The Female Gaze in Art and Photography

by Selzer, Anita

• ISBN13: 9781761451690
• ISBN10: 1761451693
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-12-13
• Publisher: Heads & Tales

Summary

In the first volume, readers could explore the work of twenty contemporary artists from across the globe. Author and academic Anita Selzer skillfully examined how art can be viewed outside of the male gaze, seen through women’s 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).
Selzer writes with care, sketching biographies of the women artists and photographers, and analyzing their works of art to share with us how they used the female gaze in their creative endeavors. Themes explored in volume one, 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 presents an exciting read to anyone interested in some of the most significant and worthy figures in art.

Author Biography

Anita Selzer is an acclaimed author of fourteen books in adult and children’ s non-fiction. 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 Women’ s 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 women’ s affairs in the Victorian Premier’ s Department as an administrative officer. She has also been a book reviewer for Cambridge University Press and the peer-reviewed journal Gender and Education.