| Description |
The New Woman was a popular media trope that represented the changing definition of modern femininity in the early twentieth-century. She was a sexually liberated, metropolitan woman with progressive ideologies concerning femininity, and her image circulated in the cinema, photographs, illustrated press, and advertisements. Her iconic appearance was created and disseminated by the commodity-consumer media culture of the age, as she was most readily recognized for her androgynous hair and clothing, bold makeup, and cigarettes. The New Woman was a polarizing figure, both praised as an advocate of woman's emancipation, and denigrated for her perversion of traditional gender norms. So much of her controversial image and influence was created and disseminated by female photographers of the time, especially by those who were New Women themselves. This exhibition, Both Sides of the Lens: The New Woman as Photographer and Subject, seeks to shed light on the marginalized women photographers of the interwar period in Europe and the United States who aided in creating the visual vernacular of modern femininity. To do so, this exhibition traces the social and political history of the New Woman through the lens of female photographers. Broken into four organizing themes -masks, mirrors, bodies, and portraiture-Both Sides of the Lens presents twenty-three photographs that explore the new feminine identity in the interwar period. This catalogue includes an exhibition list, sample wall and object labels, and a biography tracing the careers of sixteen New Woman photographers from seven countries. |
