100 Powerful Photographs By 11 Influential Female Photojournalists
Allentown, PA ‐ Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment will open at the Allentown Art Museum on Sunday, January 28, as part of the Museum’s Year of Photography. The exhibition features photographs by 11 award‐winning female photojournalists, including moving depictions of far‐flung cultures, compelling illustrations of conceptual topics such as memory and teenage brain chemistry and arresting images of social issues like child marriage and 21st century slavery.
Women of Vision is organized and traveled by the National Geographic Society. The exhibition underscores National Geographic’s history of documenting the world through photography and its ongoing commitment to supporting photographers as important and innovative storytellers who can make a difference with their work. It was curated by former National Geographic senior photo editor Elizabeth Krist.
“For the last decade, some of our most powerful stories have been produced by a new generation of photojournalists who are women. These women are as different as the places and the subjects they have covered, but they all share the same passion and commitment to storytelling that has come to define National Geographic,” said Kathryn Keane, vice president of National Geographic Exhibitions.
The photographers whose work comprises the exhibition are:
- Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur Fellow Lynsey Addario, widely admired for her conflict coverage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur and the Congo. Featured assignment work includes images that document human rights issues, particularly the plight of women and families in conflict zones.
- Kitra Cahana, who explores important social, anthropological, and spiritual themes. Born in Miami, but raised in Canada and Sweden, Kitra earned her BA in Philosophy from McGill University and her MA in Visual and Media Anthropology from the Freie Universitat in Berlin. She has won a first prize from World Press Photo, a TED Fellowship and the ICP Infinity Award. Her work includes images taken on assignment for NGM’s important feature on the teenage brain and culture in the United States.
- Jodi Cobb, who has worked in over 65 countries and produced 30 NGM stories, including “21st ‐Century Slaves,” which was among the most popular stories in the magazine’s history. Cobb was the only photographer to penetrate the geisha world, which resulted in her Pulitzer Prize‐nominated book, “Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art.” She was also the first photographer to document the hidden lives of the women of Saudi Arabia and among the first to travel across China when it reopened to the West. She has received numerous accolades, including repeated honors from the National Press Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year, and World Press Photo, as well as receiving the 2012 Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. Cobb was also the first woman to be named White House Photographer of the Year.
- Diane Cook, a leading landscape photographer, whose work is in numerous collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, and the L.A. County Museum in Los Angeles. Cook often works collaboratively with her husband Len Jenshel. Their NGM stories have covered New York’s elevated park the High Line, Mount St. Helens, Green Roofs, the Na’Pali Coast of Hawaii, the US‐Mexico border, and Grand Staircase‐Escalante National Monument.
- Carolyn Drake, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Lange Taylor Documentary Prize, a World Press Photo award, and a finalist for the Santa Fe Prize. She has spent years documenting the cultures of Central Asia and life in western China’s Uygur region.
- A Knight Fellow and passionate advocate for visual arts education, Lynn Johnson, who has covered a wide range of assignments for NGM, producing images for 21 stories on subjects including vanishing languages and challenges facing human populations in Africa and Asia. Johnson has also participated in photo camps in Chad, Botswana, and at the Pine Ridge reservation. She has received several awards including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Coverage of the Disadvantaged.
- Beverly Joubert, a National Geographic Explorer‐in‐Residence, filmmaker, photographer and co‐founder of the Big Cats Initiative. Together with her husband, Dereck Joubert, they have been documenting the plight of African wildlife for over 30 years. Her images have appeared in more than 100 magazines worldwide (including NGM), and the Jouberts have co‐authored several books and scientific papers. The Jouberts have produced over 25 television documentaries and a feature film, The Last Lions (2011), which has reached over 350 million people worldwide. These films have received many awards from around the globe including 7 Emmys, a Peabody, Panda Awards and conservation accolades including the World Ecology Award, an induction into the American Academy of Achievement and the Presidential Order of Meritorious for their conservation work in Botswana. In 2011, ’60 Minutes’ (CBS) did a profile on their lives, documenting their film and conservation work in Africa.
- Erika Larsen, who studies cultures with strong ties to nature. She published a 2009 story in NGM on the Sami reindeer herders of Scandinavia, an assignment which grew out of her own documentary work for which she lived and worked within the culture for over 4 years. Larsen received a BFA and MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology and is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a New Jersey State Arts Council Fellowship; Erika’s photography has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and the Sami Ájtte Museum in Sweden.
