Review: 11 powerhouse female photographers focus of Fernbank exhibit

Bottom line: There's plenty of inspiration for aspiring photojournalists in this show focusing on female photographers that tackles both social issues and the realities of magazine journalism.

Much has been written about the power and control photography affords: to shape the conversation, to advance a point of view. When women are behind the lens, it is a chance to take some of that agency and show a different perspective.

“Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment” at Fernbank Museum of Natural History celebrates the influence some key female photographers have had in shaping the vision of one of the most prestigious venues for a photographer: National Geographic magazine.

Eleven female photographers are afforded a portion of the Fernbank gallery space to feature work that ranges dramatically from absolutely heart-wrenching portraits of human suffering around the globe to lovely travelogues like Beverly Joubert’s up-close and personal photographs of big cats in Africa. Kitra Cahana offers fascinating images of American teenagers at play, getting tongues pierced or beating each other bloody in backyard fight clubs, while Lynsey Addario captures another reality in her image of an 11-year-old Afghanistan girl who has set herself on fire to escape or protest her dire future.

It is often the images of profound injustice and the potential of photography to bring it to light that create the greatest emotional impact. Stephanie Sinclair’s image of little girls in Yemen standing next to 20-something men who could be their fathers but are their husbands illustrates photography’s power to enlighten and effect change. In another powerful image that testifies to the emotional toll of the practice of forced marriage, a young women dressed in bridal finery wails in grief, her head turned up to the sky as she is toted to the altar and marriage to a man she hasn’t chosen.

Undoubtedly influenced by their gender and their experience of the world, many of these women photographers focus on issues unique to women, on forced marriage, sex slavery and sexual violence. An accompanying video features interviews with the photographers in which they talk about their career trajectory and both the difficulty, but also the advantages of being a female photographer. As photographers like Addario have attested, in the Middle East, being female affords access to women who are normally hidden away from male photographers.

One of the most interesting dimensions of this exhibition is the insight it gives into the relationship between editors and photographers in creating work for publication. Two light tables are activated by a hand swipe that allows viewers to hear an editor talk about the merits of that particular photo on view in this exhibition and why it was chosen for publication in National Geographic. It’s a fascinating tutorial on the composition and emotional impact of certain photographs and gives a real sense of the powerful influence these editors have in whittling thousands of images down to a chosen few.

Several of the photographers also offer real insight into the intimacy and frustrations involved in tackling their documentary projects. Photographer Erika Larsen lived for four years among the Sami reindeer herders of Scandinavia to capture her photographs of their unique, tribal lifestyle. In some instances, that degree of intimacy comes with a price. Lynn Johnson, for instance, pursued an in-depth project that required establishing a great deal of trust and access to her subjects: female soldiers raped by other American soldiers. But those photographs ended up on the cutting room floor, never published.

“Women of Vision” shows both photography’s power, but also the many limitations and obstacles photographers themselves face in bringing their work to the public.