Women's images that clicked

At the time his photo was taken, leering at a poufy-haired '80s working girl walking by the Mellon Bank project, construction worker Mike wouldn't give his last name. And in the newspaper a week later, Mike had been cropped out of the picture, an editor's grease pencil drawing a border that excluded the ogling man from the shot.

But Mike's gaze and all it represents about the experience of women in America - or at least in Center City - have been restored to history, part of a student-curated exhibit of newspaper photographs at the Moore College of Art & Design that opens to the public this evening.

The photograph, taken on Sept. 21, 1989, by Inquirer photographer Eric Mencher, is one of about 80 selected from Inquirer archives to make up the exhibit, titled "Women Through the Lens of Time: Students Select From 180 Years of Photojournalism in the Philadelphia Inquirer." It runs though March 14 at Moore's Levy Gallery for the Arts in Philadelphia, at 20th and the Parkway.

Most of the photographs were found by digging through the sometimes-arcane filing system of the old Inquirer "morgue" with the assistance of library supervisor/archivist Michael Panzer. The more recent ones were located by zippy data searching though digital archives.

"It felt like holding history in my hands," Breana Copeland, 21, a photography and digital arts major at Moore, said of her experience going through files of old photographs.

The filing system itself was a window into the social history of women, according to the students at Moore, the nation's only all-women's art school, founded 160 years ago.

Several photographs that made it into the exhibit section about women's views of themselves were found under files labeled simply "fat" and "fat people." One photo was filed under "high heels." And many of the famous women from earlier decades were located through their less-famous husband's names.

Lorie Mertes, director of the Levy Gallery, said she wanted the exhibit to reflect how the students - who range in age from 20 to 39 - grappled with decades of women's experiences.

"The idea of me going through the archives wasn't that interesting," Mertes said in the days leading up to the opening. "This gallery is supposed to be a laboratory." So seven students from four different majors did the poring-over and the selecting.

The exhibit covers changing ideals of beauty and gender roles, what it means to be a girl, symbols of women's history, transformative change and celebrity, the struggle for equality, and a section about women's choices - motherhood, wife and career.

Some of the entries are there for strictly historical reasons: photos of Susan B. Anthony (from a book, actually, but it appeared in the paper), Coco Chanel, Mary Kay, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Hillary Clinton, Marie Curie, E.R.A. protests, Alice Paul and Mother Teresa (visiting Philly in June 1974), photographed by Earnest S. Eddowes as she was being welcomed at 30th Street Station.

And some were clearly shot in the spirit of the times: a 1973 photo by William F. Steinmetz of a woman reading the paper while her husband scrubbed the floor, and a City Hall secretary in a miniskirt presenting a proclamation against miniskirts in 1970.

But others tell a more subtle tale, often incidental to their initial purpose.

A run-of-the-mill protest by a group of mothers seeking a new traffic light at the intersection of Pratt and Loretta in Northeast Philly, published June 8, 1965, struck the students as poignantly emblematic of the lengths mothers will go to to keep their children safe.

The 10-year-old girl waiting to perform in The Nutcracker - a newspaper perennial if ever there was one - photographed while doing homework in 1987 seemed to reflect the larger experience of women juggling different responsibilities - even as girls. A photo by W.R. Everly 3d of 4-year-old Nancy Lynn Strube at the Lawncrest Rec Center, applying lipstick "while performing as flower girl at Little Miss City of Philadelphia Pageant," reflected the pressures of self-image.

A 1983 feature on single mothers that was published in the Inquirer's Northeast Neighbors section stood the test of time, its photo by Rebecca Barger of Peggy Sautner serving spaghetti to her three children still resonating with the students.

A photo of an antidraft demonstration in Rittenhouse Square, published in November 1968, featured subjects who projected some provocative realities of class - two affluent-looking women, one in a fur coat, signing a petition.

Many of the photographs chosen were wire-service images that The Inquirer published; not all were shot in Philadelphia; and in some cases the photographer was not identified. One image mentioned by several students as a standout - a post-World War II photograph of a woman sitting on a curb and donning hard-to-get nylon stockings "because she can't wait to get home to put them on" - was actually released by a public relations firm.

The reality of print photojournalism took on poignancy as the student photographers looked at these pre-digital, pre-camera-phone relics even as newspapers are laying off photographers.

"I love looking at the black and white photos," said Coleman. "They have such a different tone to them, a character to them, than digital pictures. They were, like, physically cracking and deteriorating with time - that's a part of the picture."

Watsuki Harrington, 32, a curatorial studies major, said she found a more nuanced view of the women's movement reflected in the archives, with photographs chronicling, for example, women protesting against the Equal Rights Amendment.

"I went in thinking I would see a certain set of imagery," she said. "I wasn't finding those in the archive."

And the students had to negotiate over certain photographs. Older women argued for the necessity of an image of Twiggy, for instance, while younger students insisted on Kimora Lee, wife of Russell Simmons and head of the BabyPhat clothing line.

"It was really hard," said Lisa Haskell, 39. "I feel lucky at the end to have found such powerful images."

Photo Exhibit

Women Through

the Lens of Time

Through March 14 at Moore College of Art & Design's Levy Gallery, 20th and the Parkway. Free. www.moore.edu