30 For 30: PWP Goes Live!
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.
1975 was the founding year not only for PWP, but also for Microsoft and Apple Computer. At the time, most people couldn’t imagine how digital technology would change not only the way they took pictures, but the way they lived. In PWP’s earliest days ads, memos, and publications were done on paper. But in 1999, Babs Armour led an effort to create a website that would make the organization accessible from anywhere in the world. The first version of pwponline.org launched in 2000:
- pwponline.org 10/13/2000, courtesy of waybackmachine.org
It featured information about the organization’s history and how to join, plus a directory where each member could upload a single image. It was detailed in a PWP magazine:
- PWP article about the development of its website
The Internet evolved quickly, and around 2008-2009, the PWP website was revised under the supervision of Jackie Neale. It provided a content management system allowing directors to list and edit their own events, featured a rotating “film strip” of member images, as well as an individual portfolio area and, for the first time, a blog:
- pwponline.org 1/24/11, courtesy of waybackmachine.org
The most recent version was developed by a committee led by PWP president, Fredda Gordon, with an assist from former president, Maddi Ring. It features super easy content management, and individual portfolio space where each member can upload 200 images.
- pwponline.org 12/12/15, courtesy of waybackmachine.org
Query letters, like the ones sent to PWP in the 1970s and 80s, belong to the past.
– 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