What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999

What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843 – 1999, 10×10’s most recent “book-on-photobooks” anthology in its ongoing examination of photobook history, explores photobooks created by women from photography’s beginnings to the dawn of the 21st century.

Presenting a diverse geographic and ethnic selection has been a mandate for the What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843-1999 project from its inception. Photobooks included in the project will interpret the concept of the photobook in the widest sense possible: classic bound books, portfolios, personal albums, unpublished books, zines and scrapbooks. Some of the 258 books documented will be well known publications such as Anna Atkins’ Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843-1853), Germaine Krull’s Métal (1928), Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph (1972), Carrie Mae Weems’ And 22 Million Very Tired and Very Angry People (1992), while other books may be relatively unknown, such as Alice Seeley Harris’ The Camera and the Congo Crime (c. 1906), Varvara Stepanova’s Groznyi smekh. Okna Rosta (1932), Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson’s African Journey (1945), Fina Gomez Revenga’s Fotografías de Fina Gomez Revenga (1954), Eiko Yamazawa’s Far and Near (1962) and Gretta Alegre Sarfaty’s Auto-photos: Série transformações — 1976: Diário de Uma Mulher — 1977 (1978). Also addressed in the project will be the glaring gaps and omissions in current photobook history—in particular the lack of access, support and funding for photobooks by non-western women and women of color.

Contributing Essayists: Mariama Attah, Jörg Colberg, Elizabeth Cronin, Deirdre Donohue, Anthony Hamber, Christine Hult- Lewis, Michiko Kasahara, Paula V. Kupfer, Jeffrey Ladd, Carole Naggar and Tony White.

Contributing Book Description Researchers-Writers: Rose Bishop, María Beatriz H. Carrión, Jesse Dritz, Taylor Fisch, Lauren Graves, Anna Jacobson, Paula V. Kupfer, Ashley McNelis, Katherine Mitchell, Frankie Moutafis, Carole Naggar, Caroline M. Riley and Kelsey Sucena.

What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843-1999 is a follow up project to 10×10 Photobooks’ How We See: Photobooks by Women, which showcased contemporary photobooks by women (2000-2018) and began in 2018 at the New York Public Library with a tour to five other venues.

Editors: Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich
Associate Editors: Dolly Meieran and Jeff Gutterman
Designer: Ayumi Higuchi