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    Eight Girls Taking Pictures: A Novel
    Eight Girls Taking Pictures: A Novel
    Eight Girls Taking Pictures: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    Eight Girls Taking Pictures: A Novel

    Written by Whitney Otto

    Narrated by Joy Osmanski

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    “A moving read about the pleasures and pangs that define the lives of women” (USA TODAY) from the bestselling author of How to Make an American Quilt.

    A profoundly moving portrayal of the lives of women, imagining the thoughts and events that produced eight famous female photographers of the twentieth century. Inspired by the work of Imogen Cunningham, Madame Yevonde, Tina Modotti, Grete Stern, Lee Miller, Ruth Orkin, and others, author Whitney Otto weaves together eight stories, crisscrossing the world and a century to portray the tensions that defined the lives of female artists. These memorable characters seek the extraordinary through their art, yet also find meaning and reward in the ordinary tasks of motherhood, marriage, and domesticity. This is a bold, immersive, and unforgettable novel about women in love.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateNov 6, 2012
    ISBN9781442358522
    Author

    Whitney Otto

    Whitney Otto is the author of five novels, including the New York Times bestseller, How to Make an American Quilt. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.

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    Reviews for Eight Girls Taking Pictures

    3/5

    32 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Works better as a historical source book to jump into modernist photography than a novel. As unique and multifaceted as the stories are I couldn't relate to the characters. They seem to be bystanders of their time periods and geographical circumstances.
    • 3/5
      Short sketches of women photographers from early 1917 through mid-80's. Fictional depiction based on real photographers. Each vignette is fascinating on it's own and the later ones have some of the first photographers woven in as the years pass - revealing some later years.
      Very "artsy" and indeed, much focus on the photography,as well as the locales and the society of the years depicted. I enjoyed the book and of course, now there are references to books about the lives of the actual female photographers that will have to be added to my "LIST" !!!!
    • 3/5
      Otto, author of "How to Make an American Quilt," presents eight fictionalized portraits of female photographers spanning the majority of the 20th century. Successfully exploring the challenges that women artists have faced throughout the recent past, this is an accessible work of fiction that is sure to be popular with bookclubs. The author includes a bibliography for those readers interested in learning more about the real lives and work of the women fictionalized in the novel.

      Major Appeals: Character; Story

      Further reading suggestions: A Short History of Women - Kate Walbert; A History of Women Photographers - Naomi Rosenblum
    • 5/5
      Eight Girls Taking PicturesThis was an interesting book for me. One because I am a professional portrait photographer, and 2 because I am also a woman.ButI, did not lead an adventurous life or really break any new ground like each of these women did.When I began my career in 1978, I was only one of a hand full for girls in my college for photography. The guys in my classes did not seem to mind or think it was weird for us to be taking photography and when I started looking for a job I found many professionals were excited to have the female perspective in their studios. I love to read about history now but then I really did not care about the beginnings of photography and was not familiar with what was done before the 70’s. I am also fairly conservative so most of the work these women were doing would not have interested me at the time. I have since became a digital scrap booker and also enjoy mixed media and really like playing digitally with my images much like some of these women did in the darkroom which now fascinates me how they made their photomontages.There were many times when Mrs. Otto just blew me away with her understanding of the artist/photographers mind. I underlined many places throughout the book that inspired me. One of the most profound insights she put in her book was “Women seem to possess all the natural gifts essential to a good portraitist...such as personality, patience and intuition. The sitter ought to be the predominating factor in a successful portrait. I just screamed “YES” and was stunned a non-portrait photographer should grasp such insight. And then this one “if your interesting snapshot is an accident, you aren’t controlling the outcome as much as something simply caught your eye and, snap, snap, there you are. But, when you learn about light, you learn that light is everything. We photographers are lashed to light and time, and we must make the most of both. Wow, she really showed me she knows her stuff with that quote. I also learned something about myself by reading this book. As a mother I often felt I failed my girls because I was often short tempered with them. I felt selfish and never really understood why I should resent giving them my undivided attention after work until I read this quote, “What no one tells you about having children is that it isn’t the physical demand they make in your life that affects your art, it’s the emotional space they fill, crowding out your art. So even when you have the time to work, your still mentally occupied. Wow what a revelation for me and I still feel irritated when I cannot spend uninterrupted time with my creating. One more important quote for me was, “Art required solitude, a disengaged mind, free to sort through the inconsequential and the profound, sifting through the mess in the mind until it found what it sought.”Some of the women’s stories were a bit racy compared to my simple Midwestern upbringing so some may find the book objectionable but I have to give it 5 stars because I related so much to each woman as an artist, woman and mother. I learned more about the history of my profession and the history of the world. I spent a lot of nights looking things up on the internet which is always worth 2 extra stars if a book inspires me to dig deeper. If you are artistic and a woman I think you will find by the end of this book you have been inspired and enlightened.
    • 3/5
      I received this book as a Goodreads ARC giveaway. This was a great book and I really enjoy it
    • 2/5
      Great idea, poorly executed. The flow of the book is halting, with portions that were overly detailed and other sections that seemed to have large gaps. I had difficulty following several of the women's stories and kept thinking I had inadvertently skipped a page on my kindle. It could have used a really good edit.
    • 4/5
      I absolutely loved this book. Not because Whitney Otto is a brilliant writer, but because I was fascinated by the women photographers who were the subject of this novel -- which was really a loose collection of short stories. From the beginning, I wanted to learn more about the real photographers and their lives. The young women, born between the 1880s and the 1920s, shared some characteristics. Most were from unconventional families, where women were encouraged to find careers and a passion. The photographers -- Imogen Cunningham, Madame Yevonde, Lee Miller, Tina Modotti, Grete Stern, and Ruth Orkin -- all fought for a place as artists. Ruth Orkin epitomizes the woman who has a husband and a family, but also strives for a career and artistic expression. Unlike some readers, these women didn't blend together for me at all. They shared similarities, but even today, the lives these women built for themselves would be remarkable. They shared a drive to create and express themselves.
    • 3/5
      In these eight loosely connected stories, Otto portrays the lives and struggles of eight women photographers through the 20th century. Six of the eight are based on real photographers, including Ruth Orkin; Imogene Cunningham; and Lee Miller, and astute readers will recognize their lives and works in these fictionalized tales. All eight women are interesting and bohemian, ahead of their time in many ways; they take lovers of both genders, travel the world, get caught up in wars and revolutions. But at the same time, all struggle to balance their creative impulses and careers as artists with their domestic roles as wives and mothers. As the stories continue, some may feel that the eight women are insufficiently differentiated, their lives and inner thoughts so similar, their struggles much the same despite differing time periods and differing countries. But in this similarity perhaps lies Otto’s underlying point in portraying these eight women…the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite decades of social change and the groundbreaking women who have come before, the later women still face the same struggles as their predecessors.