Absence::Presence

I recently took a photography course that was offered by two women. All of my fellow participants were women too. This was a first for me! Prior to this, every single one of my photography teachers and mentors have been men.

Intriguing. Certainly there are women out there teaching in this discipline, but we seem to have to look a little harder to find them. Or, do we unconsciously follow along a centuries in the making suggestion that men are the experts?

Either way, having never created my own opportunity to learn photography from women before this, I felt a little baffled with myself. I truly believe women are the original creators (we are the life givers) and it made me wonder how, with all of my beliefs in the power of the feminine, I could have overlooked such an obvious learning situation. It made me wonder about this auto pilot switch we all have and how we robotically move through life not always fully aware of who has influence over us.

When we study photography in a class setting, we are usually given a list of famous photographers’ work to explore. Oftentimes, the list looks like this: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Steve McCurry, Sebastiao Salgado, Yousuf Karsh, and Alfred Stieglitz. Sometimes we get Annie Leibovitz or Dorothea Lang, but mostly, we get a list comprised of men.

Their work is spectacular! It is beautiful and thought provoking and game changing. But it is men’s work. It made me wonder, is there a consequence for women when we are continuously and so heavily influenced in many areas of life by men? Does this contribute to an idea that women will find their power (creative or otherwise) in mimicking men? I believe the power of women comes from being women, with all of our emotions, our ebbing and flowing nature, and our innate instinct to protect and nurture, among many other tremendous traits. I don’t believe it comes from the insistence that we adopt the behaviours of men.

That said, it is an interesting time to be a woman. And I think this idea of tuning in to our influences is a really key element to our own evolution. The acknowledgement of our place within this life and this world is changing for us, but we need to have an idea of how we are going to move forward, and what we want that place to look like. Awareness is only the first step and it does not provide forward momentum. How can we intentionally carve out this place we want for our future as women and artists? And then, how do we achieve it?

We live in a time when we still need to stand up and demand equality. We still need to demand recognition and acknowledgement for accomplishments. But what if we are at a critical new point in time? What if in addition to doing those things, we also begin changing our own actions as female creatives? What if we stop waiting for permission to be recognized and start recognizing one another? No matter how politely we stand there waiting, we aren’t going to receive recognition in the way that we want from the masses: we don’t want to be recognized because we are women, we want to be recognized because our work is strong!

Here’s where I’d like to introduce you to Anne Brigman. Anne Brigman is one of my favourite female photographers. I call her my ‘historical mentor’. She went out hiking into the Sierra Nevada’s in Northern California in the early 1900’s, often alone, but at times accompanied by female friends. The photographic pieces she created at that time were studies of nude women as part of the landscape. Not naked women standing in nature posed in overtly sexual poses, but beautiful nude women as part of nature (because we are nature). She was quite celebrated at the time for her daring artistry, even being named a fellow of Photo-Secession, a movement that promoted photography as fine art in the early 20th century. The invitation to become a part of this group was extended to her by Alfred Stieglitz (remember him from the list of names it is suggested we study?). Of course, she was also criticized, and removed one of her pieces from an exhibition after it was called “a vulgar photograph of a scrawny dame”.

This woman blazed some pretty wild and provocative trails for us but we don’t talk about her! When I found her work, I immediately felt validated and legitimized in my own desire to explore and create from that very intense female part of myself. It has given me permission to expand my idea of my comfort zone and has called out the areas I deeply desire, and even crave, to dive into creatively, but am afraid to.

We can’t rewrite history. We can’t go back in time and ask the Roman scholars to ask women what their life experiences were and actually write them down for us in a female context. We can’t go back and interview the females who composed music or created art when it was unacceptable to be doing so. We can’t ask the women who dared to wear pants occasionally what drove that decision.

But what we can do is something that I believe will be fulfilling, and something that will honour those who came before us.

We can change our narrative.

Evolution is the gradual development of something, especially from simple to more complex. So it is imperative that we take the work of those that came before us and build on it. It is necessary for us to speak about them, to list them as our influencers, and to bring elements of their work into our own if that is what feels good and right for us. By doing this in areas such as art, I believe we change the future for women. I would be curious how much of an influence the male photographers of the time were having on Anne Brigman. My instinct upon looking at her images is that there was very little, and because of that, I feel there is purity to her influence on my own creativity. I don’t feel the “male filter” has been applied to the same degree as it may be in our current time.

By allowing Anne Brigman, (and others like her) to influence me, I give her the opportunity to have a new audience in the present. She comes back to life! Suddenly, the history of photography as I understand it and identify with it, changes. It isn’t male dominated anymore. There is an equality that I consciously introduce to my sphere of influence, which can then inform my work in a deeper and more personal way. My work becomes stronger and affords me an opportunity to connect more deeply with others through it. So while I can’t go back and rewrite history, I can change the historical content that I expose myself to. And I can begin to believe there was a presence of women where I have long been taught there was not.

If we all brought great women into our work, whatever that work is, if we actively sought them out, we would change the narrative on the history of women in all fields. Because they were there, driving change, making discoveries, even if we don’t read about them! We would draw attention to the rule breakers, the brilliant minds, and the rebels who made their lives what they would, despite societal pressure to behave a certain way. We would teach our girls and our boys to scrutinize history. To know that the stories we tell only scratch the surface of what was and is the truth. And that for every man out there creating and doing great things, one should assume there is at least one woman doing it too. We also address the concept that the female way of doing things is wrong. It isn’t. It’s just different. Perhaps we become more aware of, and possibly attempt to remove, that male filter that I think we have become conditioned to see through. Instead, we see with our own filter and give ourselves the opportunity to experience our life in a wholly connected way.

We may deserve more credit than we get, but it is also our responsibility to take it. We are finally at the time when we can do that. It is up to us to create the opportunities that will usher in this change.

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