The work of six groundbreaking 20th-century female photojournalists will appear at the Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) from May 7 through Sept. 24. The exhibition, “Breaking the Frame: Pioneering Women in Photojournalism,” features 100 photographs documenting the Depression, World War II and migrant workers.
Margaret Bourke-White, Therese Bonney, Olga Lander, Hansel Mieth, Grace Robertson and Esther Bubley compose an international group of women noted for infusing passion and risk into their portraits of life from 1930 to the mid-1950s. MoPA curator Carol McCusker drew on her long-time interest in the subject matter, the women and the era while designing “Breaking the Frame.”
“A lot of us seek comfort levels, and these young women “” they were young at the time “” did not. They felt very strongly about wanting to get the images out there so that people could see for themselves what was happening in the world,” McCusker said of her inspiration. “Their lives informed their photographs.”
The women differ in career paths, backgrounds and fame. Bourke-White accrued the most renown of the bunch as the first female staff photographer at Time-Life.
“I used her as a household name,” McCusker said. “The other five are not well noted.”
Meith also worked for Time-Life, although little is known about this German immigrant. Lander captured the war from her Russian homeland and has never been published in the West.
Bonney and Bubley both took their cameras abroad to capture images, integrating themselves into the lives and culture of the refugees they profiled. Their gender seemed to aid their efforts, not inhibit them.
“These women had access to some subject matter that men would not have easy access to,” McCusker said.
Robertson is the only of the six still alive today and plans to attend the show’s opening.
McCusker searched high and low to collect the relatively obscure images. She began delving into depression and war-era photography after visiting an exhibition about female journalists at the Library of Congress many years ago.
“I wanted to see how many women were really out there,” she said. “Every time I unturn a stone, there’s another little story.”
McCusker narrowed the field by selecting the six women with strong-enough bodies of work to create a powerful show and catalogue. Although the emphasis is on female photographers, McCusker does not bemoan the gender biases or prejudices they may have faced. Instead, she celebrates their successes.
“It’s not about the struggle, it’s mostly to look at what they accomplished,” McCusker said.
Complementary exhibitions, including the first 35-mm photographs, old newsreels, and a showing of recent work by female photojournalists in Iraq and Afghanistan, will accompany the photographs beginning May 14.
A film series will screen a variety of related subjects at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. on four consecutive Thursdays, starting May 18.
Gallery admission is $6 for adults; $4 for students, military and seniors; and free to all on the second Tuesday of each month. For more information, visit www.mopa.org or call (619) 238-7559.