From Alice to Yva, explore the archive of Historical Heroines and learn about the rich lives and careers of pioneering women photographers. As we continue our mission, our online archives will continue grow.
Researched, written and curated by our volunteers. If you would like to contribute to this valuable resource, sign up to volunteer today.
Florence Vandamm (1883 - 1996) was a portrait photographer who photographed over 2,000 Broadway productions in New York....
Florestine Perrault Collins navigated the social expectations of her race and gender to give visibility to Black women in 1920's New Orleans....
Miss Psyche Altham, photographed by Yevonde, was a woman of great talent and skill, yet the accompanying text frames her only as a charming addition to her fiancé's ennobled family....
The work of Francesca Woodman, and life, is often cast with an air of melancholy. Discover her self-proclaimed "ghost pictures"....
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...
Spirit photography, a cultural phenomenon that swept through 19th-century England. At the heart of this strange and haunting practice was Georgiana Houghton, a figure who, with her delicate balance of spiritual fervour and commercial...
Gerda Taro (1910-1937) first woman war photographers, and the first to die in the line of work....
Germaine Krull was the groundbreaking photographer who influential surrealist Man Ray named his artistic equal...
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....
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