Women photographers helping women photographers

I’m one of the 1,313 people who submitted two photos to APE’s Flickr group. My background with editorial photography pretty much consists of admiring the photographs in my favorite magazines, but I’d really love to push myself in new directions, including editorial, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. So I narrowed my images to ten and then I was lost. I knew I wanted to submit one portrait and one landscape or architectural shot, but I couldn’t figure out how to pair them up in a way that would make sense. In my head, they were different projects so how would it work to include one of my portraits with one of my In Store photos?

Jennifer Loeber to the rescue. Jennifer is a photo editor besides being a great photographer, and I ran the ten photos by her and asked her what she thought. In a few minutes, she came up with three pairings of images that looked like they belonged together. This weekend, I’m pulling together my book. With what Jennifer showed me, I’m in a much better place.

All this is by way of introducing this concept: Women photographers helping women photographers. Don’t get me wrong: Men are great. Hey, some of my best friends are men. But face it, women are confronted with an art world (not to mention a non-art world) with lower wages, sexist attitudes, etc. And too often, far too often, we’re our own worst enemies by being territorial or possessive, sniping about each other, feeling all competitive and unwilling to share the information and connections we have.

This is completely the opposite of my experience, by the way. I’ve asked numerous women photographers for opinions, advice, suggestions, and every one of them has been generous. I know, though, that I’ve been lucky, and this isn’t always the case.

Cara Phillips posted Friday about the recent New York Times article on gallerinas, and about women and photography in general. (If you haven’t read her post yet, check it out here. It’s a must-read.) She e-mailed some of her fellow female photographers and bloggers and asked for their input, wanting to get a dialog going about all this. I didn’t know what I could do to conquer the Chelsea 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. I remembered those signs in the windows of some of the houses in my neighborhood when I was a kid, the ones that meant, “This is a safe house,” so that if you were walking home from school and some creep tried to grab you, you could run to the house with the sign in the window and know you’d be okay.

So I came up with the following badges, with input from Amy Elkins (who said my original color of pink did not equal girls and could we please have something else—the black, gray, green, blue, and orange look cool, and you have her to thank for the idea to move beyond pink) and Cara Phillips (who recommended tweaking the wording and made it much, much better). The idea is that, when you see one of these badges on someone’s site, you know that you’re free to e-mail her and you’ll be met with warmth and enthusiasm and a helping hand.

So here’s how it works: If you’re a woman and a photographer and you’re interested in helping other women photographers, right-click any or all of these files and save them to your own computer. Then upload them to your blog or Web site. The only rule: You have to be willing and eager to share your knowledge with other women photographers.

And if you’re thinking, “But I’m not an expert—what do I know?”, wipe that thought out of your mind. You know things, baby. And you’ve got answers.

P.S. If you want to create your own badge instead, go for it! This isn’t an official organization with a copyrighted logo. This is just women connecting with other women—and the more voices, the better!