- Stephanie Sinclair, who’s decade‐long project on child marriage has earned global recognition, including three World Press Photo awards and prestigious exhibitions on Capitol Hill, at the United Nations and at the Whitney Biennial in New York. Scenes from Yemen and from polygamist families in the Fundamentalist Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter‐Day Saints will also be displayed.
- A celebrated figure in the photographic community, Maggie Steber, who has worked in over 62 countries and her images have earned several prestigious honors, including the Leica Medal of Excellence and World Press Photo awards. NGM has published her essays on Miami, the African slave trade, the Cherokee Nation, sleep, soldiers’ letters, Dubai and a story on the science of memory that featured a touching sidebar on Steber’s mother Madje and her struggle with dementia.
- Amy Toensing, who began her prolific career covering the White House and Congress for the New York Times. She has created portraits of unforgettable people around the world while shooting NGM stories in Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, the Jersey Shore, and Tonga. For the past 3 years, she has been documenting Aboriginal Australia for a story that was published in the June 2013 issue of NGM. Toensing is also committed to teaching photography to kids in underserved communities. She has worked with Somali and Sudanese refugees in Maine and Burmese refugees in Baltimore, and recently traveled to Islamabad to teach young Pakistanis.
At 1 p.m. on Sunday, January 28, photographer and pilot Marilyn Bridges marks the opening day of the exhibition with a presentation about her own photography, currently on display in Fuller Gallery. For four decades Bridges has taken to the sky to capture riveting landscapes below. Meet the artist and hear about her passion for photography and flying during a one‐ hour presentation.
Over the next ten weeks the Museum will be the staging point for the conversation and discourse that the photographs ignite. The Women of Vision exhibition also presents the opportunity to recognize the creative power of women artists. The Museum’s Art Ventures programs will present a special series of activities inspired by images from the exhibit. On four Saturdays in February and March, the “Through The Lens: Teen Photography Workshop” series will help teens explore photojournalism and develop their own photographic techniques. Their work will be on exhibit March 18‐25 in the Art Ways galleries. During the March 15 Third Thursday schedule of events at the Museum, the Frame 37 group hosts the “Visual Dialogues” series, a conversation with guest artists Judith Ross, Susan Bank, Lydia Panas, Tracie Van Auken and Sharon Wohlmuth, who will delve into the unique perspective that women bring to the image‐making process. And on March 24, the Museum will host a day‐long symposium of women artists and speakers, guided tours of the exhibit and panel discussions about arts and culture and what it means to be a woman of vision in today’s world.
Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment runs through April 8, with special programs, tours and events. New Geography: Photographs by Marilyn Bridges will be on display through April 29. The Allentown Art Museum is open Wednesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.– 4p.m.; Sunday, noon – 4 p.m.; and Third Thursdays, 11 a.m.–8 p.m.; with free admission every Sunday and Third Thursdays after 4 p.m.
Major support for the presentation of Women of Vision at the Allentown Art Museum has been provided by the Society of the Arts.
Additional sponsorship has been provided by Blink Optical Boutique LLC and Dr. Suzanne Evano Hauck, and myHR Partner and Tina Hamilton.
The exhibition program at the Museum is supported through the generosity of the Harry C. Trexler Trust, Julius and Katheryn Hommer Foundation, The Century Fund, Bernard and Audrey Berman Foundation, Leon C. and June W. Holt Endowment, Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Friends of the Museum.
For more information about the Allentown Art Museum events, programs, the Museum Shop and the Café, check our website or Facebook or follow us on Twitter. If you have a question about our programming email us at askus@allentownartmuseum.org.
About the National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society is a leading nonprofit that invests in bold people and transformative ideas in the fields of exploration, scientific research, storytelling and education. Through our grants and programs, we aspire to create a community of change, advancing key insights about our planet and probing some of the most pressing scientific questions of our time while ensuring that the next generation is armed with geographic knowledge and global understanding. Our goal is measurable impact: furthering exploration and educating people around the world to inspire solutions for the greater good. For more information, visit www.nationalgeographic.org.
Information and image provided to TVL by:
Angela Zanelli
VP Development and Communications
Allentown Art Museum
