History is filled with works of art that have survived save one salient point: the name of the person to whom their creation might be attributed. In the 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own, British author Virginia Woolf knowingly surmised, “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
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Even though it wasn’t until the twentieth century that women began to command the political and cultural capital to demand credit where it was due, their contributions are all too often left out of the pantheon alongside their male counterparts. It is only in recent years that mainstream institutions have begun to center those relegated to the margins of history, and in doing so offer new paradigms by which we may reconsider women’s roles in shaping the world.
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The new exhibition, “Underexposed: Women Photographers from the Collection”, in Atlanta, brings together 100 works made over the past century, presents a panoply of perspectives and approaches across a wide array of genres including photojournalism, documentary, portraiture, and advertising. Featuring works by Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Sally Mann, Nan Goldin, Diane Arbus, Zanele Muholi, Sheila Pree Bright, Cindy Sherman, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems, the exhibition explores image making through the female lens.
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