All posts filed under: Guest Photographers

As a young Kenyan girl growing up in the United States, a career in photography was not on multimedia journalist and photographer Polly Irungu’s radar. Today, she is on a mission to make the photography industry a more inclusive and diverse place. In 2020, Polly started Black Women Photographers – a global community of over 1000 members that aims to put Black creatives in the line of sight of gatekeepers of the industry and getting Black women and non-binary photographers hired. The road to inclusivity Working her way through the ranks and finding her footing in the photography industry was far from an easy, straightforward path for Polly. The industry was (and still is to a large extent) dominated by white men, and opportunities for Black photographers were often limited to Black History Month or to what happened to be a timely social uprising. “I didn’t see myself in this industry. I didn’t see other people who look like me being celebrated in the same way as their counterparts. And when it comes down to …

Starting out as a side project for Berlin-based beauty photographer Zoë Noble to shine a light on women who choose not to have children, “We Are Childfree” has become a community of women across the world that support each other, share advice for how to live childfree, and work to destigmatize the act of choosing not to have children. “I didn’t have any role models growing up, and the ones that I saw were negative; it was always the mad, career-obsessed, hating-children, woman. And I knew that wasn’t me,” says beauty and still photographer Zoë Noble about the portrayal of childfree women. Realizing early on that she did not want to have children made her acutely aware of how radical that decision is within most societies. She felt that her choice was met with judgment and at times a lack of respect, having doctors tell her that she would change her mind or rejecting her request to have procedures that would affect her ability to have children. “When I had fibroids and I wasn’t allowed …