The Female Gaze and What Could Have Been of Photo London 2017

Last week’s Photo London left a slight bittersweet taste for me. The fair brings together a great selection of galleries and it is a must-see for anyone interested in photography. However, there was an overwhelming presence of fashion photography and female portraiture. At worse banal and celebrity-driven, at best a lush sensuous rich experience.

After the Kate Moss overdose, Helmut Newton’s ubiquitous iconic images of determined women, Horst P. Horst’s timeless classics, Irving Penn’s soft touch, Norman Parkinson’s old-world glamour, Miles Aldridge’s dolls… the penny dropped heavy. With the exception of very few works dotted around by Lillian Bassman, Sarah Moon and Ellen von Unwerth, a wander around the fair felt like I had been transported to another time, ignoring the contemporary appetite for female voices. The male gaze was starting to give away a rancid whiff.

Either key galleries at the fair missed a trick or the old adage that men are voyeurists and women are exhibitionists, remains true. I think a bit of both. I’ll let you be the judge. Works by René Groebli and Arthur Elgort were the real treasures within this female portraiture category by male photographers. You can trace my highlights and details of Groebli’s series The Eye of Love, 1952 in my Instagram account. Groebli developed the tender series of sensuous nudes during his honeymoon, with his wife as the model. And you are also in luck because Atlas Gallery is hosting the UK first solo exhibition of Elgort’s work in Marylebone until August 2017. The exhibition includes fashion photographs but most significantly, a unique installation of personal work from the 70s that had been in his studio until now.

If you are not one for sexed-up fashion icons and adorning your walls with celebrities, below are my top recommendations of female portraiture by female artists. Not that gender should matter in making work but since we’ve seen so much of what men had to say, let’s see what women are and have been up to. By all means the list could go on and on. This is a personal selection, incomplete and non-exhaustive list of women who have walked the fine art and fashion photography worlds of female portraiture. A selection amongst the very first artists who have become undisputable figures to the latest newcomers to attain recognition.

Admittedly, I have been agonizing over who to include and who to leave out. I will give attention to female artists working with female portraiture purely within the context of fine art in a future post. Not to be forgotten: Irina Ionesco, Katrien de Blauwer, Linder, Juno Calypso, and many others…

Lee Miller (American, 1907–1977)

Model, muse, photographer, artist, war correspondent & gourmet chef. Miller is known for her poignant photographs taken during the Second World War as a member of the London War Correspondents’ Corps. She was a successful fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, where she became an established fashion and fine art photographer. During the Second World War, she became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue, covering events such as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

After the war, she continued to contribute to Vogue for a further 2 years, covering fashion and celebrities. In 1947, she married her second husband, Roland Penrose and whilst she continued to do the occasional photo shoot for Vogue, she soon discarded the darkroom for the kitchen, becoming a successful gourmet cook.

Eve Arnorld (American, 1912-2012)

Arnold rarely used studios; relying instead on natural light she was dependent on her hand-held Nikon. Her work was always respectful and sympathetic to its subject, background details were never an afterthought—Arnold insisted, “You have to take advantage of the variables. It might be the smile, the gesture, the light. None of which you can predict.” She took pictures of black women modeling in Harlem fashion shows in 1948 and continued the project for two years, until Picture Post published her story. As a result, she was offered a job as the first female reporter for the Magnum Photos agency. A long friendship with Marilyn Monroe produced some of her best-known images.

Sarah Moon (France, 1941)

A dreamy, soft-focus trip back to the fashion mood of the 1920s and 1930s. When she photographed the Pirelli Calendar in 1972, it was a groundbreaking event: not only was she the first woman to do so (she was chosen to pacify objections from the feminist movement), but she was also the first to show fully exposed breasts. Moon spent much of the 1960s as a fashion model, but towards the end of that decade turned to photography. Her first assignment was an advertising campaign for Cacharel, which led to editorial work for Nova, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle. Subsequent advertising campaigns for Biba cosmetics summed up the fashion mood of the early 1970s. Moon has since moved beyond the constraints of fashion and into the sphere of fine art photography. Her work has remained muted, painterly and somewhat surreal.

Ellen Von Unwerth (Germany, 1954)

“The models love to look sexy,” she said. “They all like to be photographed in that way.” Von Unwerth discovered the supermodel Claudia Schiffer in the early 90s when she photographed her for Guess? Jeans. She has also famously created advertising images for Wonderbra, Katharine Hamnett, and Gianfranco Ferré. Von Unwerth left her native Germany in 1974 to begin a modeling career in Paris, becoming a photographer ten years later. She has grown to be a key image-maker through her editorial work for Vogue, The Face, Interview, and even Playboy. Her photographs have been widely exhibited internationally including in Archaeology of Elegance (2012), Fashioning Fiction, exhibited at MoMA/Queens in 2004, and The Model as Muse, exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2009).

Petra Collins (Canada, 1992)

Collins became a frequent subject of photographer Ryan McGinley, and would go on to become one of his protégées. She is mostly known for a distinct and colorful aesthetic in her photographic work. Collins is a frequent editorial photographer for publications as Vogue, Purple Magazine, i-D Magazine, Wonderland Magazine, Dazed & Confused, L’Officiel, Elle, and Love Magazine. She has photographed campaigns for brands such as Levi’s, Adidas, Cos, Calvin Klein, and Stella McCartney. In 2016, Collins was named one of Dazed & Calvin Klein’s 100 Creatives Shaping Youth Culture and one of Vogue’s 40 Creatives to Watch in 2016.

Maisie Cousins (United Kingdom, 1992)

By her own admition, Cousins’ approach to making art is hedonistic and self-satisfying. She explores themes of power, femininity, nature, technology, the body and indulgence. Since she started to share her work on Tumblr at the age of 15, Cousins has fast scaled her way to the top of London’s creative pile. Over the last two years, thiss trajectory has accelerated, with shoots for Polyester zine, contributions to Petra Collins’ Babe and most recently, placement in Charlotte Jansen’s photo book, Girl on Girl.

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