In order to make space for the women photographers of today, we highlight the women who have been obscured over the years and celebrate the strides they made. Find out more in our online archive – researched, written and curated by our volunteers.
Women photographers active at some point between the late 18th Century and the mid-20th Century
Women photographers active at some point between the mid-20th Century and the present day.
As part of its mission, the organisation tracks down, preserves and celebrates archives that might have been forgotten or mislaid, which involves working with numerous estates, from Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first female photojournalist, to Hong Kong photographer Nancy Sheung.
How to buy an Eve Arnold image for only £30 . . . and other initiatives to champion female photographers, The Financial Times
Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870 –1942), Canadian-born American photographer and photojournalist, was the first published female photojournalist in the United States and the first female night photographer. She documented Greenwich Village...
Born in Berlin, Ursula Pariser studied in London at the Reimann School of Art and Design before embarking on an illustrious career as educator and photographer. Whilst head of photography at the Courtauld Institute of Art, she acted...
Alice Austin (1866-1952) was one of the first women to work outside the photographic studio, documenting New York City as well as intimate relationships between Victorian women...
Recognized as a notable LGBTQ+ fashion icon and an accomplished twentieth-century author, Annemarie Schwarzenbach was also a prolific photographer....
Born in 1935, Elisabeth was a prolific photographer. By the time of her death in 2018, she had created a vast collection of images with immense social, political, and aesthetic value....
Dorothy Wilding (1893-1976) was the first woman to be appointed as the Official Royal Photographer...
Mary Rosse also possessed a sense of community and a generosity of spirit. During the Irish famine in 1845, she provided jobs for local people at Birr Castle....
In 2017, Lacy Scott and Knight, an independent and longstanding firm of auctioneers and property valuers, were tasked with carrying out the valuation of items discovered at Thorne Court, just outside of Bury St Edmunds....
My name is Caroline Emily Nevill. I was born on 31st May 1829 as the eldest daughter of Wil-liam Nevill, the 4th Earl of Abergavenny, and Caroline Leeke....
My name is Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. I am a mid-19th century feminist and women's rights activist. I also co-founded the English Woman's Journal in 1858 with my dear friend Bessie Rayner Parkes. Today, I thought of telling you all...
During my time, I witnessed Germany’s last emperor Wilhelm II outline a role for women, which was later adopted by the Nazis: Kirche, Küche, Kinder. This translates as ‘church, kitchen and children’ -- three words that seemed to sum up...
Virginia Oldoïni (1837-1899) was an Italian photographer who rose to the upper echelons of Parisian society and was unabashedly her own muse....
LIFE Magazine offered women photographers the opportunity to take control of their careers with sustainable wages and assignments documenting America after World War 2....
Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971), American photojournalist, war correspondent and Fortune and LIFE magazine photographer who covered events from the Great Depression, through WW2 to the Cold War...
Martha Holmes (1923-2006) was one of LIFE Magazine’s pioneering women photographers of the 1940s and 1950s....
Nina Leen (1914-1995) was one of LIFE Magazine’s pioneering female photographers of the 1940s and 1950s...
Marie Hansen (1918 – 1969) was one of LIFE Magazine’s pioneering female photographers of the 1940s and 1950s....
Explore 10 female photographers who studied at the Bauhaus’s campuses in Dessau and Weimar, before the schools were closed at the onset of the Second World War...
Marianne Brandt (1893-1983) was a celebrated Bauhaus-trained industrial designer, photographer and pioneer of Modernist photomontage. She experimented with the array of imagery available in the new illustrated press to challenge gender...
Gertrud Arndt (1903 – 2000) was a German photographer and weaver trained at the Bauhaus between 1923 and 1927. She is remembered for her pioneering series of self-portraits ‘The Mask Portraits’ from around 1930....
Chinese photojournalist Hou Bo (1924 – 2017) documented the rise of Mao Zedong from 1939 to 1968 in over 400 photographs as the official photographer of The Great Leader. She created most of the iconic images of Mao’s reign but fell...
Polish photojournalist Julia Diament Pirotte (1908 –2000) is known for her work in Marseille during the Second World War, when she documented the French Resistance and life under the occupation from 1940-1945....
Marta Hoepffner (1912–2000) was a German experimental artist and abstract photographer. She was a pioneer of photomontage and the photogram in the 1930s and the kinetic art movement in the 1960s....
Born into a wealthy New York banking family, legendary photographer Antoinette ‘Toni’ Frissell Bacon (1907 – 1988) was introduced to photography in her twenties by her filmmaker brother Varick....
