Book review of Firecrackers: Female Photographers Now

30/11/17

Book review of Firecrackers: Female Photographers Now

By Fiona Rogers & Max Houghton

Published by Thames & Hudson

There has been no shortage of books on female photographers appearing over recent months, so what does this compendium, published by Thames & Hudson this autumn, add to the library that its predecessors haven’t already provided? Certainly many of the artists included have been represented elsewhere, and some of the images are beginning to feel a little overly familiar – but, in a world where Helmut Newton’s vampy erotica or Robert Doisneau’s iconic Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville (1950) are recognisable in the flash of an eye, why shouldn’t Juno Calypso’s saccharine pink Honeymoon series nymphets (2015-16) and Natasha Caruana’s faceless brides (Fairytale for Sale series, 2011) be just as familiar and ubiquitous?

Read the full review here

Book Review of Girl on Girl. Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze

11/05/17

Girl on Girl. Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze.

By Charlotte Jansen

Hardback, 192 pages

ISBN 9781780679556

Published by Laurence King Publishing

£19.99 retail

“We see photographs of women every day, but we are used to looking at them in a few specific contexts,” writes editor Charlotte Jansen, in the introduction to her new book, Girl on Girl. Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze. “On products and billboards, in shop windows and magazine covers, in erotica and pornography.” The premise behind the book, however, is that there is a rapidly growing number of women out there photographing women, creating images where both the subject and the “gaze” are female. “At times,” Jansen continues, “there seems to be little difference between how women photograph women and how men photograph women, but women have the right to self-objectify and to exploit without critique, just as men have been allowed to do since the earliest forms of art emerged”. And here, Jansen offers 40 international female photographers the opportunity to present their work, their aims and their motivations neutrally and without critique, albeit opening themselves up for critical response.

Read the full review here