Art for the Ladylike: An Autobiography Through Other Lives

In Art for the Ladylike, Whitney Otto limns the lives of eight pioneering women photographers--Sally Mann, Imogen Cunningham, Judy Dater, Ruth Orkin, Tina Modotti, Lee Miller, Madame Yvonne, and Grete Stern--to in turn excavate her own writer's life. The result is an affecting exploration of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be an artist, and the perils and rewards of being both at once. In considering how feminism, career, and motherhood were entangled throughout her subjects' lives as they tirelessly sought to render their visions and paved the way for others creating within the bounds of domesticity, Otto assesses her own struggles with balancing writing and the pulls of home life. Ultimately, she ponders the persistent question that artistic women face in a world that devalues women's ambition: If what we love is what we are, how do those of us with multiple loves forge lives with room for everything?