The Female Gaze in Art and Photography: Volume 2

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Praise for volume one: Through the work of the artists captured in these pages, selected and discussed by Anita Selzer, we can see and imagine a world in which the female gaze is honoured and nurtured, a world that embraces difference and diversity and in which equity is a given. The Female Gaze in Art and Photography reminds us of how far we have come and that there is still work to do. Professor Barbara Bolt, University of Melbourne

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In the first volume of The Female Gaze in Art and Photography, readers were invited to explore the work of twenty contemporary artists from across the globe. Author and academic Anita Selzer skilfully examined how art can be viewed outside of the male gaze, seen through womens eyes, via a female gaze.

In this volume, Selzer delves into the past to explore artists who are no longer with us but who paved the way for the female gaze. The volume includes artists from across the globe, including Paula Rego (Portugal-Britian), Birgit Jurgenssen (Austria), Claude Cahun (France), Romaine Brooks (Italy), Tamara de Lempicka (Poland), Maria Lassnig (Austria) Elizabeth Catlett (United States) and Sue Ford (Australia). They all used a female gaze in their art to reflect their way of seeing the world.

Expanding on the themes of the first volume, Volume Two emphasises the richness and diversity of the female gaze. Selzer writes with care, sketching biographies of the women artists and photographers, and analysing their works of art to share with us how they used the female gaze in their creative endeavours.

Interestingly, themes explored in volume one of The Female Gaze in Art and Photography like love and loss, the lifecycle of women, motherhood, gender, sexual and racial identity continue to be explored here, along with socially constructed and expected roles of women. This new volume will be a valuable addition to sit alongside the first volume, while also presenting an exciting read to anyone interested in some of the most significant and worthy figures in art history.

Author Bio

Anita Selzer is an acclaimed author of fourteen books in adult and childrens non-fiction, including the first volume of The Female Gaze in Art and Photography. Her interest is in women, gender and culture, and history. She has earned a BA, Dip Ed, Master of Education, PhD in Education and Grad Dip in Womens Studies at universities in Melbourne, and was awarded the Peter Fensham Education Scholarship 1989 at Monash University for her PhD work on gender, history and education. She was also the recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA, now renamed RTP research training program) and the Postgraduate Publication Award for a paper based on her PhD work.

Selzer has been a lecturer in politics and English and worked in womens affairs in the Victorian Premiers Department as an administrative officer. She has also been a book reviewer for Cambridge University Press and the peer-reviewed journal Gender and Education.

Anita Selzers young adult publication, I am Sasha (Penguin, 2018), was shortlisted for the NSW Premiers History Awards in 2019, and is currently being taught in schools. It is about her father, who assumed a female identity and lived that identity as a teenage girl during the Holocaust to survive. A 40-minute movie, Sashas Game, based on this book is currently being produced.

Among her other publications, Selzer wrote a series of books on Australian Sportswomen (Macmillan Education, 2000), which focused largely on Olympian athletes; The Armytages of Como (Halstead Press and National Trust of Australia: Victoria, 2003); Governors Wives in Colonial Australia (National Library of Australia, 2002); and Educating Women in Australia from the Convict Days to the 1920s (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Her recent publication are I am Woman (Shawline, 2020), a memoir focusing on gender issues, and Reclaiming Beauty (Shawline, 2022), which has been nominated for the Elizabeth and Colin Roderick award for 2023.