How the 'New Woman' blazed a trail of empowerment

How the 'New Woman' blazed a trail of empowerment Ilse Bing Estate The pioneering female photographers who emerged in the early 20th Century were celebrated in their time, then largely erased. "She really did exemplify the New Woman photographer in terms of her life and career," explains Mia Fineman, who organised the presentation of The New Woman Behind the Camera at the Met in New York. National Gallery of Art, Washington In the iconic 1921 portrait of Mariette Pachefor, the photographer Mme d'Ora has used her signature dramatic lighting Germany and Austria offered access to photographic training denied women in most other European countries, and young middle-class women – many of them from liberal Jewish families like Bing's – were attracted to the potential for economic freedom and creative challenge. Dressed in masculine trench coat, breeches and tightly laced knee-high boots, the subject gazes insouciantly up at the lens from underneath a Fedora Madame d'Ora's portrait of the painter and illustrator Mariette Pachhofer has become a particularly iconic image of the androgynous and sexually liberated New Woman. Courtesy Tsuneko Sasamoto/ Japan Professional Photographers Society Tsuneko Sasamoto's stunning images captured the post-war mood on the streets of Tokyo Despite differences in nationality, race and class, "the New Woman embodied fairly universal concepts of the desire for greater social and political rights, greater ability to make life choices and to think about working outside the home and whether or not to marry and have children," says Nelson.