Photographer and volunteer writer Fanny Beckman crosses the Solent to learn more about one of the pioneering women in photography....
During Black History Month, we are paying homage to the Black women photographers who have overcome racial and sexist oppression to leave their mark within the visual arts...
As the first African-American woman hired as a staff photographer for the New York Times, Ruby Washington (1952-2018) was a true pioneer....
For Zofia Rydet (1911-1997), photography was the perfect medium to express all human stories; through her work, she felt that she was capturing the essence of what it meant to be human....
The German-born American artist Evelyn Hofer (1922-2009) is considered one of the foremost female photographers of the ‘New Objectivity’ style....
Volunteer writer Fanny Beckman travels to the home of Lee Miller (1907-1977) to discover how one fateful photograph changed the trajectory of her life and career....
Emma Barton (1872–1938) was an English Pictorialist portrait photographer active between 1899 and the end of WW1 and at the height of her fame she was the most published female photographer of her time....
In 1949 Jane Bown (1925–2014) began working for The Observer newspaper. It was a partnership that would last over 60 years and lead to her photographing the leading political, cultural and royal figures of the day....
After studying under Trude Fleischmann in Vienna, Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990) traveled back to America to document the rural south...
Coming from an intellectual Welsh family who made early strides in science and photography, Thereza Story-Maskelyne (née Dillwyn Llewelyn) (1834-1926) is a true pioneer...
Mary Olive Edis (1876-1955) opened her first studio with sister in Norfolk, UK. She was one of the first women to accepted as a member of the RPS....
Alexandra Boulat (1962-2007) photographed wars from women's perspectives, paving the way for other women in photography to do the same....
Trude Fleischmann (1895 – 1990) was an Austrian-born American photographer, one of a group of young, confident, Jewish, female photographers opening their own studios in Vienna after World War I....
In the first decades of the twentieth century, high-end portrait photography was dominated by women such as Anni Schulz (1897-1943) and Marianne Bergler (Blumberger) (1897-1980), Trude Neumann Geiringer (1890 – 1981) and Dora Horovitz...
Ryu Shima (1823-1900) took what is the earliest known photograph to be created by a Japanese woman in 1864, and it was a wet-plate of Kakoku, her husband....
The Irish-heiress turned mountaineering photographer, Elizabeth Le Blond (1860-1934) has not only been credited by being one of the first people to reach many European summits but also as one of the first female filmmakers....
Often referred to as Canada’s first professional woman photographer, Minna was born in Germany in 1861....
Florence Henri among other Historical Heroines on display in 'Women in Abstraction', at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. On view until August 23, 2021...
One of the premier fashion and portrait photographers of the 20s and 30s in Germany, ‘Yva’ produced elegant fashion portraits, photomontages and advertising work in Berlin from 1925 until the Nazi’s closed her studio. She was killed in...
German photographer Anne Fischer (1914 - 1986) left Germany in 1937 to become a fine portrait photographer and to specialise in dance photography....
Elisabeth Meyer (1899 – 1968) was an early Norwegian photojournalist of the 1920s and 30s who documented her daring trips to Iran and India, as well as the local Sami people of Finnmark in her native Norway....
A prominent member of the Norwegian feminist movement in Horton, Marie Høeg along with partner Bolette Berg, experimented with gender identity and performance....
Grace Robertson OBE (1930 – 2021) was a leading British photojournalist who highlighted the stories of ordinary women....
A pioneer of photography and installation art, Helen Chadwick (1953-1996) was one of the first women to be nominated for the Turner Prize....
A pioneer of black and white photography, Fay Godwin (1931 - 2005) was renowned for her landscapes of the British coastline and countryside....
German photographer Lou Landauer, who was active during the 1930s - 1950s, is recognised today for her photograms of botanical subjects....
For Claude, exploring the limits of male & female identities was not merely a critique of societal gender norms, but rather a highly introspective endeavour...
The exhibition is the second public showcase of street photography by Vivian Maier from the Finnish Museum of Photography...
Maud Sulter was a contemporary fine artist, photographer, poet, educator and curator. Her work explored her Ghanaian heritage....
Olive Cotton was one of the most important 20th century Australian modernist photographers. Based in Cowra, her pioneering work spanned the 1930s and 40s...
Chinese photographer Nancy Sheung was determined to break all the rules and conventions of her time, with unusual means to success....
Legendary photographer Lisa Larsen was one of LIFE’s pioneering female photojournalists. Born in Germany, she moved to the US as a teenager...
Vivian Maier is one of the most prolific and distinctive American photographers of the mid to late twentieth century...
Photojournalist Ruth Orkin was voted one of the Top Ten Women Photographers by the Professional Photographers of America in 1959...
