So How Do I Look? Women Before and Behind the Camera

This text appeared originally in the catalogue ""Staging the Self:
Self-Portrait Photography 1840s-1980s.'', accompanying the exhibition at the
National Portrait Gallery, London, October 1986. The essay gives a selective
historical overview of women's self-portraiture. In the introductory statements
self-portraiture is examined as a means of creating an image that ""presents
the self in its own terms, as it would like to be seen, as it would like to
affect other (...). When the photographer is a women (constantly the object of
the male look ) then the implications of this relation through the camera of
self to self and to the outside world are redoubled''. According to the author,
women photographers have compiled a ""dossier of conscientious objection,
indecent exposure, subversion, theft and general insubordination''. The
following photographers are discussed: Francis Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952),
Alice Austen (1866-1952), Imogen Cunningham (1883-1977), Annie Brigman,
Florence Henri, Anne Noggle, Judy Dater, Jo Spence, Cindy Sherman and Susan
Hiller.