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"Don't miss Women of the Photo league"

by Evan Mirapaul

The Women of the Photo League

Fugitive Vision

4/8/2009

The Women of the Photo League is up now at Higher Pictures. Don’t miss it. Gallery owner Kim Bourus has lovingly compiled a show that presents work from the best known members – like Berenice Abbott and Helen Levitt – to unknown and forgotten artists.

From the gallery press release:
Rosalie Gwathmey, who served on the League’s executive committee, remembered that a “real
feeling of equality” prevailed between women and men at the Photo League. However, like
American women in other professions in the 1950s, women who came to photography through
the Photo League often returned to their homes and families. Those who remained
professionals settled for second-class status and much of their work was hidden or lost.While Levitt (who passed away last week at 95), Abbott and Lisette Model are not hidden or lost, artists like Rebecca Lepkoff, Lee Sievan, and Ann Zane Shanks are not exactly household names in the photo community. This exhibit makes a strong case for their talent and accomplishment. The general level of the work on display is astonishingly high. If there were no gallery text, I think many experts would fail to identify which works were by the “famous” photographers.Check it out. It’s unlike anything you’ll see in NYC right now.