Feminist Photography refers to photographic practices developed within the context of second-wave feminism from the late 1960s onward.
Not a label for work by women photographers but a practice that critically asks how photography has represented women's bodies, domestic labor, desire, advertising, family, and work — recasting photography as a site where the power of the gaze operates.
Feminist photography's intervention was to show that how photography represents women — bodies, labor, desire, family — is not a natural given but a political construction that can be contested, reframed, and held up for critical examination.
Feminist Photography refers to photographic practices developed within the context of second-wave feminism from the late 1960s onward.*1
On this site, photographers connected to Feminist Photography appear mainly in 1970–1980s, often overlapping with Pictures Generation and Conceptual Art.*2
Feminist Photography often overlaps with Pictures Generation and Conceptual Art. Reading those pages together makes it easier to see where method, institution, or critical language begins to diverge.*5
Barbara Kruger was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1945. After studying under Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel at Parsons, she became an art director at Condé Nast's Mademoiselle in …
Cindy Sherman transformed photography from a medium associated with evidence, likeness, and authorial self-expression into a way of testing how cinema, advertising, magazines …