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.

Though PWP’s Archive is small, it tells of larger things: women coming into photography, photography going digital, the medium rising in the art world. When the group was founded in 1975, few galleries devoted space to photographic work. But as the 80s rolled in, the market took off. In 1983, PWP held an auction at the Images Gallery to raise money. There was no Internet yet, so word was spread through trade publications and paper invitations.

At PWP’s 25th Anniversary Gala Party and Fundraiser at the Swann Galleries in 2000, sponsors included Kodak, Polaroid, and Clone-A-Chrome–companies and technologies that suffered as the digital wave swept in. The world and field were changing very fast.

– 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