Photojournalism has traditionally been a male-dominated field.
But throughout history, women have made their mark on the industry.
Yunghi Kim is one of them, and she wants to make sure her peers get the recognition they deserve. Especially those who started their career in the film era, before the advent of the digital camera.
“They were courageous. They were fearless,” she said. “And they were trailblazers because they were in a sea of men.”
Kim says there is a “silent generation” of women photojournalists who are often overlooked. Maybe their work was never digitized. Maybe their work is sitting right now in the basements of newspapers, magazines and photo agencies, buried in an archive they can’t access and may never be able to.
So Kim took it upon herself to do something about it. She started a website, Trailblazers of Light, to honor these pioneers of photojournalism.
More than 500 photojournalists are listed on the site, going back to the late 19th century. These women have reported from all over the world, often in war zones and other dangerous places. Many of them broke glass ceilings where they worked and paved the way for future generations.
It’s important that these women, and their contributions, are not forgotten, Kim said.
“It had to be done,” she said. “It was a sense of duty to the women.”
Follow the Trailblazers of Light project on Instagram and Twitter.
Editor’s note: Bernadette Tuazon, CNN’s director of photography, is among the picture editors recognized on the Trailblazers of Light website.
Frances Benjamin Johnston is surrounded by children looking at her camera. Johnston was one of the first-ever female photojournalists, working for the Bain News Service that was founded in New York City in 1898. Her career spanned 60 years and included working in the White House for several administrations. She is also known for her photos of architecture, including historic buildings in the South.
Dickey Chapelle was a war correspondent who traveled across the world covering various conflicts. During World War II, she was embedded with US Marines during the battle of Iwo Jima. She also covered the battle of Okinawa. Chapelle was covering the Vietnam War in 1965 when she was killed by a landmine. She is the first American female war correspondent to have been killed in action.
Lynsey Addario photographs rebels in Sudan’s Darfur region in 2004. Addario has covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in many countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Somalia. Her work in Afghanistan contributed to a Pulitzer Prize that The New York Times won in 2009 for international reporting. Addario has been kidnapped twice while working in war zones. Her memoir, “It’s What I Do,” was a New York Times best-seller.
French war correspondent Isabel Ellsen processes film in a hotel bathroom in Saudi Arabia in 1991. She was there covering the Gulf War. She also covered conflicts in other parts of the world. A book about her experiences was adapted into the movie “Harrison’s Flowers,” which was set in war-torn Yugoslavia.
Homai Vyarawalla was India’s first woman photojournalist. Her images documented her country, notably its struggle for independence, from the 1930s until the ’70s. While working with the British Information Services, she photographed many of her country’s leaders as well as visiting dignitaries. Many of her photos were published under a pseudonuym, Dalda 13. Later in life she was awarded Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award.
Charlotte Brooks stands inside a manhole in this photo from 1957. Brooks was the only female staff photographer at Look, a biweekly American magazine that highlighted general-interest stories from 1937 to 1971. At a time when many women were confined to softer news, Brooks covered the same issues that her male peers were covering, including politics and race.
Stephanie Sinclair has covered human-rights issues around the globe. Her photo series about child marriage inspired her to start the nonprofit Too Young to Wed, which aims to empower girls and end child marriage everywhere. Here, she greets a woman in Kenya whose daughter took part in the Tehani Photo Workshop. The workshop put cameras into the hands of young girls so that they could tell their own story.
Amy Sancetta covered many of the world’s biggest sporting events during her long career with the Associated Press. She shot the Super Bowl, the World Series, the World Cup and the Olympics, just to name a few. But she did more than just sports. She was also the AP’s national enterprise photographer, and her photos of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign were part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning package in 1993.
Heidi Levine is based in Jerusalem and has been on the front lines of many Mideast conflicts over the course of her career. Her work covering the 2014 war in Gaza won her the first-ever Anja Niedringhaus Award for courage in photojournalism. “Some people look at us as adrenaline junkies, but for me and the majority of the colleagues I have known throughout my career, we are simply addicted to making a difference in this world,” she said. “I want my audience to know that, for me, the most important tool I take with me is not my camera, but my heart and my empathy for the people that I have documented.”
Marion Carpenter was one of the first female White House photographers, and she was the first woman to join the White House News Photographers Association. She was also the only woman among the photographers who traveled with US President Harry Truman. A Washington Times-Herald columnist once complained that Carpenter “teased and smiled” her way to get a senator’s picture. Carpenter found the columnist in the Senate cafeteria and threw soup into his face.
