Since the invention of photography, countless images have been taken with women as the subject. Most of these have historically been taken by men. As more women are carving out a space for themselves in the industry, the way women on both sides of the camera are represented is changing.
We asked three female photographers about the depiction of women in their work and their thoughts on what the future looks like for women in photography.
Note: This article was originally published in March 2022.
Eva Sitko
Through her colorful style of photography, German photographer and former graphic designer Eva Sitko works to bring out emotions in her subjects to show the interpersonal dynamics of our feelings. Sitko takes a keen interest in her subjects’ emotional display, in particular when shooting women.
“A self-confident, strong woman who deals openly with her emotions is the incarnation of beauty for me.”
Her interest in the emotional life of her subjects has led her to notice differences in how men and women are represented.
“Women are often portrayed in very different ways than men. Masculinity often fulfills a certain function, femininity is represented more by a feeling,” she explains.
“I often see myself faced with the challenge that female models are more likely to show and pose in a more sexual way. Men, on the other hand, want to radiate strength and authenticity. However, I find it more important to depict the feelings of the person, may it be love, anger, curiosity, anger, etc.”
Sitko notes that female photographers have in the past received little publication or marketing despite having a distinctly different and, according to her, intuitive approach to aesthetics when compared to men.
“I see a big positive shift in the support of women’s photography today. This contributes to a holistic view of the genders in art or photography. After all, every human being, male or female, should have the same opportunities. Because that’s what unites us: how we feel.”
For Carly Zavala, being able to relate to the women she shoots helps her find the best way to frame her subjects.
“I know the struggles and experiences we deal with on a daily basis. As something I relate to, I tap into that connection instinctively to get a feel on how to photograph and portray women,” says the Venezuelan-born, Brooklyn-based freelance photographer. With 15 years of experience working as a nurse, Zavala uses her knack for reading her subjects to put them at ease while shooting.
“I let my intuition take the lead and I believe this is where I produce my best work. I want the women that I photograph to be seen in their authenticity, and most importantly for them to see themselves in their natural light.”
Light and shadow play a big role in Zavala’s work to create emotive and moody images giving dimensions to her subjects drawing out interesting stories.
“Being in the age that we are at now, I think it’s extremely important for there to be a focus on the female perspective to help change the narrative of how current society sees and depicts women. We have slowly started to see a shift in the perception of what beauty standards have been, especially for women. I think that women in photography will continue to shift that narrative in a more positive light.”
“I am a woman and mother above all. In every woman, I try to discover the light,” says Madlena Motaki.
As a self-described part-time photographer and full-time mother, much of her work centers around intimate and profound moments between women and their loved ones – mothers with their children, grandmothers and granddaughters, husbands and wives.
“I choose to represent women as raw as they will allow me with a bit of aesthetic.”
Seeing her job as capturing moments of real emotion, her main priority is to make people feel safe and comfortable in front of the camera so they can open up and show their true selves.
“I hope [the future of women photography] will become less perfect and more real. Like when you look at the portrait of a woman and start to wonder ‘who’s she?’, ‘what’s her story?’, ‘why is she sad or happy?’ and I want to keep looking trying to find answers.”
Despite moving to the UK at 19, Wika Wójcikiewicz has not left her Eastern European roots behind. Allowing for curated “mistakes” in her work, the Polish photographer is inspired by the natural, raw, and sometimes gritty side of life and often brings elements from her own upbringing into her photos through the colors, motifs, and subjects she captures.
The soon-to-be London College of Communication graduate shares her thoughts on the in-between moments that create true beauty, mixing media and genres, and how to understand your own aesthetic.
What was your first experience in photography like?
I recall one of my first endeavors with photography occurring when I was gifted a small, plastic, pink-colored Nikon camera at eight years old. I got it for my first communion and started having fun by taking my first images and filming with my friends where we would even partake in styling, set design, and putting together childish scripts. At twelve years old, the idea of becoming a documentary photographer came into my mind. My interests in other subjects, such as geography, had drawn me to documentaries.
Throughout the years, I have been picking up and exploring more and more interests. Personally, I am not only intrigued by one area of photography or film. Since I have been into lens-based media since the age of eight, it only continues to evolve, weirdly leading me to the point I am at now.
Going from Gdansk in Poland to London in the UK must’ve been quite a change of pace and scenario. How did this journey affect the way you use photography to interpret the world?
After leaving Gdansk to come to London, I began to realize that as both an individual and a photographer, I carry the traditions, culture, aesthetics, and colors of both my people and my country. When you grow up with others who act or think like you, you tend not to acknowledge many differences. Differences exist regardless of where you are, as we are all human. However, differences between individuals are not as visible in comparison to the differences in a city like London. Identity was not spoken about often as everyone has a similar identity around you, whereas in London, your identity is more apparent.
As I had both observed and acquired this sense of identity, it revealed my aesthetics and my understanding of beauty through photography. Through this, my sense of expression has been elevated and developed. My awareness of my identity has tremendously helped with expressing where I am from, to the point that it is now something I unconsciously do, not something that is necessarily being forced to be implemented in my work.
