Catherine Kirkpatrick Profiles 30 Contemporary Women Photographers For Women's History Month

March is Women's History Month, and we're looking forward to a great project that one of 3rd Ward's own members will be unveiling throughout the month. Catherine Kirkpatrick will be presenting 30 by 30, a daily series of conversations with thirty contemporary women photographers about other women photographers who inspire them--hosted on the Professional Women Photographers website.

"The photographers range from photojournalists to fine art, fashion and portrait photographers, from age 26 to 99," Kirkpatrick tells us. A new segment will run each day on the PWP blog starting March 1.

"It grew out of a conversation with a museum publications director about how women of the Photo League were much less documented than their male counterparts," says Kirkpatrick. "And working in the Professional Women Photographers' archives I saw how much photography has changed in the past few decades. Opportunities we take for granted now didn't exist 30 to 40 years ago, both for women photographers and for photography as a fine art. So there was a need to acknowledge change, yet honor the pioneering women photographers who came before and were often overlooked."

Kirkpatrick is an accomplished photographer in her own right, and you can check some of her photographs after the jump. "I'm currently working on a portfolio of images using a Diana Camera plastic lens on a Canon 5D," she says. "It's a wonderful blend of high and low tech. The digital SLR provides a large, 16-bit file, and the plastic lens slurs the colors and warps the image in unexpected ways. Since you can't control everything, you have to relax, let go and have fun! Sometimes wonderful images result."

Photographers Gigi Stoll and Flo Fox, who are featured in Kirkpatrick's 30 By 30 series.Photoshelter named Kirkpatrick's article Sgt. Pepper Uncovered, on pioneering women photographers and policewomen in the 1970s, one of their Best Photography Blog Posts of 2011. Her image Train Coming (check it out below) also received an honorable mention in the PWP International Open Call, which was juried by renowned photography Mary Ellen Mark. You can find more of Kirkpatrick's photography and art on her website and more of her writing on Photospire.org.

Train Coming by Catherine Kirkpatrick Overpass by Catherine Kirkpatrick

Clouds by Catherine Kirkpatrick

-- John Ruscher