Book of the Week #5

Recollections: Ten Women of Photography by Margaretta K. Mitchell (New York: Viking Press, A Studio Book, 1979)

When it was published in 1979 this book, and the exhibit it was a companion to, was looking at the work of photographers whose place in the history of 20th century American photography was still to be adequately understood. (to paraphrase the introduction). Brief profiles, based on interviews, of ten American photographers provide insights into what brought them to create the work they did and the book includes reproductions of several of each woman's works.

"Aside from gender, their only tie to one another is that of age: all these photographers were born around the turn of the century. Their work reflects a panorama of life experience and more than seventy-five years of photographic history. Their generation lived through drastic social change and observed extremes in social mores, ethical values, and the definition of good taste in art as well as life. The world they knew as children was abruptly upended by World War I and their adult lives were disrupted by World War II. Seen as a group, their photographs form a bridge of perceptions moving through these shifts in style." (p. 8)

Among the women profiled here is Lotte Jacobi, a photographer who championed fine art photography and who made her home in New Hampshire in 1955. She was active in local political causes as well as artistic ones. Ms. Jacobi's work, as well as that of her sister, is part of an exhibit, A New Vision: Modernist Photography, opening at the Currier Museum this week and running through mid-May 2012.