes clearer when you consider that most magazine covers feature women – staged by the male gaze. Especially when it comes to sensitive topics that almost exclusively affect women, such as the exploitation and abuse in Hollywood from the New York Times cover story, one wonders: why didn’t they want to leave the visual staging to a woman? Around 90 percent of the images in our media landscape, be it advertising or magazines, are created by men, said photographer Jill Greenberg in her TedxTalk in 2018. We see the world filtered through the lens of a man. Jill Greenberg is one of the few women who has supposedly managed to enjoy recognition in the photography world. The “Jill Greenberg look” has become established – ever since her pictures of crying children went around the world. But she, too, was hit by the infamous glass ceiling. Certain TV stations, magazines and film studios are boys’ clubs, she was told when she noticed how men who copied her characteristic style got jobs that she didn’t get. The fact that narratives that explicitly deal with the reality of women in the creative industry are ultimately visualized by a man is often not even intended malice, but a continuation of fixed power structures, without questioning, without reflection. Patriarchy takes root in all of us as soon as we are born.
KODAK GIRLS
If you then question why it is predominantly men who portray women and the world, people like to talk about meritocracy. Just as some people believe that women are underrepresented in other professions because they are not good enough, some believe that there are fewer good female photographers. It would be nice to live in such an easily explainable world. The underlying structures are somewhat more confused. Women are neither worse at photography nor less interested in it. A look into the past shows that. It’s hard to believe, but for once everything really does seem to have been better in the past. At least as far as gender equality in photography is concerned. Around 1900, it was hardly common for women to pursue a profession at all. It was still a few decades before women were allowed to own a credit card and get a divorce. But women made up 20 percent of professional photographers back then – a percentage that has barely increased to this day. While around 80 percent of students on photography courses are women, the figure in the profession is still hovering around 20. Who would have thought that we would be wishing we were back in 1893? Back then, Kodak recognized the female interest in photography and launched the Kodak Girl campaign. The Kodak Girl was young, fashionable and always equipped with a camera – the company wanted to market cameras and photography explicitly to women. We’ll leave the fact that these were mostly particularly easy-to-use cameras for now, without wanting to read too much into it. Today, the Kodak Girl has to fight to be seen – even by those who supply the tools and celebrated the girl with the camera 132 years ago. The responsibility also lies with the camera manufacturers. Fuji, Nikon and Canon regularly appoint ambassadors. However, there is no need to use gender here, as the brands always seem to forget that women would also make great ambassadors for their brand. Canon appointed just 14 women out of 109 Ambassadors in 2021. Also in 2021, Canon Philippines did not nominate a single woman. Two years earlier, the camera manufacturer published an article asking: Why are there so few women in photojournalism? An important question that brands like Canon could do a lot to answer. The situation at Fuji and Nikon is similarly bleak. It may be a step to call out programs like Nikon’s “Female Facets” to the world, but if no one at the top can get it together to choose women as ambassadors, appreciate their work and take an interest in it, it’s not much more than tokenism.
(FE)MALE GAZE
The example of the cover story mentioned at the beginning is just one of countless examples that proves how deeply rooted the patriarchy is. So deep, in fact, that hardly anyone questions why we all assume that a (white) man is the best choice for any kind of job. That his look is the norm, the basic shape we should all bend into, even if it hurts. Is it because the world has been measured by men since we could walk upright? All our eyes have been shaped by the male gaze, by the male gaze, which the British film theorist Laura Mulvey explored in film in the 1970s. In photography, the male gaze works in the same way as in film. As models, women are more often in front of the camera than behind it. Although they are visible, they are often seen by the same gaze. Beauty is the focus – but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. While male photographers have sexual tension, women bring in a different look. Looking without staring, so to speak. Staging a woman’s body without portraying it as primarily sexual. The next level is added with retouching. Where does the ultra-airbrushed look that we have long since become accustomed to come from? When more and more editors, photographers and graphic designers decide what a picture – a woman – should look like without including any other point of view, it is no wonder that we have ended up with an unrealistic, Eurocentric uniformity. And when men digitally polish women’s skin until it is more poreless than Barbie’s plastic shell, bending and slimming bodies and adding curves that don’t exist in nature, the whole body positivity movement is of no use to us.
