Rescue From Obscurity
Zaida Ben-Yusuf's work was the subject of an exhibition, Zaida Ben-Yusuf: New York Portrait Photographer at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, which ran from 11 April through 1 September 2008. The curator, Frank H. Goodyear III, first learned about Ben-Yusuf when he discovered two of her photographs in 2003, depicting Daniel Chester French and Everett Shinn, and set forth to discover more about a photographer who had almost completely been forgotten.
Goodyear suggested that gender discrimination might have led to Zaida Ben-Yusuf being forgotten, despite her significant contributions towards developing photography as a medium of artistic expression. Photographic history had tended to focus on male photographers such as Stieglitz, and less so on the female photographers, even though it was one of the few occupations considered a respectable career for a single woman in late 19th and early 20th century New York. Even in relatively progressive New York, where innovators in the arts, science, journalism and politics gathered, it was difficult for a single professional woman to support herself. Another reason for Ben-Yusuf's obscurity was that she had not bequeathed a significant archive of her work to a single institution, making it difficult to pull together enough examples to give her career the appropriate historical assessment. Goodyear's exhibition at the Smithsonian acted as a showcase for Zaida Ben-Yusuf's work, re-establishing her as a key figure in fine art photographic history.
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