Nearly one hundred years ago, in April of 1906, the all-male Camera Club of Hartford held an exhibition entitled Photographs Made Entirely by Women. According to a press release in the Hartford Daily Courant, "This was the first time in the history of 'New Photography' that the women photographers have been invited to hold an exhibition exclusively of their own work.'" This event took place several decades after Anna Atkins made her first cyanotype, yet still, it was considered a groundbreaking event.

Equity has progressed in the past century, but women continue to be underestimated. Since its advent, photography has been a boy's club, and women have stood out as rebels and heroes for infiltrating the clubhouse when neither should exist (neither the clubhouse nor the need for rebellion). We shouldn't be considered heroic for being women photographers, but instead for how we insist on using the medium to tell our stories through our unique female gaze and a nuanced point-of-view. We are heroic, too, because we refuse to underestimate ourselves even when we have been told otherwise, which is the best kind of rebellion of all. 

In every woman I have deeply respected throughout my life, I've witnessed equal amounts of grit and vulnerability. Photography requires both in spades, especially when using film. Like life, film is inherently unpredictable and needs us to be patient and present; it challenges us to reflect on our past choices as we learn through our mistakes. When using film, we need to remain open to various outcomes to see beauty in the mess when things fail miserably. When selecting women for this article, I chose works that spoke to this resiliency––this fierce vulnerability.

I am drawn to work that invites me to participate beyond a mere spectator and allows me to learn something more about the world through the artist's eyes. Whether an image expresses a personal narrative, takes a stand, celebrates the beauty of other women, or finds bliss in the mundane and absurd, I seek connection. These twenty women do this with breathtaking bravery and intellect. Some insert themselves into the image and take back control of the male gaze. Others bend the medium's limits to their will through innovative techniques in multiple exposures, film soup, and experimental darkroom practices. Some of these women have advanced degrees and exhibit worldwide, while some simply found a camera at a garage sale, and from the first click of the shutter, they found their true voice. 

We lift each other up by sharing ourselves and giving space for others to do the same. It was with this in mind that I started Vigilante Darkroom Zine. I strive to be a woman who uses her voice to empower and inspire other women. I believe we can be that soft landing space for each other through collaboration and cooperation instead of comparison and competition. With our cameras to protect us, we can meet ourselves exactly where we are by taking in even the scariest parts of the world in smaller, less terrifying chunks, one frame at a time, together.

~ Shana Cruz-Thompson

20 Women Film Photographers You Need to Know! - 2022 Edition

Artist: Alexandra January | Location: British Columbia, Canada
Link: Instagram

Alexandra January is a self-taught photographer based in British Columbia, Canada. After finding a Pentax K1000 at a garage sale in 2018, she found her voice by shooting self-portraits in her bedroom to express her creativity and work towards self-acceptance and body positivity. Alexandra's ability to read light and transfer warmth and softness to film is what drew me in. I am amazed by her strength and resilience. 

Artist: Anna Lehespalu | Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Link: Instagram

Anna Lehespalu is a photographer, filmmaker, and musician from Tallin, Estonia, whose intuitive work is closely connected to psychology. Her investigative approach seeks to understand the human mind, particularly her own, responding to different surroundings. Her stills are very cinematic and speak universal truths in her own private personal myth. For me, her work leaves space for my own narrative but also leaves me wanting to know what happens next in her world.

Artist: Jordanna Kalman | Location: NY, USA
Links: Website | Instagram

Jordanna Kalman is a New York-based artist whose work speaks to the complexities of womanhood. She explores and expresses themes such as anxiety, loneliness, and individuality and is currently working on a series about the male-dominated history of photography and how it influences her art practice. Each one feels like a performance piece through her incorporation of fungi, flora, and various distressing techniques. If I were you, Id' be like me, and subscribe to her Print of the Month Club. You will not regret it.

Artist: Jennifer Timmer Trail | Location: Portland, Oregon
Links: Website | Instagram

Based in Oregon, Jennifer Timmer Trail is a founding member of Small Talk, a Portland-based collective of female photographic artists, co-owner, and co-curator of the photo-based gallery/project space Strange Paradise (Portland, OR) and creator of the online photography archive Covid Pictures.  Jennifer's expert curation of color stories and subject matter combine to create masterfully curated narratives that feel like they are equal parts diary and myth. Yet, each image stands on its own as a story in and of itself. 

