This International Women’s Day, we revisit some of our favourite previously published photo projects from the Dazed archives by photographers including Deanna Templeton, Maggie Shannon and Michella Bredahl among others, who examine uniquely female or female-identifying experiences from childbirth to a woman’s autonomy over her body, courage in the face of misogyny and more. These images speak to both the deeply personal and the more public facets of womanhood. They navigate societal expectations from battles with body image to the pursuit of self-acceptance in a world that demands conformity. They celebrate diversity in identity, queerness outside of binary definition, and the radical act of embracing oneself in full. Take a look at life through the female gaze. Happy International Women’s Day!

MICHELLA BREDAHL, LOVE ME AGAIN

In her photobook Love Me Again, published by Loose Joints and dedicated “to my mother, my sister, my friends”, photographer and filmmaker Michella Bredahl shares portraits of people as they exist in their homes and personal spaces. Bredahl and her sister were raised by their mother in a small apartment in suburban Denmark. Her mother, who first handed her the camera, was not well as they grew up. “I would photograph her in all the rooms in our apartment,” she told Dazed back in 2023. “Together with the camera, I probably became a kind of refuge for her; a place where she could create a world she could endure being in.”

Bredahl and her sister observed first hand the exploitation and abuse of feminine energies, growing up in what she describes as a “very misogynistic environment”. She sought sanctuary through art –  “books, paintings, film and photography, especially stories about women as a shelter”. Inspired by Nan Goldin and citing Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, Bredahl documents the vulnerability and tenderness of people in their domestic spaces; untidy, unruly, raw. Bredahl’s friends, often the subjects of her photos, have also come to understand her photographic language. “They don't clean up before I come,” she says. “They know that I think it's beautiful that you see details from a life lived in their home.”

Read the full story here on Dazed now. 

MAGGIE SHANNON, EXTREME PAIN, EXTREME JOY 

Maggie Shannon’s photobook Extreme Pain, Extreme Joy, published by Mother Tongue, provides an uncensored and visual depiction of birth. Documenting the emotional and physical intensity of home births during lockdown in the US, Extreme Pain, Extreme Joy acknowledges the realities of childbirth as the unique experience that remains undocumented and taboo.

“After much of the US went into lockdown in early March 2020, I began following midwives as they navigated new protocols caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Shannon told Dazed in a previous interview. “By photographing the midwives, I explored what it means to bear life in a time of sorrow and grief.” The photos featured in Shannon’s photobook were taken in the shadow of an overturned Roe v. Wade. And, mere months into Trump’s second term, which already seems more destructive than his first, conservative patriarchal structures that limit a woman’s autonomy over her body risk reinforcement. 

Read the full story here on Dazed now. 

ABBIE TRAYLER-SMITH, KISS IT! 

Abbie Trayler-Smith spent twelve years photographing Shannon, a young woman who grew up with obesity. Kiss It!, published by Gost, follows Shannon – who she first met aged 13 at a press conference launching teenage health services – from adolescence through to adulthood. Traylor-Smith‘s photos honestly and empathetically document Shannon’s life through the milestones of girlhood, from shopping for prom dresses and going on girl’s holidays to falling in love, while navigating body image, shame, self-confidence and fatphobic judgement in a society that prioritises thinness. 

Like that of many girls and women who are told they need to look a certain way, the photographer’s own youth was scarred from battle with beauty standards. “The book is about her journey – and my own journey – and how, through working with each other, I’ve learned to accept myself for who I am and she’s kind of blossomed with the attention,” Trayler-Smith told Dazed. This reciprocity is pellucid through the closeness achieved by each image. “I’ve really learned from her how to step into myself because I’ve always been someone who hasn’t liked to take up any space,” she says, continuing, “Shannon enabled me to step into my body and reclaim it again, warts and all.”

Read the full story here on Dazed now. 

MARIETTE PATHY ALLEN, RITE OF PASSAGE

Photographer Mariette Pathy Allen spent four decades documenting trans communities in the US in what is a deeply emotional record that humanises the fight for transgender equality. Her authentic representation affirms and illuminates humanity in an enduring battle in which strips trans and gender non-conforming individuals of such, paying tribute to the vibrancy, resilience, and courage of trans communities in the 20th century. Pathy Allen documented pioneers at the forefront of the trans rights movement, such as Virginia Prince, Leslie Feinberg, Sylvia Rivera, and Vicky West.

Curated by Lissa Rivera, Pathy Allen’s work was featured in a solo show, Mariette Pathy Allen: Rites of Passage, 1978-2006, at New York’s Museum of Sex, which brought together photographs, hand-written notes, darkroom prints, and DIY programmes for gender non-conforming events. “Visibility is crucial,” Lissa Rivera, curator of Mariette Pathy Allen: Rites of Passage, 1978-2006, told Dazed, continuing: “Pathy Allen’s archive is staggering in terms of depth, quality and the sheer number of voices recorded.”

Read the full story here on Dazed now. 

RENELL MEDRANO, ICE GIRL 

Dominican-American photographer Renell Medrano, who grew up in the Bronx, celebrates the bold allure of the defiant and rebellious New York female archetypal ice girls with her recently launched magazine entitled Ice Girl. Medrano’s publication is produced by an all-women crew spearheaded by Medrano and sets about to celebrate the individuality and unique perspectives of real women.

