Female photographers have united in Canberra for International Women’s Day for a series of events celebrating the critical role female artists play in shaping Australia’s contemporary story—and calling for greater gender equality.

The Loud and Luminous project celebrates and recognises the important contributions of contemporary women photographers in Australia. The theme for 2020 is equality, echoing the United Nations sustainable development goals of ‘gender equality’ and ‘I am generation equality’.

Loud and Luminous co-curator Hilary Wardhaugh said Loud and Luminous is both a celebration of equality, and also a brave statement of what still desperately needs to be done.

“Historically, photography has been a male-dominated field and there are still significantly less women exhibited in galleries and fewer in leadership positions. We need to turn this around and use our voices to retell the Australian story, Ms Wardhaugh said.

“The statistics show that women want to work in this space—they want to create and contribute—but we must look at improving retention rates and focus on leadership and longevity.”

Co-curator Melissa Anderson said Loud and Luminous aims to address important social issues, such as what equality is in global, gender, economic, social, cultural and environmental concepts—and what changes we need to make to achieve it.

“The fact still remains that there’s a huge amount of inequality, in the Arts and more broadly across society and that’s got to change.

“As women we need to work together to encourage more positive and meaningful dialogue on equality and to ensure all our stories are being told,” Ms Anderson said.

The Loud and Luminous project also includes a gallery exhibition of 100 different stories about 100 different issues—about and by women—set to open in Sydney next month at Contact Sheet on 3 April.

“Our artists tell stories about mothers and daughters, business leaders and family life. They’ve looked at gender identity, cultural identity, environmental equality and the struggles for equality and the fight to be heard,” Ms Anderson said.

“The project includes a mixture of photographers from different stages of their careers. It also demonstrates the power of mentoring, the importance of supporting each other and the strength of the collective voice.”

Images were released for the first time at the event.

Loud and Luminous is supported by Fujifilm Australia, Kayell Australia, Canson, PPIB, Momento Pro, Damian Caniglia Photographer, Print2Metal, and Contact Sheet.

The 2020 Multimedia video reflecting equality as seen by 100 women photographers, was released at the event and is available on Facebook, Insta and youtube. The 2019 and 2020 books were presented to the National Library of Australia contemporary collections and were acknowledged for the importance of these voices, in this time, and having this on the Australian record for future generations.