Jessie Tarbox Beals was hired by the Buffalo Inquirer in 1901, making her the first woman staff photographer at an American newspaper. She is also known for her work at the World’s Fair in 1904, where she took photos atop ladders and from hot-air balloons. “If one is the possessor of health and strength, a good news instinct … a fair photographic outfit and the ability to hustle, which is the most necessary qualification, one can be a news photographer,” she told a St. Louis newspaper.
Sharon Farmer was the first African-American to be hired as the chief official White House photographer — a position that only 11 people have held since it was created in 1961. Farmer covered President Bill Clinton, who is seen here with his dog Buddy and his cat Socks. Farmer started working in the Clinton White House in 1993, and she was promoted to chief official White House photographer in 1998.
Carol Guzy is covered in mud as she photographs a bread line at a refugee camp in Kukes, Albania, in 1999. Guzy, a former Washington Post photographer, was the first journalist in history to win four Pulitzer Prizes. “Back in the day, there were frequent tales of inequality or worse and female faces were few on photography staffs — especially on international stories. It’s encouraging now when students view past generations as trailblazers and realize these things can no longer deter them,” Guzy said. “I was fortunate to have editors that trusted me but were also hyperfocused on the stories. Most female photojournalists I’ve known early on were quite dedicated and just did the work, which spoke volumes. Our images were our voice.”
Dorothea Lange holds her camera on the roof of a car in the 1930s. She is famous for her photos of people who were hit hard by the Great Depression. “Migrant Mother,” Lange’s photo of laborer Florence Owens Thompson, is one of the era’s most iconic shots. At the time, Lange was working as a photographer for the Resettlement Administration, a government agency looking to raise public awareness about struggling farmers.
Joan E. Biren is seen in the foreground as she photographs the Equal Rights Amendment March in Washington in 1978. Biren, aka JEB, has been documenting the LGBTQ community for decades. “I started photographing at a time when it was almost impossible to find authentic images of lesbians,” she told The New York Times last year. “I wanted my photographs to be seen. I believed they could help build a movement for our liberation.”
Margaret Bourke-White takes a photo atop a New York City building in 1931. She was working for Fortune magazine at the time, and she was the publication’s first staff photographer. Over her career, Bourke-White compiled many more firsts. She was the first woman to be hired as a photojournalist for Life magazine. She was the first professional photographer from the West to be permitted into the Soviet Union. And she was the first female war correspondent credentialed to work in combat zones during World War II.
Ami Vitale, a photographer for National Geographic magazine, wears a panda costume while documenting Chinese facilities dedicated to saving the species. It’s what the workers do there as well, because they don’t want the bears to get too familiar with humans. Vitale has traveled to more than 100 countries during her career, she said, bearing witness to not only violence and conflict but also surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit. In recent years, she has shifted her focus to stories about wildlife and the environment. “Storytelling and photography have the unique ability to transcend all languages and help us understand each other,” she said. “They remind us of our deep connection to all of life that we share this planet with.”
Akili Ramsess, seen here in 1981, is executive director of the National Press Photographers Association. Before that, she held a variety of roles in newsrooms across the country. “As much as I love being behind the camera, I came to see how necessary it was to be a voice in the newsroom as a visual advocate, particularly regarding images of people of color and women,” she said. “In the process of following my path and my passion, it never occurred to me I was a trailblazer. That as an African-American woman, I was treading a path that only a handful had traveled. It was always about telling the story and loving the craft of photography as my tool.”
Karen T. Borchers takes a photo of San Francisco Giants pitcher Dave Dravecky during the 1989 World Series. That was the World Series that was interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake. Borchers was working for the San Jose Mercury News at the time, and the newspaper’s coverage of the quake won a Pulitzer Prize. Borchers worked for the Mercury News from 1982 until her retirement in 2012.
Berenice Abbott is best known for her work on New York City’s transforming streetscapes in the 1930s. She also photographed cultural figures of the early 20th century, and she was committed to illustrating science through photography. “We live in a world made by science,” she wrote in 1939. “There needs to be a friendly interpreter between science and the layman. I believe photography can be this spokesman, as no other form of expression can be.”
Ruth Fremson, a staff photographer for The New York Times, works in Pakistan in 2001. She has covered many international news stories during her career, including the war in Iraq and the second intifada in the Middle East. She also covered the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She has won two Pulitzer Prizes and is now based in Seattle, where she covers the Pacific Northwest as well as national stories.
Michelle Agins, seen here in 1972, became a New York Times photographer in 1989. She has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2001 she and her colleagues won a national reporting Pulitzer for their series “How Race is Lived in America.” She feels a responsibility to help mentor other young women of color who want to become photojournalists. “It’s kind of interesting because I walk into places and it’s: ‘There’s the legend. There’s our unicorn right there.’ Because unicorns are rare, just as black women photojournalists are,” she said.
