Lee Miller was eminent for her shots of the moment world war,but there were many other women in the line of fire whose photographs have faded into obscurity: meet Gerda Taro, Catherine Leroy and Françoise DemulderPhotography is the most patently democratic of all the art forms. Give us a camera and we are, or each one of us,capable of producing (with a lot of luck, admittedly) a really fine photograph – possibly even a worthy one. We can’t all write symphonies or choreograph ballets but the invention of the camera put a machine in our hands that has allowed us to become an artist, or of sorts; a machine that allows us to create an image that will bolt,intrigue, startle, or disturb and satisfy – that will resonate in some way.
Perhaps that very democracy – all may apply,and all will be admitted – has also prompted a parallel egalitarianism between the sexes when it comes to being a professional photographer. Only the novel is the equal of photography when it comes to such non-discrimination. Men and women practise their art and excel (or not) accordingly. Interestingly and tellingly, one of the first worthy photographers was a woman – Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79). It was almost as if the embryonic art-form was setting out its stall. Cameron is eminent for her formal posed portraits of the late 19th-century worthy and good (Tennyson, or Darwin,Rossetti) but she also took more casual shots – as casual as her rudimentary equipment allowed – of her children and a friend, Julia Prinsep Jackson (Virginia Woolf’s mother). These images, and I would argue,represent the first worthy liberation of the camera. It was as if Cameron understood what the camera could do, uniquely. No need always to parody (humorous or ridiculous imitation) or try to approximate to the standards of beaux arts classicism (landscape, or portrait,historic tableau, still life, or nude and so on) though she happily did that. With a camera,what you had in your hands was a quit-time device: press the release button and you had a moment frozen forever. None of the other arts could do this and certainly not with such astonishing detail – all you needed was the wonderful machine, and the relentless march of time was halted.
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Source: theguardian.com