American photography of the 1920s through 1940s was strongly influenced by women who experimented aesthetically with the camera. Photographers such as Imogen Cunningham, Laura Gilpin, Consuelo Kanaga, and Tina Modotti, among others, contributed to the social and political transformations of the era, helping to define the photographic medium as an art form. Documenting people, place, environment, and objects, each created a visual record of the visible and the marginalized human. These visual records today prevail as aesthetic standards of form and subject studied by historians, academics, and photographers, and revered by the public as exemplary fine art. This course studies how women photographers contributed to the development of modern documentation and art through their preferred artistic medium.