Striving for Independence

During the last decades of the 19th century, women used the camera, still a new technological apparatus, to establish independent lives as professional photographers. Women photographers had a particularly strong position in the Nordic countries, where photography became a tool with which to attain personal, economic, and political independence. Many hired only women assistants and remained unmarried, and some lived in lifelong relationships with women partners. Moreover, these women pioneers belonged to a generation which, for the first time, had the power to define their own visual representation as well as that of other women. Through a wide range of stories about individual photographers, this book presents a counter-history to existing histories of photography, demonstrating the medium’s liberating potential for women for the first time.

• Counter-narratives of women’s independence in photographic histories
• Bringing to light previously unknown Nordic women photographers
• With contributions from leading scholars in photography studies from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland

Sigrid Lien, University of Bergen, Norway; Mette Sandbye, University of Copenhagen, Denmark