Women Photographers of the Pacific World, 1857-1930

This is the first book to examine the lives and works of women photographers active in the settler colonial nations of the Pacific Rim from 1857-1930. The few histories of women's photography that have been written so far have been confined to developments in Britain, France, Germany and the USA, and have overwhelmingly focused on artistic photography, ignoring the whole area of commercial photography. Taking 12 case studies as representative of the many women who entered the profession between 1857 and 1930, this book deals with both early 20th-century artistic and ethnographic photography in the region and 19th-century commercial photography. In addition to asking how female photographers coped with the pressure of being women in a male-dominated profession, what was new about the techniques and methods they deployed, and the kinds of artistic visions they brought to bear on their subjects, it breaks new ground by asking how they responded as photographers to the on-going decimation and displacement of indigenous peoples as white settlement and capitalism became ever more entrenched across the new world territories of the Pacific Rim, and photography more influenced by the international art movements of Pictorialism and Modernism.

Anne Maxwell is Associate Professor in the English and Theatre Program in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. She has published numerous articles and essays on colonial and postcolonial literature and colonial photography. Her other books are Colonial Photography and Exhibitions (2000), Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics (2008) and Shifting Focus: Colonial Australian Photography, 1860-1920 (2015).

1. Introduction Part One: The First Settler Women Photographers Introduction to Part One 2. Elizabeth Withington, Pioneering Professional 3. Mrs Rudolph's Gallery 4. The Maori Portraits of Elizabeth Pulman Part Two: Women Photographers of the Late Nineteenth Century Introduction to Part Two 5. The Imaginative World of Hannah Maynard 6. The Stylish Portraits of Abigail Cardozo 7. Margaret White's Challenge to Settler Colonialism Part Three: Ethnographic Pictorialists, 1903-1930 Introduction to Part Three 8. Celebrating Racial Hybridity: Caroline Gurrey's Portraits of Hawai'ian Children 9. Laura Adams Armer in Navajo Land 10. Emma Freeman: Between Romance and Ethnography Part Four: The Persistence of Pictorialism Introduction to Part Four 11. The Celebrity Portraits of May and Mina Moore 12. Anne Brigman and the Power of Creativity 13. Una Garlick and the New Zealand Picturesque 14. Conclusion: Histories, Canons and Legacies