As Mia Fineman reminds in the introduction to Snapshots of Dangerous Women, “bad girls ain’t no good, and good girls ain’t no fun”. There’s certainly plenty of fun being had by the girls in this archival collection of found photography — the kind of girls your mother warned you about, or warned you not to become. But rather than coquettish reticence, these women are flaunting their independence in times when non-conformism could attract admonishment a great deal more serious than a mere frown or a shake of the head.
Fineman recalls us, in a poetic text, the trailblazing women who broke down barriers of accepted and expected behaviour in the 20th Century, generating sensational headlines for acts of courage and endurance — traits traditionally associated with men by the media. She also recalls those who fell foul of the law in their pursuit of equality, those who rejected the societal norms of the time by living an openly gay life, who wore what they wanted, fired guns, drank, smoked and caroused into the wee hours with the best of their male hell-raising counterparts. Author Peter J Cohen has spent the last 20 years scouring flea markets and estate sales for found images showing these “dangerous women” in action. Snapshots of Dangerous Women, produced in collaboration with Melissa Catanese, is being released by Universe Publishing, a Rizzoli New York imprint.
