Women Photojournalists

 

Photo by Peter Silverton 

Annie Leibovitz was born in Connecticut in October of 1949. Annie was born into a military family who moved across the country often. At the age of 21, Annie was offered a job as the staff photographer at the Rolling Stones. Two years later, she was promoted to chief photographer there. This was the first time in history that a female was the chief photographer at this magazine.  During this time Annie traveled with the Rolling Stones band internationally where she developed a drug addiction. After 10 years of working up the chains at the Rolling Stones, Annie transferred to Vanity Fair. Many of Annie's most-known pictures are portraits and exposing pictures of celebrities using bright and vivid colors. Annie went through many trials throughout her life both personally and in her career. After going on tour with the Rolling Stones she went through 5 years of addiction to cocaine and rehab before she finally kicked the addiction and well as living through the deaths of both her parents and her life partner. In her personal life in 2009, she was sued for 24 million dollars to pay back a loan she had borrowed from a firm. In her career, Annie has accomplished photographing award-winning portraits of famous people such as the Queen. Annie's black and white portraits are similar to Dee Dwyder's self-portrait in the Authority Collective. While both photographs have different messages overall both somewhat relate to self-expression and self-love. One is a picture Dwyder took of themselves to promote self-love and the picture that Annie takes to show others self-love. 

Photo by Annie Leibovitz

Photo by Annie Leibovitz

Despite working in a male-dominated field, Annie used her gender in a positive way. Annie was able to get the people she was photographing to open up and "reveal" a part of themselves. Annie states, "Oftentimes when you have a male photographer and a female sitter, there is a kind of imbalance of power to start with. What I see in these photos is a leveling of the playing field." Different professions where this ideology could also be true would be like doctors or lawyers. Despite both being male-dominated fields and fields that were once believed that women could not do, women doing these jobs could have different perspectives. Their different perspectives could help many women who feel uneasy reaching out to the opposite gender and could give new insights into career-focused issues. It was not until 1972, that it was legal for all women to attend schooling and not be stopped from certain careers based on gender. 

That still does not mean it was without hardship for women stepping into a male-dominated field. This is similar to the discrimination that Yunghi Kim dealt with. The sarcastic comments made to her regard her skills and the belief that she only received the job and accomplishments because of her gender and race rather than the hard work and dedication she put into her career. And even when women are given the respect they deserve due to their work ethic, they have to deal with much bigger consequences in their personal lives. We see this in Lindsay Addario's career. The photojournalist was kidnapped and while her 3 male counterparts who were also abducted only suffered beating, Addario was sexually assaulted. Despite going through this traumatic event, people still told her that women should not cover war 

Photo by Massican