Histories of photography long ignored or underrepresented women’s contributions to the medium’s development as both fine and applied art. In truth, women embraced photography from its introduction in 1839. Disrupting longstanding constraints placed on women’s social behavior and roles, these early trailblazers laid the groundwork and served as role models for subsequent generations of artists. This exhibition, drawn from Bank of America’s extensive photography collection, presents more than one hundred images made between 1905 and 2015. Diverse in style, tone, and subject, these images made by women range from spontaneous to composed, detached to empathetic, monumental to intimate. Cindy Sherman, Imogen Cunningham, Carrie Mae Weems, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Bernice Abbott, Tomoko Sawada, Ruth Orkin, Barbara Kruger, and other photographers are included, their work revealing the bold and dynamic ways women have contributed to the development and evolution of the medium.

This exhibition has been loaned through the Bank of America Art in our Communities® program.