[Fall 2021]

By Ariane Noël de Tilly

[Excerpt]
The image chosen to illustrate the cover of Women Street Photographers is certainly striking: a detail from Red Upsweep (2019) by B Jane Levine; the photograph is reproduced in its entirety inside the book. The centre of this truncated image is dominated by the head and shoulders of a red-headed woman with an upswept hairdo, photographed from the back, on Fifth Avenue in New York; in the background are the skyscrapers emblematic of the dense, hectic city. The choice of this detail is judicious, as it guides our gaze: the woman turns her back on us, we watch her watching, and that is exactly what Women Street Photographers invites us to do – to get to know the work of women photographers and the spontaneous, ephemeral events that they have captured in the public space.

Women Street Photographers, edited by Gulnara Samoilova, was published in March 2021, three years after the launch of the Women Street Photographers project, which takes three forms: an annual exhibition, a website, and an Instagram account (@womenstreetphotographers). Samoilova, a photographer born in Russia who has lived in New York since 1992 and who practises both art photography and street photography – although one does not exclude the other – founded the project. Her objective was to raise the visibility of women and people who identify as women, both professional and amateur, whose practice is associated with street photography…

 

See the magazine for the complete article and more images: Ciel variable 118 – EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY