Trailblazing Women: 22 Female Photographers Who Redefined Photography

Photography would not be what it is today if it were not for these 22 women. Each in their own unique way, photographers such as Anna Atkins, Claude Cahun, and Viviane Sassen shaped the medium of photography. From press photography to war reporting, the following selection of female photographers will demonstrate that women have been and are active in all areas of photography from the 18th century to the present.

Anna Atkins is considered one of the first-ever female photographers. She was an English botanist and illustrator. In 1841, at the age of 42, she published the first book illustrated exclusively using a photographic process. Anna Atkins learned the technique for this work from the pioneer of photography par excellence, William Henry Fox Talbot. He introduced Atkins to photogenetic drawing in 1839. The early photographer learned about the cyanotype process from John Herschel. With this knowledge as a foundation, the illustrated book British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions was published in 1841. 

2. Julia Margaret Cameron: 19th-Century Portraitist 

Julia Margaret Cameron led a bourgeois life as a housewife and mother for many years until she began taking photographs in the British colonies of India and England at age 48. With her portraits of the British upper class, Julia Margaret Cameron became one of the most important British photographers of the Victorian era. Influenced by Oscar G. Reijlander and pre-Raphaelite painting, Cameron created photographs that are always characterized by a soft focus. There is always a mystical veil over the faces of those portrayed. The portraits, it seems, show more than just the surface – they also let the viewer see the inside of the person. This you can also see in the photograph Julia Jackson that was taken by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1867.

3. Gertrude Käsebier: Notable American Pictorialist

The American photographer Gertrude Käsebier is one of the most important representatives of pictorialism. Growing up in Colorado, Käsebier moved to New York as a teenager, where she later took photography lessons and opened a photo studio. In New York, the early photographer also became a founding member of Alfred Stieglitz’s pictorialist Photo-Secession Society. Gertrude Käsebier’s best-known photographs to this day include her romantic mother-and-child shots.

One outstanding thing about Gertrude Käsebier is that she was remarkably economically successful for a woman during her lifetime. In 1899, her picture The Manger fetched 100 dollars, the highest selling price ever paid for an art photograph up to this time. With her photography but also with her economic success, Gertrude Käsebier was a role model for many other women.

Frances Benjamin Johnston was one of the first female press photographers in the United States. In this role, she documented big and small events in Washington at the end of the 19th century with her camera and photographed the most important personalities of the city for about five decades. Unlike many other women at that time, Frances Benjamin Johnston was well aware of her role as a role model for other women. In an interview with a reporter in 1893, she explained: ‘It is another pet theory with me that there are great possibilities in photography as a profitable and pleasant occupation for women, and I feel that my success helps to demonstrate this, and it is for this reason that I am glad to have other women know of my work.’ (see Clarence Bloomfield Moore, Women Experts in Photography, p. 586)

5. Imogen Cunningham: Botanical And Nude Photographer

Imogen Cunningham is considered a fervent representative of her contemporary Gertrude Käsebier. Today Cunningham herself is one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. Initially, the young female photographer, who was initially very committed to the style of pictorialism (and therefore the style of Gertrude Käsebier), achieved a scandal in 1915 with the nude portrait of her husband called The Bather. While Imogen Cunningham did not allow herself to be distracted by this from the atmospheric photography of naked bodies, her style changed over time towards the new objectivity. Today, Cunningham is especially known for her flower motifs and close-ups of Lilies and other flowers.

French photographer Claude Cahun, whose civil name was Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwab, was an early photographer, sculptor, and author of Surrealism. In her art photographs, Claude Cahun has mainly made herself a motif. For her self-portraits, she always slipped into new roles, portraying herself as an androgynous person and testing gender boundaries. In Claude Cahun’s autobiography titled Disavowals, Cahun explains: ‘Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.’ (see book Disavowals: or Cancelled Confessions) Cindy Sherman later used photography for her purposes in a similarly subversive way. Sherman, too, explored the boundaries of the body, identity, and gender in her photographs.

7. Germaine Krull: An International And Eclectic Female Photographer

A glance at the biography of Germaine Krull suggests that the German photographer would have had several lives at once. Krull Krill, a left-wing activist, portrayed Kurt Eisner at the time of the November Revolution and was expelled from Bavaria because of her left-wing commitment, she lived in Paris for a long time afterward. In close contact with Man Ray, Sonia Robert Delaunay, and others, she further developed her photography in nudes and advertising photography. In 1928, Krull’s photo book Métal was published, with avant-garde photographs of steel buildings such as the Eiffel Tower. An example of a page of this book can be seen above. As if all this were not enough for a lifetime, after the outbreak of World War II, the photographer pursued a career as one of the first female war correspondents in Indochina, and many years later owned a hotel.

Unusual perspectives and harsh contrasts – these two features are what make the work of the German female photographer Ilse Bing so unconventional. She was part of the Parisian avant-garde and captured her motifs with a Leica camera, which she had bought while studying in Vienna. Shooting photographs from the hand was still completely unusual at that time, the beginning of the 20th century. Later, the photographs of the born Jewish woman Ilse Bing were published in fashion magazines such as Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. That is why Ilse Bing today is known as a famous avant-garde photographer as well as an early part of the fashion photography industry.

9. Dorothea Lange: Depression-Era Photographer

America at the time of the Great Depression is also the time of Dorothea Lange. Today, the photographer is an icon of the history of photography and her picture called The Migrant Mother (1936) is one of the most famous images of the 20th century. The portrait of a migrant worker and her children was part of a documentary series printed in the San Francisco News in 1936. The picture even became a stamp motif in the USA in 1998. With photographs like this one, Dorothea Lange has shaped an entire style: Along with famous photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, she is considered a co-founder of documentary photography and until today has been a role model to many contemporary artists.

10. Berenice Abbott: Photography Between The Wars

Today Berenice Abbott is considered one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. It was a position as assistant to Man Ray in Paris in the years 1923-25 that is said to have brought the studied sculptor from Ohio to photography. Berenice Abbott first became known for her portraits of famous artists, including the writer James Joyce. However, it was an encounter with the work of the French photographer Eugène Atget that had a decisive influence on Abbott. As Atget did in the city of Paris, Berenice Abbott documented the city of New York. It is these black and white photographs of the architecture and streets of New York City for which the photographer is still revered today.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Barbara Morgan concentrated on motifs that still make her a very unique photographer of that time. Morgan was interested in the visual power of gesture and portrayed dancers in movement. For her expressive photographs, Barbara Morgan used the so-called “synchroflash” technique, which was only developed in 1930. With this technique, it was possible for the first time to illuminate a room and thus also a photograph from several directions and thus make the pictures appear more dramatic. Today, Barbara Morgan’s works are held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, among others.

12. Lee Miller

The American female photographer Lee Miller was initially successful as a model for the fashion magazine Vogue before moving to Paris, where she joined the Surrealists and developed new photographic techniques with Man Ray. Today, Lee Miller is best known for her work as a photojournalist and war photographer during World War II. With her camera, Lee Miller captured historical moments in a sensitive way and documented, among other things, the liberation of the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. Miller was one of only a few women accredited by the U.S. Army as a military correspondent. A staged photograph of Miller, which shows her sitting in Adolf Hitler’s bathtub, shows that Lee Miller did not lack humor as well.

13. Gerda Taro: Female Photographer Of War

The German photographer Gerda Taro is a true pioneer of war photography. Together with her partner, the war photographer Robert Capa, she documented the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Her work as a female war reporter is so outstanding because no woman before her had photographed so directly at the front. Her work as a war reporter for various newspapers finally became Gerda Taro’s end; she died on the front line of the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

Diane Arbus was an American photographic artist. With her camera, she took portraits of people in New York society, who tended to be on the fringes of society and thus represented a rather atypical motif for their time. Photographer Diane Arbus documented eccentrics, people like twins and transvestites who were thought to be different, or people with disabilities. Arbus’ photographs are revealing and sensitive at the same time. Unlike many other female artists, Diane Arbus became famous for her photographs early on. The photo artist’s pictures were exhibited in 1967 together with those of Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander. In 1972, Arbus represented the USA at the Venice Biennale – the first photo artist ever to do so. This was one year after Diane Arbus committed suicide at the age of 48.

