Women Photographers in 19th Century Europe: Amateurs and Professionals

For decades, the idea of 19^th-century photography as a bastion of male activity prevailed. That doctrine was based most notably on the belief that women’s low intellectual ability was incompatible with the technical aspects that defined the medium, and explains the ease and speed with which, both at the time and in the following decades, women photographers’ works and even their very existence were depreciated or even entirely erased from the historiography. Even until quite recently, for lack of documentation, women’s practice of photography was thought of as something exceptional rather than a socially recognized practice.

Visible and Invisible Professional Practices 

Yet we know perfectly well that this was not the case. Immediately after the advent of photography, women acquired Daguerreotype equipment. They used that new technical ability both to satisfy their personal desire for creative expression and to fulfill their professional needs. In this way, they participated in creating the photographic language, and their work was shown in the earliest photography exhibits. They also joined European photographic societies right from the start, towards 1855, in France and elsewhere. Louise Leghait (or Le Ghait) (1821-1874), from Belgium and Stéphanie Breton (or Lebreton (1809-1895), from Austria, are both listed in the archives of the Société française de photographie for 1856, heralding the later admission of women members like Louise Laffon (1828-1885), Jane Clifford (1822-1885) and Élisabeth Rodanet (1810-1859).

Depending on their socio-economic status, women photographers developed either a professional or an amateur practice. The first women Daguerreotypists, who plied their trade in an itinerant manner, sometimes went beyond the borders of their home countries. Often single, widows or separated, their status had consequences on their financial situation, while significantly enlarging their freedom to act. Later, technical evolutions in photography distinguished positive and negative images and contributed to the dazzling development of paper photography and its capacity for unlimited reproduction. That process led to new commercial and artistic applications that transformed the general public’s photographic experience, as well the practices of professional photographers, both men and women. Nevertheless, the process of sedentarization brought about by the success of those businesses, which were often located at the top of tall urban buildings, can be seen as one of the factors that wound up shutting women out of the visible practice of photography.

Aristocratic and Provincial Amateur Women Photographers

Some women from traditional, wealthy social circles latched onto amateur photography, integrating it into the private sphere, particularly family life. Due to the everyday aspect of their images, those photographic manifestations tended to remain unknown outside of their own social circles. Some well-born British women from the aristocracy or the wealthy Victorian bourgeoisie, like Lady Clementina Hawarden and the British Dillwyn-Llewelyn family (Theresa Dillwyn (1834-1926), her mother, Emma, and her aunt Mary Dillwyn) are excellent examples of that phenomenon (fig. 2).

While those few examples have highlighted in recent years, they should not blind us to the adventures of the many anonymous women photographers whose work is still unknown to the general public. Even in the provinces, many women – including Geneviève Disdéri (1817-1878), in Brest, and María Chambefort (1840-1893), in Roanne – developed photographic practices, whether professional or amateur.

Women Photographers in Spain: Foreigners and Locals

In Spain, where the level of industrialization was still low in the 19^th century, the bourgeoisie was unlike that of the northern European countries, as was photography’s role in contemporary society. Even in that context, where women’s role in the public sphere was subject to constant cultural and moral negotiation, a significant number still managed to become involved in photography, which became for them a means of both expression and subsistence or, at the very least, of contributing to their families’ finances (fig. 3).

As early as the 1840s, close cultural ties with France also contributed to the arrival of French women Daguerreotypists in cities across Spain, which was seen as something of an Eldorado, thanks to the lack of serious competition. In addition, by migrating, those Frenchwomen also obtained a status that protected them from the scandal associated with their role as working women in their home regions. Some noteworthy examples include “Madama Senges” (1828-1851), “Madama Valpery” (ca. 1842) and the fascinating Marie-Agnès-Anastasie Clemandot “Madama Fritz” (1807-1876), who was active prior to the 1850s in a wide range of Spanish towns and cities. Later, a great number of them would become known as the “wives of” photographers who we come across in establishments like those of Alejandrina Alba (1837-1910) in Madrid; Anaïs Tiffon (1831-1912) in Barcelona (Fernando and Anaïs Napoléon), and Juana Bañón (1836-1876), widow Banet in Cartagena. “Srta. López y Castillo” (Seville), “Antonia Santos” (1831-1905) (Mondoñedo), Primitiva Capistrán Latorre (1841-1872), and “Viuda de Valls” (“the Widow Valls,” Madrid), among many others, are particularly worth mentioning (fig. 4).

Although it is always difficult to talk about self-portrait in the early years of the development of photography, some professional women used every means at their disposal to openly identify themselves as such. The (self)-portraits of Fernanda Pascual (1838-1868) (Infant Sebastian Gabriel Gallery, Madrid) and Jeanne Catherine Esperon (1828-1912) (“Ludovisi y Señora,” Valencia), posing with their cameras and other tools of their trade, provide concrete evidence of that (fig. 5).

So women had an underestimated influence on the technical, commercial and artistic development of 19^th- century photography, in both the professional and private spheres. This is true in the different European nations, offering a parallel to their better-known participation in 20^th-century photographic avant-gardes in the period between the two World Wars. Their integration into those circles was fraught with difficulties nonetheless, due to the sector’s increasing professionalization and to discourse hostile to mixed-sex workplaces brandished by many of their male artist and craftsman colleagues.