WOMEN IN PHOTOJOURNALISM

The National Press Photographers Association will hold the annual Women in Photojournalism Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 10, 2009. The conference theme is Celebrating Our Past, Looking Forward Toward the Future. On the occasion of its twentieth meeting, the conference will feature the history of women in photojournalism and include a juried exhibition, workshops, and critiques. Additional information is available here.

Photograph of Margaret Bourke-White by Margaret Bourke-White, Life Magazine, 1943.

(Those readers who still hold their noses when confronted with Margaret Bourke-White’s photography (much less her self-promotion) would do well to read John Stomber’s essay, “A Genealogy of Orthodox Photography,” in Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain, ed. Mark Reinhardt, Holly Edwards, and Erina Dubanne. If nothing else, the smear job done by James Agee and Walker Evans was an exercise in hypocrisy on a grand scale, and there is reason to look at any image anew rather than through the lens they crafted.)