Ask your question by email, via Twitter or as a comment on any post here. AskMe is now a category, so a bit of an archive will build up. This is a link to one we did earlier.
There’s now a slim majority of young women in most UK photography schools, so inevitably the industry itself must start to change.
The reputation of the photography business on the whole, isn’t great.
The freelancer disease is symptomised by hugely long hours, little professional representation, periods of aching isolation, gaps between jobs punctuated by periods of time where commissions all come at once and with the same deadlines.
Liz Kuball came up with this idea, prompted in part by a rather snarky article in the New York Times about gallerinas - young women, ridiculously overqualified, working as gatekeepers, secretaries and whatnot, in the art world.
We’re not gear heads, and neither are we air heads. The reason why so many over-qualified women work in front of house McJobs with no future, is that it’s so very difficult to be taken seriously still, and the kinds of professional support clubs and elites that do exist, tend to be male dominated, competitive and culturally oblique.
And then there’s the creepy guy syndrome which is still pretty much ubiquitous throughout, and overt, which you’d think would make it easier to handle, but instead is misanthropy normalised.
Liz writes: “I didn’t know what I could do to conquer the gallery scene or combat sexism, but I thought maybe we could do something to draw attention to all the women photographers who are generous and helpful and wanting to share their knowledge.”
The buttons above are to display on your blog or website, or go ahead and make your own version. The only condition is that you have to be willing and eager to share your knowledge with other women photographers. Take one in any colour, and link back here so we can make a chain, or to Liz who came up with it all.
Mrs Deane has another analysis of the gallerina syndrome, along with a different version of the button, should you feel the same way. She definitely has a point, but perhaps has the good fortune to work in a more enlightened context than either Liz or I.
So, ask away. Men too, of course!
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