Gender Balance in Photography

by Chrissy Osborne

“People have always been visual – our brains are wired for images. Writing was a hack, a detour. Pictorial languages are how we all started to communicate – we are coming full circle”, noted Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom in a conversation with American venture capitalist Mary Meeker. We are living in the most visually rich periods in history. But how representative are the images we digest?

Several months ago, I was talking to British portrait photographer Emma Freeman. During our conversation, she passed comment that “photography is still very male-dominated”. A few days later, I was talking to Jane Fletcher-Scadden, a commercial photographer and film archivist in New Zealand. She used the same phrase to describe male dominance in the accepted history of photography. And during the following week, Finnish photographer Katri Lassila observed that “landscape photography is still very male-dominated”.

I found myself contemplating three important questions. Is there a gender imbalance in images in humankind’s most visually rich period? If so, how has this happened? And if this is the case, is it helpful to portray the world through images predominantly made by males? 

The history of photography is dominated by male photographers. If you are unsure about this, try a quick search on Google for “famous photographers”. My monitor is large enough to show fourteen photographers along the top of the screen. Names like Alfred Steiglitz, Man Ray, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank. Of the fourteen, only three are women. Annie Liebovitz, Dorothea Lange and Dianne Arbus. For every female photographer that Google believes is significant, the world’s most popular search algorithm can find four men.

This imbalance is often justified with a social/historical argument. The logic behind this assertion is that historically men had better opportunities than women, and as a consequence many of the best photographers in the past were male.

While this seems plausible, it may not be true. In the early 1900s, more than 50% of photographers were female. Studios were often situated below the living accommodation and the practicality of a business/job close to the home and family undoubtedly tipped the balance. But not every female photographer spent all their time in the studio.

The Nordic state of Finland proudly claims to have one of the most gender-neutral societies in the world. Twenty years ago Signe Brander was another unknown photographer of the past. This is despite creating a historical record of over 700 images of Helsinki, a series on the Finnish war and a collection of images of Finnish Manor houses that took twenty years to make. Yet by the beginning of this century, Signe Brander failed to feature in the Finnish photography curriculum.

Signe Brander makes an interesting case study. She was interested in painting but was encouraged to study photography instead. This was often recommended for young women as being more appropriate than “real, high art”. Women were discouraged and often banned from learning to paint nudes and human anatomy throughout 18^th and early 19^th Century Europe.

To the credit of Finnish academia, she has been reinserted into Finnish photography history. But this is not an isolated case. The work of another 70 Finnish women has been identified. These women weren’t just shooting in the studio below their apartment. They were making documentary work across Europe and up into Siberia.

On a commercial level, by the turn of the 20th century, Kodak was actively promoting photography to the “New Woman” through its “Kodak Girl” campaign. This was a marketing campaign directed at a generation of women seeking enfranchisement, economic and sexual autonomy. It seems improbable that the women who purchased and used cameras failed to produce anything noteworthy.

If one accepts that there are “lost” female photographers, then the next question must surely be why? And one of the uncomfortable possibilities is that the curriculum of noteworthy photographers we base our academic syllabus on was created by men, for men.

Can we measure the scale of the imbalance? There is a surprising amount of data. For example, an annually published study authored by Kate McMillan for the Freeland Foundation (based in London) considers gender equality in the arts (not only photography). In 2019 only 35% of artists represented by commercial galleries in London were women. At the top end of the market of the 112 artists whose work was sold in Christie’s evening sales in 2019, only 14 were women.

The positive trend is that the gender split of Gallery Directors in London is nearing gender parity. However, the split in major institutions and galleries outside London still has a heavy male bias. (70M:30F). A larger sample shows the rate of improvement to be a meagre 1% per annum.

Do you look to a newspaper for balanced reporting? It turns out that there is a significant gender imbalance in editorial photography too. Photojournalist Alex Washburn asked a photo editor why she didn’t hire more female photographers at a photo festival in France in 2016. “Well, I’d hire more women if I knew where to find them”, came the reply. Alex started womenphotograph.com, a site that includes statistics on photographs taken by women in the press. These statistics for 2020 demonstrate that we have a long way to go. The percentage of lead images featured in major daily newspapers made by women were; The San Francisco Chronicle setting the bar at 43%, The New York Times 29%, Wall Street Journal 11%, Le Monde 10%, and The Guardian 8%.

