PDF - Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

A WOMAN’S
WORLD
Female photographers on assignment for National
Geographic are a visual force, connecting the world
to some of the most powerful narratives of the last
decade, often with stories only they can tell.
BY BARBARA KLEIN
ike slices of meat from the deli counter, cross sections of
a pair of brains are placed on a table in a University of
California, Los Angeles, medical facility. It’s just what
Maggie Steber ordered. On assignment for National
Geographic, the photographer’s task was to document the
science of recall and the tragedy of memory loss. A sidebar
to the story included a collage of images of her mother and
only parent, Madje Steber, who ultimately died from
Alzheimer’s disease, along with intimate portraits of others
suffering from vanishing memories.
Steber spent nearly an entire day photographing those
“memory boxes,” as she calls them. She built a small set and
methodically experimented with the lighting. In the end, she
created a simple yet startling image showing the disease-free
specimen with its temporal lobes intact next to a diseaseriddled brain with gaping holes where the lobes once existed.
“Now you can understand what happens with Alzheimer’s,”
says Steber.
Providing that visual clarity, a gateway to better understanding both our interior and exterior worlds, is perhaps
what best defines National Geographic.
It should come as no surprise then that in 2013, when
the National Geographic Society was preparing to celebrate
125 years, the powers that be—in this case Kathryn Keane,
vice president of exhibitions at the National Geographic
Museum, and Elizabeth Cheng Krist, senior photo editor
at the magazine—decided to create a traveling photography
exhibit. In an effort to narrow the focus, they established a
few guidelines, most notably to concentrate on the first
decade of this new millennium.
After reviewing thousands of images, Keane and Krist
realized that many of the most moving images just happened to be created by women. More specifically, 11
women. In addition to Steber, the list includes Lynsey
Addario, Kitra Cahana, Jodi Cobb, Diane Cook, Carolyn
Drake, Lynn Johnson, Beverly Joubert, Erika Larsen,
Stephanie Sinclair, and Amy Toensing.
L
(continued)
Nujood Ali stunned the world in 2008 by obtaining a divorce at
age 10 in Yemen, striking a blow against forced marriage.
PHOTO: STEPHANIE SINCLAIR/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
26
CARNEGIE
•
FALL 2016
CARNEGIE
•
FALL 2016
27
Getting her tongue pierced was “exciting and scary” says a teen who succumbed to pressure from her best friend.
“Some felt that being a
woman was an advantage,
while some felt it made
them more vulnerable.
The truth is they are all
very brave.”
- ELIZABETH CHENG KRIST, CURATOR, WOMEN OF VISION
And so, Women of Vision: National
Geographic Photographers on Assignment was
born. After touring the country for three years,
the show will make its final stop at Carnegie
Museum of Natural History, September 22,
2016, through January 8, 2017.
“I don’t usually notice if an image is shot
by a man or a woman,” says Krist, who
worked at National Geographic for 21 years
and edited some four million images. In
fact, the general consensus is that the pictures themselves—the composition and
lighting—do not betray the gender of the
shooter. However, gender may impact how
a photographer is perceived in different parts
of the world and how she perceives the
world around her.
“Some felt that being a woman was an
advantage, while some felt it made them
more vulnerable,” says Krist, who also served
as the show’s curator. “The truth is they are
all very brave.”
ODD WOMAN OUT
For Jodi Cobb, her credentials as a woman
ultimately helped shape some of her most
acclaimed work. But throughout her career,
including her stint as a National Geographic
staff photographer—notably, one of only
four in the magazine’s history—she was
always the odd woman out.
28
CARNEGIE
•
FALL 2016
PHOTO: KITRA CAHANA/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
“I found myself doing all these ridiculous, macho things,” says Cobb, who was
among the first female photographers
almost everywhere she worked early in her
career, including National Geographic.
“Then came the Saudi Arabia story.”
This 1987 assignment called for her to
document the seemingly opaque lives of
Saudi Arabian women. Cobb was able to
gain unprecedented access no man would
ever be granted. The results were a revelation, both in terms of the images she
brought home and the new-found freedom
she took with her.
