Great Women Photographers

Phaidon put 250 women photographers in one book, alphabetical, 200 years, no ranking.

Robert Capa didn't invent Robert Capa. In 1935 a Hungarian refugee named Endre Friedmann and a German photographer named Gerta Pohorylle invented him together — an elusive, wildly successful American photojournalist who'd only speak to editors through his "agent." She sold his prints at a rate no one would pay a stateless freelancer, and a real chunk of the early work sold as Capa's was actually hers, shot on her own camera under her own eye. On July 25, 1937, covering the retreat at Brunete, she was riding the running board of a press car when a Republican tank spun out of control and crushed her against it. She was 26. Friedmann kept the name. Capa became one of the most famous photographers who ever lived. Taro became a footnote in his biography.

Phaidon's new Great Women Photographers is built specifically to undo that kind of math — 250-plus names, two centuries, alphabetical, nobody crowned "the best," every entry with a newly commissioned scholarly text instead of a recycled caption. The cover is Atong Atem's Our Neighbor Was a Witch (2022), a woman floating sideways in a floral dress, printed almost five feet wide — not the safe pick, the right one.

Editor Fiona Rogers puts it more plainly than I would: "greatness" has always just meant who gets remembered. Taro's the reminder of what happens when nobody's keeping score.

Found via This Is Colossal.