Feminism

Feminism is no one thing, it is different things to different people. Although most see it as meaning the rights of women – whether that means superiority or equality, and whether that is best achieved by treating men and women equally or differently, depends on which feminist you ask. Whether men can also be feminists, and whether “positive discrimination” is at all positive are other questions without consensus.

One of the most high profile feminist campaigns in the art world, aiming in this case at the end of what they see as discrimination against female artists, is that of the “Guerilla Girls”. An anonymous collective of female artists founded in 1985 and based principally in New York, they have engaged in high profile publicity campaigns against such targets as art galleries featuring only male artists in exhibitions.

While there are many female photographers who identify themselves as feminists, Annie Leibovitz, Cindy Sherman, Nam Goldin and Barbara Krueger, there is no single style or single topic that one can point to and say “that's a feminist photograph”. Common topics that essayists on the subject of feminism point to are such themes as examining gender roles and seeking to document life from a woman's perspective, but those women who do not describe themselves feminists also photograph just the same things. 

 

So although there are hundreds of photographs by feminists, I remain unconvinced “feminist photography” exists. The image above is a good example, at first glance quite a male chauvinistic image of a scantily-clad woman in bright red high heels on the knee of a powerful suited man, is actually taken by Annie Leibovitz, a self-described feminist.

It seems therefore that just as Marcel Duchamp famously said “Anything is art if the artist says it is”, anything is feminism if a feminist says it is.

References:
Williams, Val, "Illuminations: women writing on photography from the 1850s to the present", 1997
Warner Marien, Mary, "Photography: A Cultural History", 2006