Sexism on Show
Has gender equality in photography moved on from the 1970s?
by Emma Campbell
Issue 79 Summer 2014
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In April of this year the British Journal of Photography (BJP) published a ‘Women Only’ issue featuring women photographers, projects run by women and conversations about the paucity of women in photography. It touched lightly on the reasons behind this disparity and briefly, in an almost embarrassed tone, highlighted the magazine’s own past sexism, showing some of the easier to digest sexualised advertising that had filled its pages in the past.
But why now? The role of women in
photography has become a vital issue once
again, tallying with wider public discussions
about women’s involvement in other arenas. A
conference at the Tate Gallery Fast Forward: Women and Photography then and now has also
taken place this year (part of a larger research
project at the University College of the Arts,
Farnham). Other initiatives include
Firecracker, the European women
photographers project, started by Fiona
Rogers, a Magnum employee, to showcase
women’s work. As was highlighted in Source 76 women now make up a majority of the
photography curators in Ireland and the UK
(62%). Graduating photography students are
now more likely to be women than men, but
are these moves beyond equal participation
reflected in the wider photographic culture?
Are questions around gender in photography
redundant? To get some answers to these
questions we have surveyed the programmes
of a selection of photography institutions to
find out the historical and contemporary
participation of women photographers. These
include the magazines Creative Camera and the BJP, the galleries Belfast Exposed,
Impressions, Open Eye, the Photographers’
Gallery and Gallery of Photography. The
available information – either supplied by the
galleries or taken from library collections of
magazines – covers the period from 1970
onwards (depending on the history of the
organisation).
Taken by decade, in the 1970s women
made up 18% of the photographers published
in Creative Camera, 13% of the exhibition
programmes of the galleries and just 8% of the
work published in the BJP. Since the 1970s
things have improved but are still well short of
parity. In the last four and a half years women
have made up only 30% of the exhibitions in
the galleries and, notwithstanding their
‘Women Only’ issue, 28% of the work in the
BJP.
The graphs show the
percentage of exhibitions
or portfolios made up of
women’s photography
and the number of
exhibitions that made up
this percentage. The
number of exhibitions in
a decade is only shown if
the figures for that
period are complete, so
comparisons can be
made across decades
and between galleries.
Creative Camera and the BJP make useful case studies as they have both been influential
publications throughout this period in British
photographic history and represent different
sectors of the photography industry. Creative Camera was identified as the ‘independent’
and therefore more progressive forum for
photography in the UK. In the 1980s 22% of
its portfolio pages were made up of work by
women, a gradual increase on the previous
decade. Moving on from Creative Camera to the BJP – long established as an industry
magazine, for commercial professionals and
technically proficient amateurs – it becomes
clear how radical Creative Camera was. It is immediately apparent that the BJP of the 80s was for male audiences. Women were regularly featured as sex-objects in both the editorial and
advertising (similar to contemporary ‘technical’
magazines) ensuring that women practitioners
would not feel relevant or welcome as
producers. This must go some way to
explaining why throughout the 80s women
photographers made up only 10% of the
portfolios in the magazine.
The figures record the
number of exhibitions
rather than the number of
participants. For example a
group show of 3 men and 2
women would be recorded
as 0.4 of a women’s
exhibition.
An editorial comment from May 1997, in response to being asked why they feature so few women states: "To go back to the original point about paucity of women photographers featured in BJP, it really is quite simple. BJP reflects the reality, and, for whatever reasons, far fewer women pursue a career in professional photography than men... We are not going to positively discriminate and publish inferior work. What would be the point of that? We are on the look out for good photography, and as they say: age, colour and sex immaterial." This Olympian attitude is contradicted by the facts, if Creative Camera can include more than double the number of women then it isn’t just a reflection of the world at the time.
This is not to say that the poor
representation of women in the BJP was
exclusively a consequence of the sexist
attitudes of the editors. Work being made by
women was undoubtedly harder to find in the
UK and Ireland than it is today because not as
much was being made (incidentally much of
the earliest women’s work shown was by
French, American or German photographers).
There were many other obstacles to women
photographers including limited access to
photographic equipment, training and
education. The 70s and 80s saw a huge
increase in the uptake of further education by
middle and working class women and men,
which in turn influenced the type of work
produced. There is also a perception of
photography as a ‘male’ profession; even today
many newsagents still sell their photography
magazines in the ‘men’s section’.
A good comparison here is the exhibition
histories of the photography galleries surveyed.
As it happens, many of these galleries have
women curators or directors but their record of
showing women is close to that of Creative Camera (they also showed 22% women in the
1980s). The percentage of gallery exhibitions
that involve women also only tells part of the
story. Ironically, as women have made up a
higher proportion of the work shown, galleries
have started to show less work; they may have
more of the pie, but the pie is getting smaller.
The 119 exhibitions of women’s photographs
that were exhibited from 2000-2010 were 31%
of the total exhibitions held that year but that is only a marginal increase on the 113 exhibitions
in the 1980s.
Another important factor must be the various initiatives that have been taken to increase the participation of women in photography such as the 1988 Spectrum Women’s Photography Festival, the 1994 Signals Photography Festival and many others besides. This began to mean photography was not only seen as being produced differently by women but also began to be regarded more seriously. This higher regard then allowed greater inclusion of women’s work in galleries and publications, but at an infuriatingly slow pace of progress. To return to the question of why there is an interest in women’s photography today. Perhaps it is due to an awareness of the ongoing problem? Since 2010 the galleries surveyed have included women in 30% of their shows. This may be an improvement on the 1970s but it is actually less than the previous decade (2000-2010) when, on average, women made up 31% of the same galleries’ exhibition programmes. The problem of the poor representation of women photographers has not been solved and is in danger of getting worse. It will take a lot more work by photographers, educators, curators, publishers and editors to redress the balance.
Thanks to James Brown, Yvonne Kennan, Darragh Shanahan, Angela Sheard, Ciara Hickey, Open Eye Gallery and the Photographers’ Gallery for their help in compiling these figures.
Other articles by Emma Campbell: