Wow. There’s been quite a flood of traffic here over the last few days, but it’s slowing down now. Last week I corresponded a bit with the author of 500 Photographers about some of the issues I mentioned in my recent post about women in photography. He refused my request for permission to quote some of his emails here, saying that he didn’t want to enter the discussion publicly because he doesn’t know enough on the subject and his blog was never intended to engage in that subject. I suppose I could quote him without his permission, but I’d prefer not to.

Still, the correspondence got to me. On the same day, I attended training at work about the requirements of new legislation regarding workplace violence and harassment. The training raised three stories from the last decade(ish) involving workplace violence and harassment. Two of the three stories involved women being harassed by men in positions of power in their workplace while their employers did virtually nothing. Lori Dupont and Theresa Vince. They are horrible stories. When I got home, I got a package in the mail from one of the derby girls I photographed. She had a document on her fridge when I went to her home called Domestic Violence Bill of Rights. She left an abusive relationship three years ago, and she still needs this reminder on her fridge. I asked if I could have a copy of it for my project, and she was happy to oblige. She said, “Every time I think about throwing it out, I put it back on the fridge.” When I opened her envelope the other day, it was the original that she sent, while she kept the copy. So it was a heavy day.

The next day, a friend sent me to this book review. It is worth reading. No doubt the book is worth reading too. I’ll do it when I’m feeling less raw.

Anyways… Friday was my day off, and I was still thinking about women and photography. I decided to do the numbers on resources that I think represent women fairly well. I also want to find out more about how many women are studying and practicing photography, to see how those compare with the people getting shown, but I think that will take more effort. Anyways, I emailed Flak Photo to see if there was an easier way to count the contributors, like a textual list of names or something. As part of the correspondence, I gave him a link to my post, and he decided to broadcast it through his channels. It caught me off guard, because it’s such a rambly and barely coherent piece of writing, but now people are commenting on it and discussing it elsewhere too.

Most of the discussion seems to be happening on Flak Photo’s facebook page and in the comments on the original post. But it’s also happening on flickr here and a little bit on the original thread I referenced. It seems to be dying down now.

I spent a couple hours counting the proportion of women on Flak Photo and Fraction Magazine. They both show photography I like, so it was quite enjoyable. My numbers were off on Fraction, as the editor, David Bram, pointed out in the comments to my post. He got 43 percent. My counting on Flak is probably a bit off too, but it’s a large enough sample size that it’s probably reasonable. On Flak, I went back to Nov. 1, 2009 and counted 211 photographers in total that have been shown since then. 41 percent of them are women.

Also, one of the admins from La Familia Abrazada asked for clarification of my comment that the photos of mine that got in were cheesy or overly sentimental. When I went through the photos that made it in the pool, I realized there were two that made it in that I quite like and think are good photos and not cheesy. But two made it in that I do think are cheesy. Don’t get me wrong, I like them. As pictures of my kid. But not as fine art photography. Anyways… I would share the images, but I don’t want to sidetrack the conversation, which I never really intended to be about my work. Some commenters, particularly on the facebook thread, have gone down that rabit hole, and honestly, I’m fine with the idea of my work being crap. I don’t think it’s all crap, but I’m not convinced that the photos I posted in my post are at all good. I’m still very early in my journey, and I still have a lot to learn. Maybe I would be more concerned about people thinking my work is bad if I was further along in my journey, but I’m not. I guess I just needed to get that bit off my chest.

We live in a sexist world. I was about to get sidetracked into a rant about how thoroughly our society encodes gender in our children despite our best efforts, but thanks to the delete key, I just saved you from it. So I will just say, read this book review.