Raw and rough are sensations that have a lot to do with your subjects and surroundings. How do you capture this feel in your work across different types of photography?
I suppose many may see my work and believe it to be raw or rough because they are used to perfection when it comes to photography; perfect bodies, faces, and products. As a consequence of this idea of perfection in photography, more organic and candid photos may be considered raw or rough.
However, I perceive those photos as more natural pieces of work. The way I personally achieve this is definitely through analog photography. It allows more room for certain mistakes that a DSLR might not, which is where the roughness of the images comes from.
For example, in fashion photography, I pay attention to and actively look for these candid moments when I shoot. These are moments you have to be patient for, for example, in-between glances from the model. I always seek and find these moments in all styles of photography, whether it is fashion, documentary, or film. I believe it is the true beauty of what we do as photographers – waiting for that particular moment and capturing it.
Many individuals have become accustomed to photography that is highly edited, often shot on a DSLR. These beautiful images of perfect people may have led more organic or less edited photographs to be deemed as rough or raw. For the past three years, I used to describe my work similarly. However, in more recent times, I believe my work to simply be more natural and just less edited in comparison to other photographers. My work being more organic is definitely because I look for these in-between moments and glances. These in-between moments can be crucial as they amplify the honest feel of the photograph and capture the true state of the situation.
Follow along with Wika as she edits one of her photos to bring out the detail of the scene.
How would you describe your style?
As mentioned before, it’s truly about the in-between moments. I would like to call it alternative portraits, which involve less conventional mimics and body language. I appreciate when there is an aspect of my work that catches the viewer’s eye and is remembered. This is executed best when your subject is relaxed, otherwise your subject will only be posing. I prefer when my subjects are both comfortable and natural rather than posing; I then have the room to capture what I need.
What are some of the types of photography you like to shoot the most?
Documentary, fashion, and film (which is also a lens-based media) are my favorites. I love mixing these genres and often find myself doing so. I encounter more space to create something new when mixing genres and styles, and it creates many future ideas. I enjoy sticking them all together by looking through a cinematic lens.
On a different note, how has studying at LCC (London College of Communication) helped you become a better photographer?
Being able to work on projects and study with so many different students from various backgrounds has been mind-blowing. I have seen and tried things that I have never even heard of before, in both a personal and photography/professional context. Exploring new media, colors, textures, and even tastes have helped me find out what suits my ideas best.
In places like that, you are given a chance to develop your identity as both an individual and a photographer.
My tutors are also very helpful. I would love to mention my tutor Derek Wiafe, who consistently provides people on the course with opportunities and tremendous help. It does not matter how busy he is – he would always find time to help everyone. He creates professionals out of his students. Derek honestly pushes us to the best place we possibly can be and ensures that we are working to the best of our potential. He definitely provides both technical and mental support as a tutor and mentor. Big shoutout to him!
Was studying at LCC where you first came in contact with Capture One? What role does the software play in your workflow?
I was introduced to Capture One at LCC through my tutor Derek. He advised us to download the software, and we later had an introductory workshop. We were shown how to use the software and explore its features. Even though I am fond of mistakes in my work, through my use of Capture One, my mistakes become more experimental than unknown. It allows me to see what I am getting and gives me the platform to see whether mistakes are worth developing or not.
Capture One is especially useful when decreasing ambiguity and the unknown from images. At this time in my work, I find it beneficial to know what I am getting on the day of shooting. I used to not consider the importance of this, but as I am now working in a more professional space, it has most certainly been of great assistance. It saves a lot of time.
What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your career so far, and how have you overcome them? Any advice for other upcoming photographers?
One of the biggest challenges for me was moving to a new country by myself at the age of 19. I had come to London knowing nobody but ready to start a new life and embark on my photography career. I knew I had to work hard in this new endeavor, or I would have to go back home. This relates to my advice for other aspiring photographers, regardless of where you are – originality and hard work should be your two main priorities when considering your creative work. There are no shortcuts; even if you make good connections and can easily network, you still have to show worthy work.
To produce good work, I would suggest to others that they ensure they enjoy what they are doing. Your work should be pleasurable but should also drive you. I trust that when someone truly believes in what they do and the style they create, they can find their audience. I believe this is due to the fact that your work will come out true and honest, which individuals will see and can deem as good. No one can recreate your work as no one has had the same experiences as you nor possess your own personal aesthetics, aspects which are vital.
In short, I would tell other photographers like myself that understanding yourself and your aesthetics should be your goals when building your style and embarking on originality. Hard work is crucial; if you don’t work hard, no one will do it for you.
Finally, what are some of the photographers you look up to?
One of my favorite documentary photographers is definitely Boris Mikhailov. He’s a photographer who often deals with ideas of roughness and organic work while honestly showing how everything is. He also picks really alternative portraits, which align with my favored styles. In regard to specific genres such as fashion, I would say Zhong Lin is a photographer I’m rather fond of due to their use of color and aesthetics. In terms of alternative portraits, it is very eclectic, and that is exactly what I admire while shooting fashion.
