Against The Odds: Women Pioneers in The First Hundred Years Of Photography

It's hard to believe that a woman like Elizabeth Ellen Roberts had time to take hundreds of stunning panoramic photographs of the American prairie in the early 1900s, considering that she was a mother with a full-time job as North Dakota's first female game warden. But Roberts is just one of many exceptional photographers profiled by Martin W. Sandler in Against the Odds: Women Pioneers in the First Hundred Years of Photography. This generously illustrated book, which deals with such subjects as portraiture, images of Native Americans, landscape, and documentary and experimental photography, is written in an easygoing style reminiscent of a TV documentary--in fact, it was the basis for a PBS show. Sandler briefly profiles famous women in the field, such as Dorothea Lange, Laura Gilpin, and Margaret Bourke-White, as well as many obscure figures. With great warmth, he describes the obstacles they overcame and explains why their images are memorable. --Cathy Curtis