Shots Fired Photostylings

Shots Fired Photostylings Britney | Portrait Artist
I photograph women the way the great painters should have.
↓ Sessions · The Goddess Circle (IG)

06/15/2026

“I showed her where to find gold. But the gold she found was her own.” — Rodin

She was Rodin’s student, his model, his lover.
She was also arguably the better sculptor.

Camille Claudel was born in 1864 in France. By 18 she was sharing a studio in Montparnasse with fellow sculptors and Rodin became their patron. She was 18. He was 43.

She became his student, his model, his collaborator, his lover for fifteen years. Some works signed by Rodin were modeled by Camille!

One week after her father’s funeral in 1913 the only family member who supported her, the family had her committed to an asylum.

Camille wrote letters from the asylum begging to come home. Begging for her tools. Asking to sculpt again. Though believed to be schizophrenic she was completely lucid when sculpting.

She died in 1943 at 79. Never sculpted again. About 90 works survive many in the Musée Rodin. A museum named for the man she worked beside. She deserves her own. Thankfully there is now a Musée Camille Claudel. It opened in 2017.

She was never just his muse.
She was THE sculptor.

Sources: Musée Rodin · Frome Society Yearbook 2020 · Britannica · NMWA · Wikipedia
Camille Claudel · Rodin · women in art history · feminist art history · French sculpture · forgotten women artists · art history you weren’t taught · women sculptors · asylum · institutionalization of women · Musée Camille Claudel

06/15/2026

She painted gutted fish and jars of jelly.
Critics compared her to Caravaggio.

Mary Pratt was born in 1935 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Her mother tinted black-and-white photographs as a hobby and taught Mary to dye them with watercolors. That was where it started.

At Mount Allison University she studied under Alex Colville, one of Canada’s best.

Not everyone agreed. Another professor.. Lawren P. Harris, son of Group of Seven founder Lawren Harris told her there would only be one artist in the family. And it wouldn’t be her. It would be her husband.

He was wrong!!!

She had married fellow art student Christopher Pratt in 1957, had four children, and found her subjects in the domestic world around her. She photographed her life and projected the images onto canvas but in 1970 she came to believe her photographic technique was basically cheating and gave up painting entirely. Her daughter brought her back with one question: “If you’re not a painter… what can you be?”

She picked up her brush and never stopped again.


Critics compared her use of dramatic light to Caravaggio. She was painting what she was confined to. And making it sacred.

In 1996 she was named a Companion of the Order of Canada. Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson called her ‘our national treasure.’ She died on August 14th 2018 at 83.

The son of a Group of Seven painter told her she didn’t have what it took.

She painted the world around her and made magic!

I hope to do the same in my studio.
Dm me to become art 🪽✨

Sources: Art Canada Institute · Maclean’s · The Walrus · CBC · National Gallery of Canada · Wikipedia

Mary Pratt · Canadian art · women in art history · feminist art history · Canadian realism · photorealism · still life painting · domestic art · Group of Seven · forgotten women artists · art history you weren’t taught · Newfoundland art · Order of Canada

06/13/2026

She invented drip painting in her kitchen.
While wearing her high heels in her apartment. Before the man credited ever did.
 
Janet Sobel was born Jennie Lechovsky in 1893 in what is now Dnipro, Ukraine. Her father was killed in a pogrom when she was young. Her mother emigrated with the children to New York in 1908. Janet was fifteen.
 
She married. She had five children. She became a housewife in Brooklyn.
 
Her son Sol had won a scholarship to the Art Students League and told her one day she should try making art herself if she cared so much about it. She did! He became her greatest advocate, reaching out to Max Ernst, André Breton, and dealer Sidney Janis on her behalf.
 
In 1943 Janis included her in a major exhibition at the Arts Club of Chicago alongside Grandma Moses and Horace Pippin.
 
Her technique was laying her canvases on the floor of her Brighton Beach apartment and using glass eye droppers and her vacuum cleaner in reverse. She created all over drip paintings. Four years before Jackson Po***ck.
 
A few things that didn’t make the video:
 
In 1945 a photographer came to her apartment to document her work for a planned Life magazine article. He took the photographs. The article never ran. Po***ck got the Life magazine feature instead.
 
Later her husband moved the family to New Jersey to be closer to his factory. She couldn’t drive. She was cut off from the galleries of New York.
 
Her career lasted three years.
 
She died in 1968 at 75. Her painting Milky Way (1945) is in MoMA’s permanent collection…recently displayed alongside Louise Nevelson, Kazimir Malevich, and Sonia Delaunay in a gallery of Ukrainian-born artists.
 
She invented a technique while wearing high heels in her kitchen.
The art world gave the credit to someone else. A man.
 
