If a woman asked the question: what is being a woman, then being a woman photographer is revealing the answers to that eternal question. It was never easy to define a question, and even less easy – to be a real woman. Perhaps to answer it is harder than to live really as a woman. Being a woman is a great challenge and a fight, and being a woman photographer is to double the difficulty of the challenge and the fight.
The lenses of a woman photographer are different from the lenses of a man photographer, the woman author of the photo has a completely different perception of the dynamics of the objects covered by the frame of the camera. The distinction of perception is also characteristic of the quality of photography and subject matter, the subject of photography and the technique. The woman author through the photography produces an entire world of experiences and crosses of reality and the world where it belongs. Through the description by means of light, the woman photographer participates in creating a sense of being, positioning herself as a well-established subject in relation to the world as her non-me.
The history is full of testimonies for successful woman photographers starting with Julia Margaret Cameron and Tina Modoti, all the way to Cindy Sherman and Annie Lebowitz. In her famous study titled “On Photography”, the famous essayist and writer Suzan Sontag examines the specificity of the photo created by female photographes. Susan Sontag puts the photos of Annie Lebowitz under a special analysis, and draws the claim that the genius expressed in a special beautiful art – the photography belongs to an attribute of women just as much as it belongs to men. Photographic art is one of the rare arts in which establishment and development, women contributed equally to men. Therefore, it can be said that the efforts of women and their integration in the creation of reality and the reflection of the beautiful are significant and that photography is one that is proof of the success of women in creating a more beautiful and humane world.
The role of photography in modern times is viewed from different angles. Some claims go in the direction of affirmation of the photographic activity as emancipating, among other things, even about the feminine gender. Other claims go in the direction of experiencing the role of photography in the contemporary age as an extended medium for shaping man as a consumer, a visual creature and opens his voyeur nature. Photography as well as other arts in the contemporary era, besides the role of an art print, has a media function and is usually used for communication and transmititing of the message. The applied page of photography reveals the state of all arts in today’s world.
Whatever the role of photography, it was treated as a fine art, as an engaged medium of a capitalist society, or as a contemporary fashion designer, the presence of a woman in the sphere of photography is a strong proof that she is not excluded from the contemporary trends and from their creation or reproduction. Photographing can become a peaceful way for women to present their window to the world and use the photo to send a loud message about how they want the world to look with their whole idealism, utopianism, pain and melancholy because of the actual situation.