Mary Ellen Mark, seen here in 2008, was one of the premier documentary photographers of her generation. Her work spanned decades, and her subjects ranged from celebrities to world leaders to those at the fringe of society. She gained prominence in the 1960s and built a reputation as a fearless, globetrotting photographer who brought out the dignity and humanity of her subjects. “Mary Ellen had the unique ability to see inside. She was like a snake charmer of the soul,” friend Kelly Cutrone said after Mark’s death in 2015.
This photo of Callie Shell was taken by future President Barack Obama while Shell covered Obama’s campaign in 2008. For 15 years, Shell took thousands of photos of Obama and his family, chronicling their stratospheric rise to the White House. Shell was also Al Gore’s official photographer during his vice presidency. “It has been a great ride and honor to have seen and photographed all the people and places I have,” Shell said. Her career is now approaching its 40th year. “I have been surrounded by strong and brilliant women as mentors, co-workers, editors and bosses.”
Alexandra Boulat takes photos of Afghan refugees in Pakistan in 2001. The French photojournalist co-founded the VII Photo Agency, and her work appeared in magazines such as National Geographic, Newsweek and Time. Among the stories she covered were the Balkan crisis, the invasion of Iraq and child trafficking in Romania.
Esther Bubley, seen here in 1944, started her career by documenting American life at home during World War II. She then traveled the world during the “golden age” of photojournalism, photographing stories for prominent magazines such as Life and Ladies’ Home Journal. “Bubley approached her assignments with genuine curiosity, creating probing and enduring portrayals of ordinary lives,” according to the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Wendy Maeda photographs the NBA Finals in 1985. She was one of the first Asian-American women to be hired as a full-time photojournalist on a newspaper staff. She covered news, features and sports for The Boston Globe. “She was like a sister to some of us,” Yunghi Kim said.
Mary F. Calvert works on a story about polio while in Nigeria in 2010. “I specialize in underreported and neglected human-rights issues and actively seek out projects about our society’s most marginalized and forgotten people,” she said. One of her recent projects, featured by The New York Times, profiles men who have been sexually assaulted while serving in the US military. She has received several honors for this series, including the Canon Female Photojournalist Award.
Eve Arnold was the first woman to join the prestigious agency Magnum Photos. During her career, she photographed many celebrities and world leaders, including Queen Elizabeth II, Malcolm X, Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford. But she also shined a spotlight on the poor and disenfranchised. “I don’t see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary,” she told the BBC in 1990. “I see them simply as people in front of my lens.”
Sally Soames wears a gas mask in Israel following a missile attack by Iraq in 1991. The British photojournalist worked for The Observer and The Sunday Times newspapers, and her photos also appeared in other publications such as Newsweek and The New York Times. She worked in war zones but also took portraits of world leaders and celebrities such as Andy Warhol, Muhammad Ali and Sean Connery. When she photographed Ali, he told her he had never met a female photographer before.
Lee Miller, center, talks to soldiers during the liberation of Rennes, France, in 1944. She was a model before becoming a fashion and fine-art photographer. During World War II, she was Vogue magazine’s official war photographer in London, and she photographed concentration camps, the London Blitz and the liberation of Paris. She also profiled women during wartime. “Like the women she photographed, Miller was plucky, determined and in possession of a robust sense of humor,” The Guardian’s Rachel Cooke wrote in 2015.
Anja Niedringhaus was a German photojournalist who worked for the Associated Press. She was killed in 2014 while covering Afghanistan’s presidential election. An Afghan police officer opened fire on her and her colleague, Kathy Gannon, while they were waiting inside a car. Gannon survived the attack. “Anja showed a side of Afghanistan that few have ever seen. It’s just a devastating loss,” a colleague told Time magazine. Before Afghanistan, Niedringhaus worked in many conflict zones and spent a decade covering the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Santiago Lyon, who was the AP’s vice president and director of photography, said Niedringhaus “consistently volunteered for the hardest assignments and was remarkably resilient in carrying them out time after time. She truly believed in the need to bear witness.”
Paula Bronstein rides on the back of a motorbike in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1998. Bronstein is based in Asia and has photographed many conflict areas over the past three decades. “Often I try to focus on underreported stories that deal with the human, economic and political issues exposing the silent victims of conflict,” she said. Her acclaimed book “Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear” documents daily life in the country, showing the advances that have been made but also the scars that have been left behind after years of war.
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