I do not think that there is male feminism or female feminism there exists just feminism. When I was coming up through the art world and the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s in America, I think that the philosophy of feminism was incorrectly cast as issues of gender. For me, it should have been framed as issues of values. Because of this, men were considered the enemy and all women part of the movement. This was and is not necessarily true.
How I define myself as a feminist is that I do not support a dominant paradigm whether imposed by men or women. Society rewards either gender for supporting this dominant structure. My personal experience has shown that both men and women can be equally supportive of a dominant paradigm. Because of the social pressure and the rewards promised for supporting the dominant paradigm it makes it very difficult for both men and women to stand up to and change these values. I try to act and create work that supports both women and men and especially be a model for other men of how to act in a supportive/cooperative/inclusive manner in an effort to both challenge and change the dominant paradigm model.
Donald Woodman’s photographic career spans nearly five decades. As an established large format photographer, Woodman’s unique combination of traditional and digital methods lends his work technical proficiency, formal refinement, and conceptual weight. His diverse subject matter, ranging from portraits and landscapes to probing examinations of masculinity and personal identity, remains consistently intimate, characterized by a subversive perspective and eccentric wit.
Woodman holds an undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in photography from the University of Houston. Over the course of his career, Woodman has collaborated with and assisted artists such as: Ezra Stoller (1915 – 2004), recognized as the leading American architectural photographer of the twentieth century, whose brilliant photographs helped establish the modern movement in architecture; Minor White (1908 – 1976), renowned photographer, teacher, critic, editor and curator, whose efforts to extend photography’s range of expression made him one of the most influential creative photographers of the mid-twentieth century; Agnes Martin (1912 – 2004), noted minimalist/abstract expressionist painter of the twentieth century; Dan Margulis, specialist in the field of applied color theory and one of the first three members inducted into Adobe Photoshop Hall of Fame.
His work has been exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally and published in numerous magazines and books. His oeuvre includes the Holocaust Project: From Darkness Into Light with Judy Chicago; The Rodeo and the West; Gay Rodeo; The Therapist; Harbingers of Which Future; The Selling of the West; Attractions…Addictions…and other Kodak Moments. In 2015 he published Agnes Martin and Me, an engaging illustrated memoir as assistant, friend, and sometime adversary of the celebrated painter, Agnes Martin. Since completing the Holocaust Project in 1993, he and Judy Chicago have collaborated together on a variety of creative projects.
In addition to being included in numerous private and museum collections, Woodman’s photo archives are being acquired by the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, which plans to showcase aspects of his work over the coming years. Though Woodman has been an ingrained figure in the international art world for decades, the artist has chosen to remain at the margins, living and working primarily in the American Southwest. Regarding this tendency, Woodman says, “For most of my career, New Mexico has provided me with a respite from some of the unbearable excesses of civilization. I have chosen to stay out of the limelight in order to preserve the freedom to pursue my personal vision.” Woodman is married to the artist, Judy Chicago, where along with their cats lives in a wonderful, one hundred and ten year old, brick Victorian hotel in Belen, NM.