These women shook off the shackles of expectations – and told their stories their way

While living in the US in the 1970s, Australian photographer Christine Godden created tender images of the people, animals and spaces around her. Natural and spontaneous, her work documents an intimate daily life – and an insight into women’s lives more broadly.

It’s a portal into a world often forgotten, neglected, in art history. Godden’s story is one of many told in Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light, which aims to rectify that omission, and celebrate the images, lives and careers of more than 70 influential artists who worked between 1900 and 1975.

Coming to the National Gallery of Victoria in November, the show includes many brilliant photographers: locals Godden, Ponch Hawkes and Olive Cotton, plus big names internationally including Diane Arbus, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Barbara Morgan and Dorothea Lange. Lesser known global artists are showcased too – Consuelo Kanaga is one, whose stunning photo She is a Tree of Life to Them is featured.

Born in 1894, Kanaga worked at the San Francisco Chronicle from 1915, initially as a writer and later as the staff photographer, then became a member of the California Camera Club. In 1950, she stayed in an artists’ colony in Maitland, Florida, and documented the lives of black field workers living there. Her portrait of a mother with her children became well known around the world after its inclusion in the touring exhibition, The Family of Man, curated by Edward Steichen.

“The women artists in the show aren’t pigeonholed in any way; [it shows] they started to really express themselves as they wanted to,” says Donna McColm, an assistant director (curatorial and audience engagement) at the NGV.

McColm says those featured – starting at the beginning of the century – are turning the camera around, rejecting the male gaze and shooting themselves. Women in the show are featured as nudes, in portraits, on the street going about their daily lives, and also photographing a huge variety of subjects, from architecture and changing cities, to fashion through to arty, surrealist compositions.

“This only really starts to happen as women start to break out of those gendered roles; they start to become independent artists, saying, ‘We want to participate and you can’t objectify us any more’,” McColm says.

After analysing its collection to identify areas that needed attention, the NGV acquisitions team homed in on female photographers of the 20th century. “It came up as a really important area because only about 10 per cent of that international collection [in 2000] was by women,” McColm says. “So we thought here’s a way we can make a huge impact, change the nature of the collection and hold the exhibition.”

Over the past five years, the team has been busy collecting – and holding all new acquisitions back, McColm says, with the exhibition’s big unveil planned for later this year.

More than 300 rare and innovative photographs, prints, postcards, photo books and magazines from the NGV collection will feature in the show.

Working across the 1970s, both Godden and Hawkes documented what was happening in their lives and worlds more broadly. Hawkes’ fabulous work ranges from women’s liberation marches and other political protests, to share houses in inner-city Melbourne. Her work reflects the micro and the macro – a theme that underlines much of the show. We gain a sense of what mattered in the world, and what preoccupied these women closer to home.

According to McColm, the show features “women who were moving around … unable to pursue their preferred profession”.

“A bit later on they were able to study, but until the mid-century, they were doing other things – maybe magazine photography. In the show are a lot of fine art prints which women made that began as advertisements.”

Fundraising paid for the 170 new works, 130 of which will be on display for the first time. Since 2020, the Bowness Family Fund for photography and Krystyna Campbell-Pretty and family have provided more than $1 million to the gallery.

Even now, of course, photography is ubiquitous, with each of us carrying a portable camera in our phones. But McColm says that access is part of photography’s appeal for audiences.

McColm says that seeing what they can achieve with a camera, not unlike the one we now all have access to, and how they can elevate it, is extraordinary.

Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light runs from November 28 to May 3 at NGV International.

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