The female faces of photography: masterpieces at Paris Photo - in pictures

Alice Lex-Nerlinger: racing driver, Berlin, 1926

The 26th edition of Paris Photo presents these powerful images by female photographers from different photographic genres and eras. Alice Lex-Nerlinger belonged to the avant-garde of the Weimar Republic, creating socially critical collages and photograms incorporating themes of heroism, man and machine. The Sheroes of Photography exhibition at Kicken Berlin will feature a collection of Lex-Nerlinger's work. The Paris Photo exhibition will run through November 12, 2023.

The Tokyo-based photographer Tokuko Ushioda shot this series called "On the Way to the City," which captures young women coming into the city. Ushioda was honored with the Domon Ken Prize, an award for excellence in photography from the Photographic Society of Japan,''as well as a prize in the home photographer category at the 2018 Higashikawa International Photo Festival.

Genevieve Naylor, originally from New York City, studied photography with Berenice Abbott and later became her student. In 1940, Naylor moved to Brazil, where she captured a virtual day in the life of various sectors of society. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Alex Brodovitch, the art director of Harper'\''s Bazaar magazine, saw Naylor's exhibition and hired her as a fashion and reportage photographer for the magazine.

Pilar Aymeric was born in Barcelona and after several years abroad, she returned to the city to work professionally. She has collaborated with publications such as Serra d'\''Or, Destino, Triunfo, la Calle and El Pais. Most of her work'was published in black and white, in connection with classical journalism. In 2018, the National Museum of Art Reina Sofia acquired part of her archive. In 2021, she was honored with the National Photography Award.

Grete Stern created these photomontages for Idilio, a weekly magazine for women, between 1948 and 1951. The pictures were commissioned to illustrate the "Psychoanalysis Will Help" column. These works made her a well-known collage photographer and were a kind of protest against existing standards in Germany.

Janine Niepce was one of the first journalistic photographers in France. She first worked freelance, then joined the Rapho agency alongside humanist photographers such as Robert Duano and Willy''Roni. She was a distant relative of Nicéphore Niépce, one of the pioneers of photography.

Helen Levitt is considered one of the most influential street photographers of the 20th century. She spent decades documenting local communities in her hometown, capturing daily life in neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side, the Bronx, and Spanish Harlem.

Lottie Rosenfeld held an art action called "A Mile of Crosses on the Pavement" in the courtyard of La Moneda Presidential Palace in Santiago in 1985.

Jill Friedman has followed the New York Police Department arresting burglars, picking up homeless children and breaking down doors. Her work can be seen at the Stephen Bulger Gallery.

Sarah Moon began her career as a model in the 1960s. Since 1968, she has worked as a fashion photographer and cinematographer. Her work has been featured in magazines such as Vogue, Harper'\'\'s Bazaar, Marie-Claire, Life and many others. Moon was awarded the Infinity Award for Applied Photography by the International Center of Photography in 1985 and the Grand Prix de la Photographie Nationale in 1995. She lives and works in Paris.

Ringle and Pete (Grete Stern and Ellen Auerbach) met while studying at the Bauhaus under the renowned photographer, mathematician and philosopher Walter''Peterhans. In 1929, the students opened a photographic studio called ringl + pit, named after their childhood nicknames (Grete - ring, Ellen - pit). The duo created innovative, proto-feminist portraits and commercial assignments, disrupting the traditional German style of the time.

Erna Lendvai-Dirksen originally studied painting at the Kunstakademie Kassel, then learned photography at Lette-Verein in Berlin, where she later opened her own studio in 1913. After that, Lendvai-Dirksen continued to study typological portraiture throughout Germany.

Wendy Iwald is an American photographer and teacher. Iwald has collaborated on photography projects with children, families, women, workers, and teachers. Her projects began as''s documentary studies and turned into explorations of issues of identity and cultural difference. Her work is in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Duke University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

Melissa Shook was an American photographer, videographer, writer, and educator from Massachusetts, best known for her portraits of herself and her family, as well as documentary photography that humanizes marginalized people such as immigrants, the elderly, and the homeless. She has been a pioneer in exploring issues of identity, motherhood, and interracial families, embodying the spirit of creative freedom and embracing uplift''feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.

Barbara Crane was born in Chicago, studied photography in California and earned an art history degree from New York University. She began teaching photography in 1964 and joined the prestigious School of Visual Arts in Chicago in 1967. In this series, Crane focused her lens on local people vacationing at beaches and parks in the spring and summer from 1972 to 1978.

Martine Barrat is a French photographer and videographer. Barrat moved to New York City in 1968 and has worked extensively in the South Bronx and Harlem, including the project "Harlem in My Heart," presented at the International House of Photography. This image was named Life Magazine's photograph of the year.