What We See : Women and Nonbinary Perspectives Through the Lens

Open your eyes to a new world view with 100 women and nonbinary photojournalists’ stories from behind the lens.

*Winner of the 2023 Bronze Foreword INDIE Book Award*

85% of photojournalists are men. That means almost everything that is reported in the world is seen through men’s eyes. Similarly, spaces and communities men don’t have access to are left undocumented and forgotten. With the camera limited to the hands of one gender, photographic ‘truth’ is more subjective than it seems. To answer this serious ethical problem, Women Photograph flips that bias on its head to show what and how women and nonbinary photojournalists see.

From documenting major events such as 9/11 to capturing unseen and misrepresented communities, this book presents a revisionist contemporary history: pore over 50 years of women’s dispatches in 100 photographs. Each image is accompanied by 200 words from the photographer about the experience and the subject, offering fresh insights and a much-needed perspective.

Until we have balanced, representative reporting, the camera cannot offer a mirror to our global society. To get the full picture, we need a diverse range of people behind the lens. This book offers a first step.

Relearn how to see with this evergreen catalogue that elevates the voices of women and nonbinary visual storytellers.

Daniella Zalcman is the founder of Women Photograph, a global, US-based non-profit that launched in 2017 to elevate the voices of women and nonbinary visual journalists. The private database includes more than 1,000 independent documentary photographers based in 100+ countries. Their mission is to shift the makeup of the photojournalism community and ensure that the industry’s chief storytellers are as diverse as the communities they hope to represent. They believe that inclusion and equity work must be fully intersectional, and are committed to supporting and highlighting photographers across the spectrum of all identities.

Sara Ickow is the Senior Manager, Exhibitions and Collections at the International Center of Photography. Previously, she worked as a Curatorial Assistant and Collections Manager with the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in their Department of Photographs and as a freelance collections manager. She holds an MA in art history from NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, where she studied photography and time-based media art and wrote her thesis on Walker Evans in the 1930s.