Rare Merit: Women in Photography in Canada, 1840–1940

“Why women?” In the introduction to Rare Merit: Women in Photography in Canada, 1840–1940, Colleen Skidmore reflects on this question posed by the late American photography historian Naomi Rosenblum, known in photo history classrooms everywhere for her 1984 survey text, A World History of Photography, now in its fifth edition. This question reminds me of Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” which, like Rosenblum’s historical text, has been republished and revised many times over the last fifty years. Nochlin suggests that instead of falling prey to the question’s trap by offering up examples of “great” women artists from history or by conceiving of a different criterion of greatness for women artists all together, we should instead think about why such a question even requires asking in the first place. Nochlin urges her readers to consider the larger structures of inequity at play within the discipline that have marginalized women from achieving the institutional status of greatness. The question “Why women?” in art studies is not a new one, though Skidmore’s Rare Merit is evidence that it remains pressing.