How Women invented the Photobook?
The history of photobooks and artists’ books is documented, collected, exhibited and discussed. How were the contributions and legacy of women to print culture overlooked for so long? *
The birth of photography took place in a highly competitive and nationalistic context, with its inventors fighting for licenses and commercial gain, contesting court cases to decide whether photography was art, and asserting its role in the colonial process. Although the history of photography and of photobooks and artists’ books is widely documented, collected, exhibited and discussed, the legacy of women using photography in print is under-documented, cursory, fragmentary and, too often, inaccurate. Historically, publishing was the privileged medium to circulate images, and women used it to claim their artistic, economic, political, intellectual and sexual independence, blurring gender roles and modes of representation at a time when they were not encouraged or allowed to study art or science.
I will take a few examples in France and England, the two countries that allegedly invented photography. The English botanist and photographer Anna Atkins published the first series of photobooks as soon as photography was invented in the early 1800s, while the…
