To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring items from the PWP Archives* each day on this blog. In looking back, we see not only where we started, but how far photography, women, and the world have come since 1975.

Desktop publishing didn’t exist in 1975, so the roster for the FIT show Breadth of Vision: Portfolios of Women Photographers had to be mimeographed for distribution.

It was the largest exhibition of its kind at the time, and included photo luminaries like Ruth Orkin, Suzanne Opton, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, and Dianora Niccolini, who would become PWP’s first president.

Dismayed by the lack of press, Dannielle Hayes, one of the organizers, brought exhibitors together at ICP (then on Fifth Avenue) for a quick publicity campaign. Results included an article in the New York Herald Tribune (unfortunately under “Hobbies”), and a plan for the photographers to keep meeting. Women’s Lib was in full swing, and there was tremendous grassroots energy in the arts. Groups long excluded from exhibitions and representation were taking action for themselves. Some of the organizations founded in the 1970s include the A.I.R. Gallery, Soho Photo Gallery, and the Visual Studies Workshop (actually founded in 1969).

 

– Catherine Kirkpatrick

*The PWP Archives were acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library of Emory University

Links to all the 30 For 30 Women’s History Month blogs:

Help Me Please! Hopelessly Waiting…

Exhibition and Anger

Spreading the Word

Early Ads On Paper

Cards and Letters

A Lady, a Truck, a Singing Dog

Women of Vision

A Show of Their Own

Taking It To the Street

Sisters of Sister Cities

Sold!

Education and More

Face of a Changing City

Digital Enabling

Expanding Walls and Other Possibilities

A Wonderful Life–Lady Style

Branding–the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Great Change Sweeps In

PWP Goes Live!

Honoring the Upcoming

Continuity Through Change

Reaching Out

Eye a Woman Naked

Rapidly Multiplying Alternative Options

Women In the World, As Themselves

Kudos!

Friends Who Overcame and Inspired

Reversing the Gaze

Photography and More

Chicks Telling It Like It Is

Looking Back With Thanks