Austrian visual artist and photographer who focused primarily on conceptual art as a form of narrative expression....
Sibylle Bergemann has been hailed as ‘one of the most important German photographers of the last decades’...
Fanny Foster was a British photographer hired to document the 1929-1931 archaeological excavation at the Vinča-Belo Brdo tell in modern-day Serbia...
Over her long career, Jo Spence moved from capturing moments of domestic happiness in commercial photography to works that challenged capitalism and sexism,before focusing on questions of illness and healing as she battled with breast...
Britain’s pioneering female press photographer, Christina Broom, took up photography only in her 40s after her husband became unable to work....
The most famous of the Viennese pre-war photographers was Dora Kallmus, otherwise known as Madame d’Ora...
Mariana Yampolsky is one of Mexico’s most influential and talented photographers. She created art is versatile and multifaceted...
Betti Mautner was born in Vienna in 1892 when the role and significance of photography was being re-evaluated, being seen as an art form...
Gisele Wulfsohn's work was celebrated for highlighting poverty, HIV/AIDS and the apartheid in South Africa....
Ann Cooke is credited as being the first female photographer in Britain to open a professional photographic portrait studio....
Anna Atkins was the first person to create a book made entirely from photographic images and is widely acclaimed for her use of British algae cyanotypes....
Ida Kar was a woman of many origins who became most well-known for her portraits of London artistic circles, becoming the ‘Bohemian Photographer’....
Dorothea Lange was able to run a successful portrait studio in San Francisco during the 1920s during the Great Depression....
Born Laure Meffredy in Paris, photographer Laure Albin-Guillot first opened a portrait studio at her home in Rue du Ranelagh in the 1920s....
Laura Gilpin spent her photography career documenting the Indigenous tribes of the United States, particularly the Navajo and Pueblo tribes....
Possibly the South Kensington Museum’s (V & A) first female Official Museum Photographer....
Serbian-born photographer whose work explored, and was influenced by, Vienna, the heart of the Austrian Empire and a prominent place within the world of art and fashion....
Not only was Homai Vyarawalla India’s first female photojournalist but her career documented the overthrow of British colonial rule...
Jane 'Jennie' Louise Van Der Zee toussaint Welcome was one of the only Black Women filmmakers during the silent movie era....
Exploring Tish Murtha’s lesser known collection London by Night (1983)....
Austrian photographer Inge Morath left Nazi Germany to America to become an editor and then as assistant to Henry Cartier-Bresson....
German photographer Ruth Bernhard studied at the Berlin Academy of Art. In 1927, she relocated to New York to begin a career in commercial photography....
Reproduction of Jo Spence's BA thesis. Written in 1982, this landmark thesis aimed to untangle interconnected gender and class oppressions in historic fairy tales....
From admiring Life magazine to shooting the cover, Esther Bubley was a prolific freelance photographer during the golden age of American documentary photography. Becoming one of the first women to be able to financially support herself...
Palestinian photographer, born in Bethlehem, later moved to Jerusalem, and died in Nazareth.She was unknown to historians or photographers, until 2007....
Best known for photographing the changing face of New York in the 1930s....
Still influencing contemporary photography, nearly fifty years after her death....
American photographer Vera Jackson (1912-1999) was noted for her evocative narrative content within her work....
Pioneering photographer who worked during the 1840s and 1850s, is widely considered to be the earliest female photographer in Wales....
Photographer who rebelled against the homogeneous narrative with which women were typically represented in the public eye....
Gerda Taro has both the distinction of being one of the first female war photographers, and the first to die in the line of work as in 1937....
Polixeni Papapetrou (1960-2018) was an Australian photographer most recognized for her work on historical and contemporary culture....
From being the only woman associated with the Berlin Dada movement to evolving her craft for more than half a decade, Hannah Höch created photomontages that commented on politics, gender roles and popular culture....
Acclaimed Czech filmmaker,Věra Chytilová, known for her surrealist approach to cinema....
Shaped post-War American photography even while under the watchful eye of the FBI...
Camilla Koffler was a pioneer of animal photography. She changed her name to Ylla after finding out that Camilla in Serbian means ‘camel’....
Exploring the reality of living under a totalitarian regime in Communist Romania...
Amelia Elizabeth Guppy was a pioneering photographer often remembered for her adventurous spirit and passion for studying orchids....
Lucia Moholy - now gaining recognition for her contribution to the photography of the Bauhaus...
Norah documented the early years of British suffrage and the ground-breaking work of socialist Sylvia Pankhurst in London’s East End....
