“How Women Artists in Victorian England Pushed Photography Forward” –Artsy

Earlier, in the 19th century, when photography was considered outside the remit of fine art, women found fertile ground for making their mark in the new medium. “Unlike the gun, the racquet and the oar, the camera offers a field where women can compete with men upon equal terms,” wrote Clarence Moore, rather patronizingly, in an 1893 Cosmopolitan article. Photography didn’t require academic training; in theory, it could be picked up from popular manuals. Overlooked as painters for centuries, women found an art form they could shape—and the result was several bodies of work that feel light-years ahead of photography produced by many men of the same era.