Celebrating International Women's Day 2021

Today we would like to celebrate women's contribution to history and art. The text and images below are courtesy of the author and art historian, P.L.Henderson who after gaining a BA in the subject of Art History began a ten-year study into the area of women artists, resulting in the creation of the successful social media project @womensart1.1 Images are copyright to the respective owners.

Photographer Lee Miller, below was a member of the London War Correspondents Corps, joined the Allied forces during the liberation of Western Europe in 1944.

Photographer Lee Miller - Image by D.Sherman, 1945

Below, Evelyn Dunbar, who was commissioned to record the work of land girls - a woman farmworker doing work to replace a man absent in military service.

Singling Turnips, Evelyn Dunbar, 1943

English wood engraver, printmaker and sculptor Gertrude Hermes is represented below with 'Through the Windscreen', 1929.

Through the Windscreen, 1929 by Gertrude Hermes, 

One of the first self-portraits in Western art was done by Catharina van Hemessen, Self Portrait in 1548.

Catharina van Hemessen, Self Portrait 1548, 

'Williamina Fleming (standing) supervises the team of (underpaid) women “computers” at the Harvard College Observatory as they help map the universe – one star at a time' US, 1875. (via Smithsonian Insider)

Women "computers", Harvard College Obs.

The Chipko Movement, 1970s-Indian, mainly women, activists who protected local forests from deforestation, a model for ecofeminist activism and environmental movements globally. Where the term 'tree huggers' began.

The Chipko Movement,1970s - India - Photographer unknown

“The visual life is an enormous undertaking. . . . I have only touched it with this wonderful democratic instrument, the camera . . .”
Dorothea Lange - Photographer

Berenice Abbott, Pennsylvania Station, New York, 1936
Yemini artist Boushra Almutawakel, What if, 2008

Artist Marta Minujín's monumental replica of the Greek Parthenon created with 100,000 copies of banned books, to symbolizes the resistance to political repression and to promote free speech.

Artist Marta Minujín

Footnotes
1.https://twitter.com/womensart1?s=11