Women and early photography.
Constance Fox Talbert married William Henry Fox Talbert in 1832.
On honeymoon, he realised her artistic skills exceeded his own, and jealousy drove him to create photography.
'When William Henry Fox Talbot sketched Lake Como in 1833, a comparison with his bride’s drawing led the honeymooning Englishman to deem his work a “melancholy” mess.
Despite having used a camera lucida to superimpose the panorama on his sketchpad, he deplored his efforts to trace its contours and vowed to devise a means to capture a view without recourse to his “faithless pencil”.
The result, after much experimenting at his home at Lacock Abbey, was the negative-positive process that is key to photography.'
https://archive.is/Www9T#selection-871.0-883.127
A blurry image of a poem attributed to Constance would make her possibly the first female photographer, although the point at which various processes combined to create a photograph is disputed. Her watercolours, and those of her children, remained hidden while her husband's fame as one of the inventors of photography was feted.
They've recently been put online by the National Trust.
https://www.watercolourworld.org/learn-more/features/the-fox-talbots-of-lacock-abbey/
Other early female photographers:
https://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/about/news-blog/2021/february/unearthing-the-worlds-first-female-photographers/
Anna Atkins is famed for her cyanotypes:
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/cyanotypes-of-british-algae-by-anna-atkins-1843/
'Atkins became a member of the Botanical Society in London in 1839, one of the few scientific societies which was open to women.'
Another name that is very slight but can be considered a part of the history of photography, and a fascinating life story, is Elizabeth Fulhame, whose 1794 work An Essay on Combustion contained meticulous records of her chemical experiments.
'...she often began with small scraps of silk, which she would soak in a solution of metallic salts. She then treated the pieces in different ways – for example by placing them in a dark closet, drying them by the fire or exposing them to sunlight – and noted the results. Occasionally she was fortunate enough to find her cloth had beautiful colours, like red, purple or gold, or had ‘spangles’, sparkling areas. Historians often credit Mrs Fulhame’s descriptions of photochemical processes as forerunning the science behind early photography.'
https://minervascientifica.co.uk/elizabeth-fulhame/
Elizabeth Fulhame sharply expresses her views on how she may be regarded as a woman promoting these ideas:
‘Some are so ignorant that they grow sullen and silent, and are chilled with horror at the sight of any thing, that bears the semblance of learning, in whatever shape it may appear; and should the spectre appear in the shape of woman, the pangs, which they suffer, are truly dismal.’