By Kristi Alexandra
@kristialexandra

Not all Instagram feeds are created equal. Some are punctuated by gratuitous shows of affection for pets (guilty!), others are highly curated displays of terracotta-filtered landscapes, and more yet are documentations of one’s food to varying degrees of skill. But, if there ever was a feed in which each ‘gram was print-worthy, it’s @womenstreetphotographers. 

Started in 2017 by award-winning Russian street photographer Gulnara Samoilova, the Instagram account boasts several high quality photographs by women street photographers all over the world. Now, the account has become a full-fledged coffee table book, full of colour and black and white photographs, published by Prestel on March 1.

The book features the work of 100 contemporary artists from 31 countries, all of whom buck tradition by simply carrying out street photography in a male-dominated industry. 

“I’ve been a photographer for 40 years, and I never once wanted to be considered as a woman photographer. I just wanted to be treated equally as a photographer,” Samoilova says.

“As street photographers, though, we women have a sort of advantage, because when we walk around on the street with a camera, people don’t think of us professional photographers.”

That advantage definitely does have its benefits, given that street photography is characterized by spontaneous, candid captures of unposed moments. Most often, the medium is associated with snaps of busy cities and metropolitan areas, but Samoilova asserts that the work in Women Street Photographers doesn’t follow such stringent guidelines.

“If you go through [the] book, you’ll see photos done on dirt roads and in small villages. It’s so easy now to take a small camera or your phone and take photographs of anything around you,” she says. “I like to push boundaries and the book illustrates that. Street photography can be on the beach, at a pool, on the subway… It can be blurry figures on a dark street. For me, it’s a fun thing to do.”

Women Street Photographers introduces a panoply of non-traditional approaches to the medium drawn from women of all ages, races, ethnicities, creeds, and sexualities–pushing the boundaries of street photography in new and exciting directions.

“The way I curated the book is that I wanted to tell a collective story. I wanted to pick photographs that show everyday life: the joyful, happy or humourous,” Samoilova says.

To enjoy the depth of the collective story, you’ll just have to pick one up for yourself. Women Street Photographers is available from Penguin Random House here, or from Target, Walmart, and Amazon.

Kristi Alexandra is an unabashed wino and wannabe musician. Her talents include drinking an entire bottle of cabernet sauvignon, singing in the bathtub, and falling asleep.