Photobooks by Women

For over 30 years, Catherine Opie has captured often overlooked aspects of contemporary American life and culture. One of the most important photographers of her generation, her photographic subjects have included early seminal portraits of the LGTBQ+ community, the architecture of Los Angeles’s freeway system, mansions in Beverly Hills, Midwestern icehouses, high school football players, California surfers, abstract landscapes of National Parks, and the Bel-Air residence of Elizabeth Taylor, among others. In 2018 Opie debuted her first film, The Modernist, a dystopic view of Los Angeles, a city that has figured prominently in her work over the years. Her complex and diverse body of work is political, personal, and highly aesthetic—the formal, conceptual and documentary are always at play.

Melodie McDaniel is a photographer and director fluent in fine art, fashion, and music. Her career has spanned over two decades, helming several exhibitions and countless commercials and print campaigns. As a photographer, she has long prioritized authenticity in her art, often exploring the intersections of different subcultures. The Getty Museum has acquired some of her groundbreaking work.

Russet Lederman is a writer, editor and photobooks’ collector who lives in New York City. She is a co-founder of 10×10 Photobooks and lectures internationally. Her editorial work has received awards from Paris Photo-Aperture, Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, AIGA, Les Rencontres Arles, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her recent publications are What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843-1999 and Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present.

Isotta’s curatorial focus is the cultural history of photographic images as creative narrative tools in albums, photobooks and artists’ books.