Women refugee photographers are put back in the frame in Four Corners' exhibition. Kirtey Verma goes behind the scenes of the recently reopened Another Eye with Four Corners’ Carla Mitchell and co-curator Katy Barron...
With her camera, Tina Modotti presents a distinctive vision of 1920s Mexico. As a Hollywood actress turned Comintern agent, Modotti used photography as an artistic and political outlet....
From model and muse to ground-breaking modern artist, Lee Miller’s biography at times overwhelms her aesthetic achievement....
Compassionate and engaged, Mexican photojournalist Kati Horna introduced a personal and feminine approach to reportage photography...
Hansel Mieth was a German-born photojournalist, most notable for capturing the dire conditions of working-class Americans in the 1930s and 1940s...
Germaine Krull was the groundbreaking photographer who influential surrealist Man Ray named his artistic equal...
Transitioning from fashion model to fashion photographer, Corinne Day proves that the only rule for success is to remain true to your vision...
Constance Stuart Larrabee was remarkable on many levels, from owning her own photography studio to photographing from war zones...
Mary Ellen Mark was a highly esteemed and accredited photographer with a specific interest in capturing 1960s counterculture...
As one of the first successful Mexican women photographers, Lola Álvarez Bravo was celebrated in her nation for her works...
For legendary photographer Gertrude Käsebier (1852–1934), photography was a means to escape an unhappy marriage and become financially independent....
Edinburgh-based Franki Raffles (1955 - 1994) was a social documentarian and feminist photographer who died tragically young....
Lillian Bassman’s (1917-2012) fashion photography appeared on the pages of Harper's Bazaar from the 1940's to the 1960's. Her self-taught, experimental and dreamlike approach brought an elegance to fashion photography and elevated it...
Pioneers of industrial architecture photography, Hilla Becher (1931 - 2015) with partner Bernd, were known for their black and white typology photography....
One half of ringl+pit, Jewish photographer Ellen Auerbach (1906-2004) created surreal images and used photography as a means of independence....
Known as Ya-Haddy Sisi Saye, Khadija was a Gambian-British photographer, celebrated for her extraordinary photographs during her short life, which ended, at the age of 24, in the Grenfell fire of 2017....
Coming from a long line of photographers, German-born Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990) was known for her intimate, dramatic and often experimental portraits in the ‘New Vision’ style of the late 1920s and 30s. After fleeing Hitler’s Germany,...
Ilse Bing (1899–1998) was a German-born inter-war photographer who worked in photojournalism and portraiture in Paris and New York. She worked in the modernist style and innovated using solarisation and night photography. Her work was...
One of America’s foremost street photographers, Helen Levitt captured the energy of the streets of Spanish Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx through her candid, quirkily framed shots of children at play....
Edith Glogau (1898 – 1970) was a student of Madame D’Ora who opened her own Atelier Glogau in Vienna in 1925 when Madame D’Ora went to Paris....
The Bauhaus-trained Austrian designer and artist who was killed in the Holocaust has recently become better known for her painting and art therapy than photography. But in the early 30’s she produced powerful anti-fascist photomontages...
Martine Franck was a Belgian-born/British documentary and portrait photographer who was a member of Magnum Photos for over 32 years...
A true pioneer of photographic practices in the 1800s, she created over 300 photographs in collaboration with her husband....
From assignments for Life and Time Magazine, Gisèle Freund is most well-known for her candid portraits of literary greats and artists...
Florence Henri did not just live through arguably the most exciting period in the history of art – she was at its very frontier...
After being gifted a Kodak Brownie, Eva Besnyö went on to open her own photography studio where she continually adapted her style...
Dora Maar (1907 – 1997) was an acclaimed painter, poet and photographer who was an integral figure in the Surrealist art movement....
E. Lennie is the acronym used by Eliza Lennie (1818 – unknown) who was a successful 19th century business owner and optician in Edinburgh, Scotland...
British photojournalist Penelope Anne (Penny) Tweedie (1940-2011) covered the major political and humanitarian issues of the 60s and 70s with fearless and compassionate images....
Cui Xiuwen (1967 – 2018) was one of China’s leading contemporary artists. Her work looks at femininity, Chinese iconography and motherhood....
Tour our A-Z of Heroines past, as our archives grow we hope to provide a detailed photographer’s profile for each name. Fancy writing a bio that’s missing? Or know a name that should be on the list? Email us at hello@hundredheroines.org
Why not be the first to nominate a historical or legacy Heroine whose name begins with Q?
Ursula Pariser (1917 – 2010)
Texts cost £5 plus one standard rate message. Thank you!