Artist: Carol Golemboski | Location: Lakewood, Colorado
Links: Website | Instagram

Carol Golemboski is an artist and educator living in Lakewood, Colorado, whose work employs alternative and traditional darkroom processes and drawing to create images that seem to defy all conventional darkroom logic as if made by sleight of hand and pure magic. I am drawn to her work because it explores the complexities of the human experience in the most innovative way. For me, her images are like visual riddles; I am pulled in by dynamic visuals but linger to get lost in the details and metaphor.

Artist: Chantal Convertini | Location: Basel, Switzerland
Links: Website | Instagram

Chantal Convertini currently lives in Basel, Switzerland, and has had much success as a commercial freelance photographer working for such brands as Polaroid, Omega, and Bulgari. Her personal work is filled with psychological tension, and I am drawn to the grain and beautiful tones of her black and white images. She shoots with my favorite film, Ilford Delta 3200, the "filmiest" film with all its glorious grain. This textural quality in her images works so well to add to their dreamlike quality. 

Artist: Kay Nowicki | Location: Rochester, New York
Links: Website | Instagram

Kay Nowicki is an experimental photographer and educator based in Rochester, NY. Kay started electrocuting film very soon after discovering she is related to Ben Franklin. She has been using a Wimshurst machine for the past few years to electrocute expired traditional and Ortho Litho films. Kay uses her gift of being a medium to channel energy and intention from spirits beyond the living realm to create these collaborative and dynamic images. Kay's work speaks directly to the inventive and fearless nature of the female spirit.

Artist: Irene Steger | Location: Dolomites, Northern Italy
Link: Instagram

Irene Steger is one of the women I mentioned in my intro that make themselves open to learning through experimentation and trial and error. Based in the Dolomites in Northern Italy, Irene makes incredible collages from her 120mm film prints. She has turned a curiosity about film photography into a passion and career. Her collages are masterfully composed. You can also find her photos printed on leather goods and other soft goods that she sells under the label Sheye. 

Artist: Aliki Braine | Location: London, England
Links: Website | Instagram

Aliki Braine is a photographer, educator, and lecturer who lives and works in London. Her work often involves folding, drawing with ink, punching holes, or overlaying her negatives with adhesive labels to acknowledge the photograph as an object and the image as a construct. I was immediately drawn to the graphic nature of her work and the clever manipulation of the film as an object to enhance its materiality. Brilliant!

Artist: Alyssa Udovitsch | Location: Dallas, Texas
Links: Website | Instagram

Alyssa Udovitsch is a photographer and cinematographer living in Dallas, Texas. Photography is in her blood, as her father was a photographer and taught her how to shoot film in her youth. Her inspiration comes mainly from cinema, and a significant influence is David Lynch. Her ability to elevate the mundane and celebrate the uncanny is what drew me in. Her photos make me want to be her for a day and see things from her perspective. 

Artist: Celina Bailey | Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Links: Website | Instagram

Celina Bailey is a photographer, graphic designer, educator, and social media influencer whose powerful portraits of her two children around their Montreal home take my breath away. Her use of color and how she sees and captures light is masterful. As a mother, I relate to her images in solidarity. There is a vulnerability and resilience required in motherhood that is unparalleled, and Celina's images make me feel like I'm not alone in the heaviness and bliss of it.  

Artist: Erika Nina Suárez | Location: Fort Worth, TX
Links: Website | Instagram

Erika Nina Suárez, based in Fort Worth, Texas, is interested in identity and complex familial dynamics. She documents her family and home life in intimate and beautiful ways, often inserting herself into her narrative through self-portraits that feel curiously investigative as if she is seeing herself for the first time. To me, her work feels very covert, as if she is a private investigator in her own life and I hang on every detail. 

Artist: Iosune de Goñi | Location: Basque Country
Link: Instagram

Iosune de Goñi is a photographer and writer in Basque Country who employs experimental techniques such as film soup and multiple exposures to create images that are at once delicate and mighty. I was immediately taken with the beautiful color palette of her Instagram feed, with neon pastels from film soup and boutique color films. Her double exposures are meticulous, and I get lost in the layers. A fellow Zinester, Iosune co-authors Trenza roja with Ińes Martínez, which mixes photography and poetry to explore illness and friendship.