15. Vivian Maier: Posthumous Recognition

Vivian Maier is a controversial person on this list. While some people want to elevate her to a legend of street photography in recent years, critics point out the posthumous commercialization of her person. The question is: Is Vivian Maier one of the many (female) figures in art history whose work remained (unjustifiably) undiscovered during her lifetime – or is she nothing more than a conventional leisure photographer? Vivian Maier earned her money during her lifetime as a nanny. Almost daily she documented her life with a camera and produced a huge number of black and white photographs. Maier became famous when her remains were discovered by chance after her death and were auctioned off. The documentary Finding Vivian Maier (2013) tells the story of Vivian Maier’s discovery.

Annie Leibovitz is the first still living and contemporary artist on this list. Annie Leibovitz is one of the most renowned and best-paid photographers today. In the 1970s, she made a name for herself as chief photographer for the music magazine Rolling Stone. Later, she became known above all for her expressive portraits of famous people. Whether artist, musician, or actor – Annie Leibovitz has had them all before her lens. One of the most famous pictures of the American photographer is the last joint picture of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, seen above.

17. Nan Goldin: Photography And LBGTQ+ Activism

Nan Goldin, who was born in Washington D.C. in 1953, began taking photographs as a teenager. Initially fascinated by fashion photography, she later became interested in the photography of Diane Arbus, Larry Clark, and August Sander. All three can still be seen and felt today as references in Nan Goldin’s work. Goldin’s photographs, mostly personal, honest, and blunt portraits, show parts of the New York subculture and depict Nan Goldin’s environment of transsexuals, gays, lesbians, and other people in 1980s New York.

18. Cindy Sherman: Womanhood And Identity In Photography

The American photographer Cindy Sherman, who lives in New York, negotiates gender roles and questions of identity in her works. Sherman always moves in a field of tension between self-dramatization and photography. For more than 30 years, Cindy Sherman has been staging herself in her pictures, using lots of make-up and disguise to slip into the most diverse roles. The series Untitled Film Stills (1977 – 80) is still one of Cindy Sherman’s most famous series today. In this series, the photo artist presents female stereotypes from TV, film, and advertising.

Sally Mann is an American photographer who rose to fame in the 1970s and 1980s with her large black-and-white photographs. She has worked with a variety of subjects throughout her career: her children, her husband, rural landscapes around where she lives, and self-portraits. Most of her photographic subjects have in common that they are parts of her everyday life.

20. Francesca Woodman: Female Bodies On Film

Francesca Woodman is often associated with Cindy Sherman and also with the conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. Her works also stand for the feminist discourse of the 1970s and 1980s. Francesca Woodman was a photographic artist who shaped her very own style. In her self-portraits, it seems, she reclaims her own body and her right to female eroticism. Francesca Woodman had a short life. She committed suicide when she was only 22 years old. Until then she is said to have been restless, working day and night, arranging herself and other female bodies.

21. Rineke Dijkstra: Contemporary Portrait Artist

Rineke Dijkstra‘s motif is people. The female photographer portrays people in her immediate surroundings. From young people on the beach in swimwear to soldiers in uniform to naked mothers with their newborn babies, Rieke Dijkstra’s photographs are simple and unadorned without there being anything voyeuristic about them. The Dutch artist, who studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, became known to a wider public in the 1990s with her series Beach (1992 – 1996).

22. Viviane Sassen: Female Photographer Of Fashion And Fine Art 

Viviane Sassen is a Dutch photographer known for her work in fashion and art photography. Her photographs are famous for containing geometric shapes and often deforming or twisting the bodies of the people depicted. In Viviane Sassen’s work, individual body parts such as legs or arms regularly become absurd forms and objects that can often only be recognized at a second glance. In addition, Sassen’s photographs – and this is certainly worth mentioning in this list – are characterized by a special richness of color and by particularly vibrant colors.

This selection of 21 female photographers, who have significantly influenced the history of photography, not only shows the special impact of their work. The selection also makes it clear what emancipatory potential photography had for women in particular, in contrast to earlier, traditional art forms. It is particularly noticeable that in photography it is easy to find famous women who are known to have influenced the genre. What you will find in this list is a selection and by no means includes every famous and important female photographer.

Originally published: November 16, 2020. Last update: August 4, 2024, by Elizabeth Berry