'One Hundred Portraits: Women Artists' – A photographic survey of women artists

In her ground-breaking exhibition, 'One Hundred Portraits: Women Artists,' American fine art photographer Barbara Yoshida presents a fascinating photographic survey of women artists through portraits that reveal a key aspect of each artist’s identity. Since 1990, Yoshida has travelled the world to document more than one hundred women in their studios and homes. Her diverse subjects, who range from art world luminaries to artists starting their careers, work in a variety of styles with no distinction between fine art and craft. Collectively, they can be seen as a community of artists that fearlessly pushes forward the boundaries of art making.

A feminist who believes in collaboration, Yoshida talks with the artists about their work and lives until they fall into natural poses that Yoshida sees as revealing and authentic. Shooting only with natural light, she allows chance elements of the quality of light and the interaction between photographer and subject to record a real encounter. Yoshida seeks out women artists who are unafraid to explore their identity or notions of sexuality. Their art was often dismissed at first as too female or transgressive, only to be hailed later as groundbreaking.

Yoshida employs a 4 x 5 large format camera and black and white film, to add a sense of weight to her portraits. Working in black and white continues the tradition of classic portraiture, painting with light on film in grays, blacks and whites. Yoshida creates space in her images in the way that a painter or sculptor does, through a range of focal lengths, sharpness and softness. Before she begins a session, Yoshida tells her subject that she will allow her to approve the images that can be published. Believing that every woman should have the right to control which of her images is released into the world, Yoshida’s approach frees the artist from concern about misrepresentation, establishes trust, and results in better portraits.

Salena Art Gallery at LIU Brooklyn, presents, the U.S. premiere of 'One Hundred Portraits: Women Artists,' photographs by Barbara Yoshida during Women's History Month.

The exhibition is on view from March 3 - 27, 2015.

(Photographs by Barbara Yoshida)

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