Pioneers of photography at the beginning of xx century

The pioneering period of photography is connected with women emancipatory process, who perceived the new technology as a chance for free artistic creation, getting to know the world, as well as documenting every day life - their own and their close one’s. Research on women’s participation shows how geopolitical, cultural and class conditions influenced the development photo industry, photo art and most of all access to equipment and education. The text offers a new look and photography pioneers from three different perspectives. The first - artistic - is connected to modernist intellectual and cultural movements just as in case of Bloomsbury Group made climate for photographic activity of women such as Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. The second - professional perspective - which embeds women’s activity in rich photographic tradition, important in case of Ruth and Lotte Jacobi, both of German origin. The third - institutional perspective - is connected to the importance of women’s professional education in photography as well as social dimension of women’s activities seen in biography of Janina Mierzecka from Lwow.