The female photography touch

Out on the street I've become aware of increasing numbers of women with cameras around their necks.

Not the handbag-sized point-and-shoot but Big Metal; serious photography-geek instruments. These are not professionals but enthusiasts, women who wield good kit with skill and pleasure.

Last Friday the Photographers' Gallery began exhibiting The Family and The Land by Sally Mann, in her first London exhibition. Works by big female names such as Nan Goldin and Alison Jackson show at Tate Modern's Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera until October, and this month Purdy Hicks gallery hosts Voices of the Vivaris from Tessa Traeger.

Work by London-based Hannah Starkey exploring "everyday experiences and observations of inner-city life from a female perspective" is also exhibiting at Maureen Paley London until July 18 and Jane Hilton's Dead Eagle Trail, a study of cowboys, has just finished at east London's Host gallery.

Alex Prager's exhibition is proving a success at the Michael Hoppen gallery, and across the pond, MOMA in New York is showing Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography. Such exhibitions are bringing female photography into pin-sharp focus — and they are pulling amateurs into the frame with them.

Of course women photographers are nothing new — Jane Bown (b 1925), working for years for The Observer, is legendary, and the MOMA show features the British photographers Anna Atkins
(b 1799) and Julia Margaret Cameron
(b 1815). Dorothea Lange (b 1885), Margaret Bourke-White (b 1904) and Lee Miller (b 1907) are also known far and wide.

The difference now is that thousands more regular women are making photography their own. "Women photographers seem more confident, more able," says Rhonda Wilson, of photography development agency Rhubarb Rhubarb. "In the past 10 years we have seen the number of women attending our annual International Review increase, and with a much higher standard of work."

But it's not just among the professionals that this is taking place. "We've noticed many more female camera users," says Richard, the manager of Apperture camera shop near the British Museum. "It started about two years ago and most are enthusiasts rather than professionals."

"Once you had to be a particular class to own a camera and studio, and analogue film was expensive," says Camilla Brown, London organiser of the Sally Mann show.

"For women, that meant a time commitment that didn't necessarily fit in with raising a family. More women over 50 are picking up their cameras, creating superb work and having exhibitions. There's also a preponderance of women graduating and securing commissions through their degree shows."