I talked to photographer/filmmaker Jillian Edelstein. She observes that the “outstanding picture editors are not afraid to take risks. They make assignments based on merit”. She remembers Aidan Sullivan from “The Sunday Times” calling shortly after the birth of her second child with an assignment to shoot John Malkovich. She had been feeling vulnerable and insecure about her position at work, and this was a massive affirmation of her abilities. “I do not doubt that he firmly believed in selecting the right person for the assignment”.

Forbes published an article with research showing that 75% of consumer purchases are driven by women. American artist and photographer Jill Greenberg comments “A lot of times the photographer has the least amount of power to make decisions. But, at the same time, the dynamic of the shoot is always captured in the photograph and even more so in an editorial context when we have much more impact and control on the way things look. Power, sexuality, etc., everything is there. So, if it’s all men making these images that are marketed primarily to women, there’s something wrong”.

Wendy Carrig is a British advertising and editorial photographer. She was instrumental in restarting “f22”, a group within AOP aimed at creating awareness around gender imbalance. She observes that “attitudes are changing within the industry. My male colleagues want a world where their daughters have equal opportunities”.

Julia Peck is the academic lead in photography at a UK university. The percentage of female students has steadily risen to 75%, and this is typical across Europe. She has witnessed a negative reaction from female students to the overwhelmingly male photographer-based curriculum. Julia observes that “many women make work that is looser than that of men.  In part this is a reaction to the male dominance of technology”.

“If we accept that we need more diversity in the academic curriculum, then we have to question whether the work of primarily male photographers is relevant. Unless we see more diversity in arts education (in the broadest sense of the word), we will perpetuate a distorted perspective”.

Del Barrett, a researcher and academic reflects, “Changing the curriculum is a bit like changing direction in the Queen Mary”.

Del founded the charity “Hundred Heroines” to promote women in the visual arts. She notes that while there is an issue with gender balance in photography, the imbalance in “the film industry is even more pitiful”. There are now 175 “Heroines”. Women and non-binary photographers and filmmakers apply or are nominated and are selected on merit and for making inspirational work.

Some of the photographers and educators I spoke to expressed a concern that contributing to this article might have a negative impact on their careers and were careful about how they expressed their views.

Ecuadorian university lecturer and artist Paola Paredes was very forthright. “Photography is male-dominated. In Ecuador, 90% of project winners are white male. This means that we don’t get a rich diversity of experiences in visual stories. There is one type of lens/gaze”.

Paola took up a teaching position at a university after returning to Ecuador from London with an MA in Photography. She has a very strong recollection of the reaction of 5 men in the photography department to a new woman lecturer. “They felt threatened by me. I was super discriminated against”. Despite bringing a new outlook on photography she was ignored and marginalised. Not surprisingly she has since moved to another university.

It is worth noting that Paola’s work has been exhibited across the Americas and Europe. The series “Until You Change” caused the Ecuadorian Government to outlaw gay correction facilities.

Celia Jackson lectures photography and is an advocate for gender balance in image-making. The last line of an article commissioned by “The Conversation” sums up the frustration of many women in the industry. “These are not big asks. It would be quite easy to make the industry as well as photographic output more gender-equal – we just need to be more proactive about it”.

Ukrainian American artist and filmmaker Anna Kipervaser sees the issue as less two dimensional. “To make any progress at all, we need to achieve balance across race and ethnicity, not only gender.”

Jillian Edelstein describes a world where the last two years has seen a significant change in the way that picture editors/photo directors/visual directors are assigning work, particularly in response to awareness around BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic). Picture editors are increasingly having to demonstrate that they have achieved equality and balance. Of course, commercial pressures such as the number of followers a photographer has on social media may also play a part. 

The final word goes to British artist Clare Strand, who describes how gender is unimportant to her Zoomer (Generation Z) daughters aged 7 and 11. “My daughters are surrounded by an open mix of sexuality and gender at their school and this is their ‘normal’. They are often confused as to why this is even considered an issue.

They are interested in what kind of people their contemporaries are, Are they kind? Are they happy?…..whether you choose to be a girl or a boy or neither is not a consideration. I look forward to the Zoomers taking charge. This mindset can only help bring about a less discriminatory and more inclusive society”.