“That’s when I discovered I love these
kind of stories about women’s issues,” she
says. “This is my niche.”
Cobb has since held up a light to other
veiled institutions, including the 21st-century
enslavement of women in diamond mines,
factories, tomato fields, brothels, and brickyards around the world. She was also the first
photographer granted unprecedented access
to the beautiful, and sometimes tragic, lives
of the Japanese geisha community.
One of her images featured inWomen
of Vision depicts women in Chennai,
India, laboring to pay off loans that in
reality will be passed on to their daughters
and granddaughters.
“The ‘brick lady’ is one of the photographs
that means the most to me,” Cobb says. “You
can see the weight of the bricks on her head
and the stoicism in her face.”
Access is one thing, making sure you blend
into the scenery, especially when carrying a
camera, is another. “Of course, just being an
American I stick out like a sore thumb,” notes
Amy Toensing.
As an American woman and a photographer,
she brings new meaning to the phrase dressing
for success. “I have to make sure I’m respectful
in what I’m wearing. Being a photographer is
really physical, so I spend a lot of time thinking
about how to dress,” Toensing explains.
“Packing is very stressful.”
But once those bags are packed, she’s able to
truly immerse herself in new places—a village
in Egypt, the jam-packed Jersey Shore, an
Aboriginal camp in Australia—and learn something about the people who live there.
“It’s a dance,” she says, “and we both have to
show up. I need my subjects to be a part of it,
but I also have to get out of their way.”
In her image of colorful dresses hanging on
a clothesline in the mountains of central Puerto
Rico, Toensing presents a puzzle of sorts. Just
where are the little girls to whom these dresses
belong? “When you leave something out,” she
says, “it allows the viewer to imagine and make
connections. It’s more intimate.”
PHOTO: JODI COBB/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
AGENTS OF CHANGE
Intimate also describes Steber’s work. “Even in
terrible situations,” she says, “we find tender
moments.” For the past 30 years, she has covered Haiti during times of conflict, disaster,
and grace. She has feared for her own life and
celebrated the lives of others.
“In the midst of all this chaos and hell on
earth,” Steber says, “I can suddenly see a little
girl with a new red ribbon in her hair. I can
see hope.
“The Haitians are so brave,” she adds.
“They have taught me how to be brave.”
It’s a lesson that helped her navigate her
own perilous journey—her mother’s battle with
Alzheimer’s disease. At first, Steber took photos
of her mother just for herself, to create new
memories. Then came her assignment from
National Geographic.
The brain image selected for Women of
Vision is different from the one that appeared in
the science of memory story in the magazine.
PHOTO: AMY TOENSING/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
(continued)
From the top: A family trapped by exorbitant loans
hauling handmade bricks in Chennai, India, in 2002;
a clothesline in Utuado, a lush mountainous region
in central Puerto Rico; and Madje Steber, mother of
photographer Maggie Steber, during her final years
suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
PHOTO: MAGGIE STEBER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
CARNEGIE
•
FALL 2016
29
An early morning at an evaporating pond in Chobe National Park in northern Botswana. Below: A lively gathering
spot for customers, this beauty shop is a rare example of a woman owning a business in Zambia.
PHOTO: BEVERLY JOUBERT/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
PHOTO: LYNN JOHNSON/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
30
CARNEGIE
•
FALL 2016
MARK THEISSEN/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
All 11 photographers will come together for a panel discussion at the museum on September 22. They are: Erika Larsen, Kitra Cahana, Jodi Cobb, Amy Toensing,
Carolyn Drake, Beverly Joubert, Stephanie Sinclair, Diane Cook, Lynn Johnson, Maggie Steber, and Lynsey Addario.
“We use photography to illuminate our world, and that can lead to changing it.” - LYNN JOHNSON
“When the doctor came in to collect the brain
slices, I thought, ‘Now, this looks dark and
Hannibal Lecter-like,’” Steber recalls. In that
moment, she decided to incorporate the doctor’s hands, sheathed in bright-blue latex
gloves, so the image “became less about the
brain and more about the mystery.”
While working on this story, Steber found
herself confronting the biggest mystery of all.
“You can run from this end-of-life experience
or you can face it and be a warrior,” she says.
“The photographs helped me become a warrior
in my mother’s death.”
“A photograph can impact someone on
a very deep level and move them to action,”
says photographer Lynn Johnson, who lives
in Pittsburgh. “I do feel the weight of that; it’s
not overwhelming but it does feel important.”
So important that sometimes she prefers to
picture the world in stark black and white.
“National Geographic doesn’t want you to shoot
in black and white,” the former Pittsburgh Press
photographer says, “but I’ve proposed it as an
aesthetic solution.”
In her image, Conversation and Culture,
she paints a joyful yet muted scene of customers gathered in a beauty shop, one of the
few woman-owned businesses in Zambia.
“With black and white images,” Johnson says,
“you look at the content rather than the postcard color or the home décor elements. It’s all
about the substance, the moment, the light—
the content.”
The search for that content is not for the
faint of heart. Johnson and her camera have
been unflinching in the presence of disease
(monkeypox victims in parts of Africa), devastating injuries (children wounded by land mines
in Cambodia), and despair (women who were
sexually assaulted while serving in the United
States military and are now suffering from
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder).
Lynsey Addario, a seasoned conflict
photojournalist with more than a decade
of experience in the Middle East, has been
kidnapped twice. First in 2004 and again in
2011, when she was one of four journalists
from The New York Times held hostage in
Libya by pro-Qaddafi forces.
When asked why she first chose to cover
war, Addario told NPR, “I was interested in
how women were living under the Taliban,
for example. So it was really the story that
brought me to these places, and if they happen to be in a war zone then so be it. Or if
injustices against women or hardships were a
byproduct of war—or many years of war—
then that’s what I was interested in covering.
… And at some point, people started calling
me a war photographer. And it was very confusing to me because I actually didn’t ever
think of myself as that.”
It’s a deep commitment to storytelling, says
Johnson. “We all work on complex stories in
volatile situations. Each of us is so committed,” she says. “That’s our common bond.”
Another bond that unites these storytellers: their fundamental belief that by
putting the world’s humanity (and inhumanity) on display, something might happen.
Something good. Maybe a conversation.
An outcry. A change.
“We use photography to illuminate our
world,” Johnson says, “and that can lead to
changing it.”
The exhibition’s 100-plus images will be
arranged so that each photographer has her
own gallery. This approach, Cobb says, allows
visitors to “see the totality of the vision of
the photographer, to see how her style and
aesthetic vision work together.”
Still, each photograph must also be able
to stand on its own. “We wanted every single
image to be informational and incredibly
visually striking,” Krist says. “We had the
luxury of picking only the best.”
And because the prints are so large,
Steber says, “You meld or melt into them;
it’s a richer experience than looking at them
in the magazine.”
“It increases the power of the experience,”
adds Johnson. “It’s a portal or invitation into
a different way of thinking and seeing.”
That invitation is far ranging—from
cityscapes, a Sami village in Sweden, and
Texas teenagers to leopards in the wilds of
Africa, the plight of child brides, and the
resurgence of Shamanism. Often it reflects
years dedicated to a single place or topic.
What you will see are 11 distinct points
of view. “There is an incredible breath of
vision,” Toensing says.
“It’s a broad brush in terms of style and
subjects,” Steber says.
“We are all women, but we are dramatically different individuals,” Cobb notes.
The exhibition makes clear there is no
ubiquitous definition of a woman photographer. But if it had an overarching goal,
it could be to set the next generation of
photographers in motion.
“I hope people realize how photography
can elevate our understanding and emotional
intelligence,” Krist says. “I would love to
think that someone could come to the show
and feel inspired.” 
Women of Vision is organized and traveled by the
National Geographic Society. The PNC Financial
Services Group, Inc. (NYSE: PNC) is the Presenting
National Tour Sponsor for Women of Vision.
CARNEGIE
•
FALL 2016
31