Photography exists not only to depict (supposed) beauty, but also to capture reality or our own emotions. This is another reason why it is important for women to work in photojournalism. As a war photographer, a woman may have a different view of a crisis area. The American photographer and president of the Magnum Foundation Susan Meiselas sees this as a unique strength: as one of the few women in conflict zones, she has appeared less threatening, has been able to adapt better to her surroundings or even disappear into them, she is quoted as saying by the non-profit art institution Aperture. How we see world-changing events such as wars visualized influences our thinking. So the only point of view should not be male and white. In an interview with The Game Magazine, Iranian photographer Mahshad Jalalian finds clear words. She not only struggles with censorship, lower pay and fewer opportunities, but also with men who actively block her path, for example by placing tripods in her image space or specifically requesting only men for assignments. Jalalian also points out that as a woman, you have a unique perspective on conflict and war zones. Documentary photography shows reality. “How can you not want to see the truth?” asks Jalalian, who has often come under pressure to delete certain photos. There is one advantage: “As a woman, you are never taken seriously. But: they don’t kill you first,” she quotes war photographer Marie Decker.
NO MORE BOYS’ CLUB
It can’t really be that we haven’t come much further than Annie Leibovitz from the Kodak Girl of 130 years ago. So the good news after so much pessimism: there is no shortage of talented women with cameras. Otherwise we wouldn’t be filling these pages so easily. Susan Meiselas once said, when asked by writer Giles Tremlett whether the Magnum photography agency felt like a boys “club: ‘The world feels like a boys’ club to me”. Time to break up these exclusive cliques. In an interview with us (FACES May 2024 issue), Italian fashion photographer Lucia Giacani says: “The fact is: you have to work harder to become a photographer. People don’t want to entrust you with big budgets because men are seen as more serious and safer.” You can get upset about such nonsense. But it’s more productive to pick up the camera and ignore men’s opinions. Many women, non-binary people and people of color have been doing this for a long time. Dominican-American photographer Renell Medrano, for example, founded her own magazine in 2024. ICE is inspired by Players from the 1970s, which was dedicated to Black women and Black culture, but from a male perspective. Medrano’s version was created exclusively by women and is aimed at women.
Photographers take up space and can make visible whatever they want to make visible. In her essay collection “On Photography”, the American cultural critic Susan Sontag hardly ever speaks directly about women in photography. But she says: “To photograph people is to violate them by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge about them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.” Whoever grabs the camera automatically grabs responsibility. For too long, this responsibility has rested with men who have decided over the years that their gaze is valid. So much so that it is considered neutral. All of us who like to consume visually are involved in breaking down this ideology. By deciding which exhibitions we visit, who we follow on Instagram, whose visual narratives interest us. It never hurts to engage with a point of view that you can’t put yourself in. Incidentally, this doesn’t mean that men are banned from taking photos. Even if that might sometimes be for the best. But humanity is complex and multi-layered. What women and marginalized groups experience outside of the heteronormative, Western norm should be seen just as much as the thousandth portrait of a white guy. When only men portray our world, defining what women should look like, we adopt a one-sided mindset in a world that is incredibly complex.
WLP ART
The wonderfully versatile photographs that embellish this text? You can buy them – at White Label Project. The concept store has launched WLP Art, a contemporary, carefully curated online gallery. There you will find numbered and limited edition prints by up-and-coming photographers from all over the world – and yes, a few men have also snuck into the portfolio.
We wanted to hear our female photographers’ perspectives on their male-dominated professional world. Read what they have to say here.
Grab one or more prints for your walls!
Teaser: © Djeneba Aduayom, Lois Cohen, Dörte Fitschen-Rath
