#5WomenArtists

(Anna Atkins, British, 1799–1871) Anna Atkins was a dedicated amateur botanist and the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographs. "British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions," a botanical reference book, took Atkins 10 years to complete. All of the book's imagery, and even its text, was created with the cyanotype photographic process. To make a cyanotype, objects such as this fern are placed directly on photographic paper. When exposed to light, the paper reacts and deepens in color, except where the paper’s surface is obscured. Atkins created thousands of cyanotypes in the course of her study of the natural world.

(Berthe Morisot, French, 1841–1895) In 19th-century France, it was unusual for a woman to pursue a career, but Berthe Morisot was born into a prosperous family that encouraged her artistic inclinations. At the age of 20, Morisot became the pupil of acclaimed artist Camille Corot. She met Édouard Manet while they were both copying Old Master paintings at the Louvre, and she would later pose for him. In 1874, Morisot married Édouard's younger brother and fellow painter, Eugène Manet, and the couple had one child, Julie. It is Julie who peers over the fence in this painting. "The Basket Chair" depicts the garden of Morisot and Eugène Manet’s Paris home. The painting is freely worked, with large areas of the canvas remaining exposed, creating an unfinished appearance and evoking the playful naiveté of childhood. Morisot was a central member of the Impressionist group, showing in seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions and hosting regular gatherings at her home of Parisian artists and intellectuals including Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

(Dorothea Lange, American, 1895–1965) Perhaps no other image has shaped our collective memory of the Great Depression like Dorothea Lange’s "Migrant Mother." Lange took this photograph while on assignment for the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) program, formed during the Depression to raise awareness of and provide aid to impoverished farmers. Lange’s photographs were used primarily to illustrate informational publications, including reports to governmental agencies, newspaper stories, and magazine features. She often used money earned from publishing her photographs to support migrant relief efforts. Prior to her work with the FSA, Lange had operated a successful portrait studio in San Francisco. Moved by the plight of those directly impacted by the Depression, she began photographing bread lines and protests in the San Francisco streets, leading her work away from commercial portraiture and into a daring new direction. Today, Lange is considered a pioneer of social-documentary photography who captured moments of intense emotion with a formal power that continues to resonate.

(Vera Lutter, German, born 1960) To capture her mysterious, monumental photographs, Vera Lutter creates enormous pinhole cameras out of darkened rooms, shipping containers, and specially constructed boxes. The exposures can last for days, weeks, or months. Lutter retains the negative form of the resulting image as the final work—a literal reflection of space and time as determined by the immediate visual environment. The subject here is the Piazza San Marco, or St. Mark’s Square, in Venice, Italy. Though this public square is normally bustling with tourists, Lutter’s serene image lacks any traces of life because of the extremely long exposure time: Anything that moved through the frame was not present long enough to appear in the final image. At a time when analog negatives are disappearing from photographic practice and process, Lutter finds new magic in the traditional materials of her medium. Her work was the subject the 2015–16 exhibition "Vera Lutter: Inverted Worlds" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

(Mequitta Ahuja, American, born 1976) Reworking the genre of self-portraiture, Mequitta Ahuja probes the construction of both image and identity. Ahuja’s paintings begin as acts of performative photography: Dressed in elaborate costumes that often reference her African American and South Asian heritage, Ahuja poses herself as triumphant epic heroes, warriors, and other archetypal power figures for the camera. Notable within the composition of "Off the Edge" is the hand-held remote shutter control Ahuja uses to snap the photographs that inspire her richly textured paintings. Although it may not be obvious at first that "Off the Edge" is a self-portrait, the corded shutter control references the reality of the painting’s construction. "Off the Edge" was featured in the 2016 exhibition "Statements: African American Art from the Museum's Collection" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.