From Feature Shoot:

Working for Look, Life, People, and New York during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Wood’s photographs became an part of the cultural dialogue. As a woman photographing women, her portraits reveal the soul and spirit of her subjects with sensitivity and understanding. Here Wood looks back at her years on the beat, reflecting on life for women during the decades when everything changed…

This monumental transformation in the culture offered up some incredible figures to photograph. Could you describe how the spirit of the times informed this era of self-actualization on both sides of the camera?

“The examined life is more interesting. The clothes we chose, the clothes we were offered, were more liberating, freer and easier to wear, and youthful. Film and cameras were able to capture action. There was synergy among active people and it all worked together producing, certainly with me and my cameras and fast film and split second strobe light, a way to capture both action and beauty. I liked getting real skin tone and color. My strobes and reflectors helped.”

It’s incredible how many women you have photographed at different points in their careers. Looking back on the women you selected for this book, what are some qualities of their character that they share that made them fantastic subjects?

“They shared character, self confidence, intelligence, low vanity but high sense of self, openness, and trust that I was looking for their best selves, their real inner spirit, and they went along working with me to capture that on film.”

Read more and see more of Susan Wood’s work

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