Artist: Birdee (Jamie Johnson) | Location: Los Angeles, California
Links: Website | Instagram

Jamie Johnson (Birdee) is based in Los Angeles, California, and photographs the female form to examine themes of femininity, strength, and grace, as well as the healing powers of water. She empowers women through immersive (often underwater) portraits to promote self-discovery and self-love. I was drawn to her images for their sense of grace and divine femininity, which prove that we are at our best when empowered. 

Artist: Kathia Vertiz | Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Link: Instagram

Kathia Vertiz is a Mexican photographer based in Mexico City, Mexico. Her work investigates the complexities of sadness, loneliness, love, nostalgia, anxiety, and fear. Kathia's perspective is unique, and her images are gloriously surreal as if they are snapshots from a dream. I discovered Kathia on Instagram through a film hashtag I follow. Every time a photo makes me stop scrolling and take notice, it's most often created by Kathia. Sublime!

Artist: Lena Storjohann | Location: In the countryside, Germany
Links: Website | Instagram

Lena Storjohann is an art therapist and self-taught master of multiple exposure based in the German countryside. In addition to double exposure, she often experiments with in-camera masks, filters, cross-processing, film soup, and collaborative film swaps. I love the rich jewel-tone colors and surreal imagery that cause me to get lost in daydreams in two ways: each image serves as a prompt for mythical narrative and second, I get lost in trying to unravel and piece back together her process. Love!

Artist: Nadzeya Pakhotsina | Location: St. Petersburg, Russia
Link: Instagram

Nadzeya Pkhostisna is based in St. Petersburg, Russia, and began experimenting with alternative darkroom processes in her small home darkroom she built and uses with her husband. Nadzeya believes that "footage on the film is not a moment from the past that has frozen and turned into a memory...but something more when the invisible crosses the boundaries of reality, is refracted, and, gaining meaning, becomes visible. Reality disappears and an image appears." Nadzeya was born to do what she does. Her experimental work is surreal, mesmerizing, ethereal and full of psychological tension. 

Artist: Poochie Collins | Location: Brooklyn, New York
Links: Website | Instagram

Poochie Collins resides Brooklyn and possesses the divine superpower to see and capture the inherent beauty in everyone she photographs. Whether shooting film or digital, she knows the precise moment to press the shutter to capture their true and most powerful selves. It is apparent that she is truly connecting with her subjects in the moment and receives pure joy through empowering the women she photographs. If I got to pick one person in this world to photograph me, it would be Poochie Collins.  

Artist: Rachel Larsen Weaver | Location: Chesapeake Beach, MD
Links: Website | Instagram

Rachel Larsen Weaver is raising her five children on the edges of the Chesapeake Bay, MD. She is one of those photographers who, when I see their work, I think, "I want to be friends with her." This happens because they are so pure and present and authentic in their work that I can see themselves reflected in her subjects. Rachel claims to be committed to pure joy and I believe every ounce of that. Her work is a result of genuine connection and compassion for the human condition. 

Artist: Tarrah Krajnak | Location: Los Angeles, CA
Links: Website | Instagram

Tarrah Krajnak is a Los Angeles based award-winning, and widely exhibited artist whose stunning book, El Jardín De Senderos Que Se Bifurcan , published with DAIS book in May 2021, was shortlisted for the Aperture/Paris Photo First Book Award. I was drawn to Tarrah's work for her thoughtful and performative process in exploring and confronting the male-dominated history of photography.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Shana Cruz-Thompson is an experimental photographer and mixed media artist based in Aurora, Colorado whose work explores nostalgia, grief, loss, and complex familial dynamics. Passionate about community outreach and arts education, she is the Education and Programs Manager at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver, Colorado, and the founder of Project Photo Op, a burgeoning nonprofit that strives to empower youth through photography workshops, mentorships, and exhibitions. As the creator and curator of Vigilante Darkroom Zine, she aims to champion women working in analog, experimental, and alternative photographic processes. Shana holds a BFA in Photography from the University of Colorado Denver and is mom to five incredible sons. 

Connect with Shana Cruz-Thompson on her Website and on Instagram!

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