Featuring more than 120 photographers from over 20 countries, The New Woman Behind the Camera explores the diverse "new" women who embraced photography as a mode of professional and personal expression from the 1920s to the 1950s. The first exhibition to take an international approach to the subject, it examines how women brought their own perspectives to artistic experimentation, studio portraiture, fashion and advertising work, scenes of urban life, ethnography, and photojournalism, profoundly shaping the medium during a time of tremendous social and political change. Work by Lillian Bassman, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Toni Frissell, and Genevieve Naylor, among others, is included.

Two times of modern age. Two chapters of fashion history. Two different visions of sensuality and femininity. Two iconic artists. Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Stephanie Pfriender Stylander are featured at the ongoing exhibition at Staley-Wise Gallery of New York (currently available online and extended through the summer). Stars of magazines over thirty years apart, the works of the two fashion photographers reveals the evolution of elegance from the 40s-50s to the 90s-2000s. “Louise and myself approach fashion photography from opposite directions. Opposites eventually strike each other out which brings you to zero. Zero is our equal and our equal is our behavior.”

Interview by Fiammetta Cesana

NEW YORK, NY.- In this exhibition of fashion photography and portraits, Staley-Wise celebrates the work of two artists whose work appeared in magazines over 30 years apart.

In 1979, a group of women in Santa Rosa marched in a DIY parade holding up a banner that read “Sonoma County Celebrates Women’s History Week”. No one could have foretold that this grassroots initiative, founded in 1978, would become the foundation of a worldwide Women’s History Month.

In the years that followed, the National Women’s History Project was born, just as women’s history made its way into school curriculums across the country. In the 1980s, President Jimmy Carter recognized Women’s History Week, and Bill Clinton recognized Women’s History Month in 1995. This year, there are numerous exhibits across the US that celebrate great female artists. Here are eight of them.

In this exhibition of fashion photography and portraits, Staley-Wise celebrates the work of two artists whose work appeared in magazines over 30 years apart.

Where are all the great women fashion photographers? Ahead of women’s history month in March, one exhibition is looking at two key figures of the female gaze in fashion. Opening March 5, the Staley Wise Gallery in New York features two trailblazing women who broke ground in fashion photography; 2 Women of Style is the name of this two-woman exhibit showcasing the works of Louise Dahl-Wolfe; who shot for Harper’s Bazaar in the 1930s, and Stephanie Pfriender Stylander; a New York photographer who shot Kate Moss in 1991, when she was just 17. Granted, there are countless women fashion photographers who changed the game, from Regina Lelang to Deborah Turbeville and more recently, Ellen von Unwerth. Here, Pfriender Stylander shares her personal history as a photographer, her triumphs, challenges and what she respects most about actors.

Some of Staley-Wise Gallery’s represented artists on Artsy as some of the fashion photographers that defined the genre.