To all of you who depend on us, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by the outage affecting Capture One this past Friday, April 14.
Empower photographers is one of our core values, and we could not deliver on that during the outage. We also wish we had been more open and timelier in communications on our website, noticeboard, and social media. I want to apologize to all of you who were affected on behalf of everyone here at Capture One.
What happened?
On Friday, April 14 at 08:47 PM CEST, our detection systems flagged an outage that prevented many of our users from starting Capture One. Within minutes, our engineering team started investigating the root cause of the issue, and about 1.5 hours later the incident was fixed.
This was an especially difficult outage in that it involved a combination of factors. Our authentication and authorization services were overwhelmed and denied new requests for reasons that were unrelated to incoming traffic, and they ultimately required a restart.
Moving forward
Although an incident like this is very rare, we’re completely committed to making sure Capture One is available to you no matter what. So, we’re working closely with our cloud and infrastructure providers to prevent similar incidents in the future. We’ll also be making changes to the activation and authentication logic in Capture One Pro to make it more resilient to cloud availability. These will be progressively rolled out over the next 6 months.
We have also defined actions we will take to serve our community better in the future through a more proactive approach in our communications.
Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to dozens of photographers and digitechs who have impressed on me the critical role Capture One plays during a high-stakes, time-sensitive photoshoot. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no persistent consequence from the outage, and your Capture One experience should be fully back to normal.
You can always contact our support team if you experience any problems using Capture One now or in the future.
We are grateful for the patience and support of our community, users, customers, and partners.
With a mission to empower marginalized visual artists, Authority Collective is working to end systemic and individual abuse in editorial, documentary, and commercial photography. In their Photographer’s Guide to Inclusive Photography, the group is challenging photographers to think about their responsibility when telling visual stories.
“The guide definitely came out of the recognition that photography, since its inception, has been an extremely extractive space,” explains Tara Pixley about the Photographer’s Guide to Inclusive Photography, which addresses the specific things photographers should consider when shooting stories related to race, gender, sexuality and more.
Tara is a visual journalist, professor, and one of the founding members of Authority Collective, a community for women, non-binary, and gender expansive people of color working with photography, film, and VR/AR to connect and share resources.
It was at a conference in 2017 that Tara and nine other photographers of color got together to create the collective after noticing they had all had similar experiences in the photography industry – many of them experiencing microaggressions from usually male and white photo editors, creators, and colleagues.
“If we hadn’t come together and kind of had this conversation, we wouldn’t have realized that this was happening to a lot of different people. We wouldn’t have come to this realization that it wasn’t us as individuals – we’re not doing a bad job or we’re doing something wrong. It’s actually these microaggressions that are being put upon us,” she says.
Seeing that it was not only photographers, but the also subjects of photography who were facing discrimination, the collective wanted to find a better way for photographers to work with marginalized groups. Wanting to address the fact that a lot of documentary photography work has been done by people who are photographing communities they’re not part of, often in a way that disadvantages those communities, they began reaching out to editorial and photo organizations to help them address this and other diversity issues.
“We started focusing our energy toward interventions and that’s how things like The Guide to Inclusive Photography came about,” says Tara.
Questions for photographers
“This guidebook was attempting to open up that conversation to say, ‘Hey, here are some ethical approaches. Here are some thoughtful ways to critically engage with your photography and recognize the power structures and power hierarchies at play’,” explains Tara and adds that since it was first published, the guidebook has been downloaded almost 10,000 times.
The guide, which was made in partnership with Photoshelter, dedicates chapters to photographing race, the global south, indigeneity, gender, and LGBTQIA communities and addresses the specific things to think about before photographing and portraying each of these groups.
In the end, the guidebook offers a list of questions for photographers to ask themselves to help challenge their own work. Questions like ‘Am I perpetuating stereotypical narratives with my work?’ ‘What are the likely consequences of the publication of my photography?’ ‘Who will be harmed? Who will be helped?‘.
Making room for more perspectives
Tara underlines that the guide is not there to say that people who aren’t part of the different groups covered in the guide cannot photograph them. Instead, the guide offers some ethical approaches to doing so.
“There is no objectivity and neutrality. We are indeed – every single one of us – subjective. So, instead of pretending that [we come with] neutrality, what we need to do is recognize and celebrate where we’re coming from and understand our potential limitations, understand what that makes possible,” she says.
“It’s to make space for all photographers, for all perspectives. Everyone needs to have a multitude of views and understandings in our visual content. We need that. We require it to have a better understanding of the world.”
The guide was edited byTara Pixley and Jovelle Tamayo, who are founding member of Authority Collective. Tailyr Irvine, Mengwen Cao, Danielle Villasana, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, and Hannah Reyes Morales all contributed to the guide.
Carly Zavala
Madlena Motaki