“She is relentlessly herself,” proclaims the publication from its first pages, followed by an abundance of erotic and empowering images of women in a style inspired by the retro shots and sexualised aesthetics of the 1970s black softcore female-oriented publication Players. 

Read the full story here on Dazed now. 

DEANNA TEMPLETON, WHAT SHE SAID 

Being a teenager is magical, novel, formative but equally it’s excruciating and painful. The relative freedom and europhoria of adolescence that so many of us spend the rest of our lives longing for is often overcast with distress and humiliation. Named after The Smiths song (the anthem of her teen years), Deanna Templeton’s photobook What She Said, published by MACK, takes a compassionate and tender look back on the angst of teenhood. Revisiting her own adolescence, rifling through a tranche of pink-paged diaries, Templeton became curious about the melancholy and melodrama so typical of our teen years.

“When I first sat down and read my diaries and journals I was caught off guard how miserable and mean I was to myself. I cried. It was almost like I was reading about someone else because I was,” she told Dazed. The project collates excerpts of her own journal entries; ephemera from her youth such as concert tickets; and portraits of young women taken over several years, particularly of those expressing themselves through subcult-esque symbolism such as ripped jeans, band tees, kohl eyeliner and tattoos. In many ways, What She Said is a love letter to all young women. “I had somewhat forgotten about this time in my life. The advice I would’ve loved to pass onto my younger self would have been to give yourself a break, don't be so hard on yourself.”

Read the full story here on Dazed now.

CARMEN WINANT, THE LAST SAFE ABORTION

Bringing together photographs from personal and institutional archives across the American Midwest and spanning the period between 1973 and 2022 (when access to abortion was a constitutional right), Carmen Winant’s The Last Safe Abortion, was published last year (by MACK) in the shadow of the reversal of Roe v Wade in June 2022. Working closely with abortion clinics, Winant carefully curated the book by combing through hundreds of boxes of archival material, conducted interviews a the photographs and arranged these alongside her own photography. “I’ve long thought about how anti-abortion agitators effectively weaponise images as a political tool to stigmatise what is simply an extension of healthcare,” Winant told Dazed in 2024.

The Last Safe Abortion underscores the workaday aspects of this medical procedure. They pictures are not sensational. Instead, there are doctors at desks, administrators scheduling appointments, nurses drawing blood, patients being examined and municipal-looking wall clocks keeping time. Winant said:  “There’s this inclination to lace any representation of abortion, positive or negative, with trauma and conflict,” she says. “I wanted to countermand that notion of abortion care and represent it solely as healthcare. I wanted to capture the work of the work.”

Read the full story here on Dazed now. 

SHINING LIGHTS: BLACK WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS IN 1980S-90S BRITAIN

Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s-90s Britain (co-published by MACK and Autograph gallery) celebrates the image-makers at the heart of the Black arts movement – a radical voice and mobilising force of the 80s and 90s art scene – a period marked by significant shifts of the social, political and economic landscape; a landscape scarred by deindustrialisation and Thatcher’s legacy. Compiled by eminant photographer Joy Gregory, Shining Lights brings together the work of 57 women photographers alongside historical essays and roundtable conversations exploring the abundance of groundbreaking photography produced during this time.

But, above all, Gregory envisions the book not simply as an anthology honouring the past, but a call to action; part of an ongoing conversation and practice. “I’ve always maintained that photography is a much broader subject than people often give it credit. Sometimes it sits on the edge of printmaking, sometimes on the edge of filmmaking but in all cases, it’s about telling stories,” Gregory told Dazed. “This book is a starting point rather than an end, and I very much hope that someone else takes up the batten.”

Read the full story here on Dazed now. 

BRIANNA CAPOZZI, SISTERS

With warmth and sensitivity, photographer Brianna Capozzi continues to take portraits celebrating the complexity and multiplicity of womanhood. Eight years in the making, her photo book Sisters was published last year by IDEA and features portraits of sisters, twins, and half-sisters of various ages. The book evokes the mysterious and intricate web of feeling that exists between sisters. Turning away from the more carefully orchestrated, high-production fashion imagery she’s renowned for and opting instead for intimate, more spontaneous shoots without styling or direction, Sisters has a potent, commanding quality.

“As I shot each early set of sisters, I noticed the nuance and difference from friendships. There were wider age gaps, more likeness in appearance and mannerisms, but also less likeness in other ways.,” Capozzi told Dazed in 2024. “You choose your friends, and often you live similar lives to them. [With sisters], guards were down fully in this very natural way.”

Read the full story here on Dazed now.

SIRUI MA, LITTLE THINGS MEAN A LOT

After leaving Beijing for London, Sirui Ma began taking portraits of the Asian diaspora and the city’s natural landscapes. As an artist, she found a fascination for the minutiae of the urban landscape and the enclaves of green space. Her debut exhibition Little Things Mean a Lot (held last year at Hackney Gallery) was itself like a sequestered serene space within east London’s frenetic streets. Developing this thoughtful, meditive body of work for over two years, Ma told Dazed.

“The work looks at the quieter moments of everyday life in London, through images of my friends and the nature that surrounds us.” As well as portraying Ma’s East Asian community in London, Little Things Mean a Lot is in essence autobiographical. The photographer describes it as “a self-portrait through the women in my life.... In every image there is a bit of me, a bit of how I see and care for the world around me... The way I experience the world, how I see my peers, how I as an Asian woman want to be perceived, how I find small bits of beauty in mundanity.”

Read the full story here on Dazed now.