A short and slightly unusual blog this week as I have been travelling and visiting friends so time has been short. But I thought you might enjoy a book which is an autobiography but tells the writers story through the lives of eight women photographers...and all without a photograph in the entire book!

Sally Mann and Judy Dater

Witney Otto is a writer and artist and a lifelong lover of photography although she is quick to point out, not a photographer herself. She is probably most known for her best selling novel "How to Make an American Quilt" which became a 1995 film with an array of stars including Winona Rider, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn and Kate Nelligan. Two further novels "The Passion Dream Book" and "Now You See Her" were also optioned for films and she has been widely anthologised and has written for many newspapers. Her autobiography is called "Art for the Ladylike" and you'll find some reviews here.

Imogen Cunningham and Madame Yvonne (with a pre-digital camera!!)

Her autobiography takes eight women photographers and reflects elements of their lives (occasionally speculatively) and practice against her own. She employs her feminist perspective to consider the challenges of being an artist of any kind when women also have marriage and children to contend with. I found it both interesting and challenging in parts and thought she had a great analysis of the problems faced by and the contradictions in the lives of women.

Lee Miller (in Hitler's bath) and Grete Stern

Some of the photographers she uses as her muses were familiar to me - Sally Mann, Lee Miller and Imogen Cunningham I knew well. Ruth Orkin (who took many of her photographs from her fifteenth floor New York apartment window whilst bringing up her children) and Grete Stein I had some passing knowledge of. Judy Dater, Tina Modotti (at least as a photographer) and Madame Yvonne were new to me. As there are no photographs within the text I had fun looking them up on the internet. She recalls how she came across the original photographs of these women and how they impacted on her. The book is extremely well researched and covers far more than just her life and those of the women mentioned as men, and their influences and behaviours (good and bad) featured largely alongside them including Man Ray, Edward Weston, Diego Rivera, Ansel Adams and others. She roams her territory with majesty and her digressions illuminate her and her subjects with wonderful details and asides. My favourite features Ruth Orkin at seventeen making a three hundred picture photographic story of riding her bicycle from Los Angeles to New York  to go to the World Fair alone!! 1939!! Imagine!! It took her four months!! That is a 40 hour, nonstop drive of 4500Kms today!! Wonderful...

Ruth Orkin and Tina Modotti

I knew nothing much about Witney Otto before winning a copy of this book by producing a six word story about her based on my scant knowledge. But I am glad I did. "Art for the Ladylike" is available here or on Kindle.