Sources: MoMA · Artnet News · Messy Nessy Chic · Daily Art Magazine · Wikipedia · Brushed Aside by Noah Charney
 
Janet Sobel · drip painting · Abstract Expressionism · women in art history · feminist art history · Ukrainian American art · Jackson Po***ck · forgotten women artists · art history you weren’t taught · MoMA · Brighton Beach · self-taught artist

06/12/2026

She spent her career making other people beautiful. When she finally painted herself, she refused to filter.

Giovanna Fratellini was born in Florence in 1666. As a child her aunt introduced her to the court of Vittoria della Rovere the Grand Duchess of Tuscany and one of the most significant female art patrons of the Baroque era. She trained in miniature painting, pastels, oils, enamel, and chalk. Multi media artist!

In 1706 she was accepted into Florence’s Accademia del Disegno which the world’s first drawing academy. In 1710 she was elevated to full member.

As the official portrait painter of the Medici court she would flatter her subjects producing idealized images of the Florentine nobility that made them more beautiful and refined than reality. That was the job and she delivered what they asked!

In 1720 she painted herself. Just a regular woman at work at 54 but full of energy while painting her son Lorenzo in miniature in the same portrait… but she painted him idealized in her typical style. Lorenzo died in 1729. They were immortalized together and she passed two years later.

That painting now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence alongside the greatest self-portraits in history!

A few things that didn’t make the video:
She was featured in the Emmy-winning PBS documentary Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence which revealed thousands of works by women in storage in Florence’s museums, including many of her pastels and portraits.

She trained other female painters throughout her life… including Violante Beatrice Siries and Maria Maddalena Gozzi Baldacci. She passed her knowledge to women when the system had no interest in doing so.

Sources: Royal Collection Trust · Davis Publications · Wikipedia · Italy Magazine · PBS Invisible Women (2013)

Giovanna Fratellini · Baroque art · women in art history · feminist art history · Italian Baroque · Medici court · Uffizi Gallery · forgotten women artists · art history you weren’t taught · Florence Italy · self-portrait history · women painters

06/11/2026

She told the truth. And the world punished her for it.

Na Hye-seok was born in 1896 in Suwon, Korea. At 18 she was already writing powerful work… “We need to become women who possess a clear sense of purpose and a consciousness to live up to their full individual potentials. We ought to be ideal women ourselves…true and powerful sources of a mysterious inner light.”

She studied Western oil painting in Tokyo, organized Korean women students, marched for Korean independence in 1919, and was arrested and jailed for six months. When she was released she held the first solo exhibition of Western style oil paintings by any Korean artist, man or woman! More than 5,000 people came on the first day.

In 1927 she traveled to Europe. While in England she met Emmeline Pankhurst of the British suffragette movement.

She came home ready to take action.

In Paris she had an affair. Her husband divorced her in 1931. She was cast out by her family and banned from seeing her children. Her husband had also been having an affair. Only she was punished for it.

In 1934, already ruined and cast out, she published A Divorce Testimony. It was not a confession. It was a mic drop!

This was not a uniquely Korean injustice. Western women were being institutionalized for the same thoughts. She just was brave and said them out loud.

She died in 1948 of malnutrition in a charity hospital. No one came to claim her remains.

In 2019 Google dedicated a Doodle to her.

She told the truth. Whether they were ready to hear it or not, and it cost her.

Na Hye-seok · Korean art history · women in art history · feminist art history · Korea women artists · first Korean female painter · forgotten women artists · art history you weren’t taught · Korean independence movement · Emmeline Pankhurst · feminist history · women who changed history

06/10/2026

She was Turkey’s first female opera singer. She also painted everything including her refrigerator!

Semiha Berksoy spent her entire life refusing to be contained. Born in Istanbul to artist parents, she starred in the first Turkish opera in 1934, commissioned by Atatürk himself!

Before she left for Berlin to study opera, her friend the revolutionary poet Nazim Hikmet wrote to her “May your path be open. Not Hitler’s land, but Beethoven’s homeland. I wish you victories that are not bloodstained, but full of life.”

But she was never just a national symbol. In 1939, she became the first Turkish prima donna to perform in Western Europe, later returning home to help found the Turkish State Opera and Ballet. But while she gave the Republic her voice, her paintings told a different story. Instead of sleek, patriotic art, her work was surreal, raw, and chaotic! Decades ahead of her time, she even created a kinetic painting with moving arms that echoed her 1941 performance as Tosca…blurring opera and visual art long before it was trendy!

She turned her entire life into a canvas. She painted her walls, her furniture, and her refrigerator, all while dressing entirely in pink!

She never stopped creating. At 88, she performed at Lincoln Center in NY. Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof museum dedicated a major retrospective to her six decades of genius. Finally and rightly seen! She was always herself. Full of life. Refusing to be bloodstained.

My studio is for women who refuse to be contained. DM me.

Sorry if my pronunciation isn’t perfect I’m still learning!

Sources: Anadolu Agency · Hurriyet Daily News · The Diasporist · Hamburger Bahnhof Museum · Wikipedia

Semiha Berksoy · Turkish opera history · women in art history · feminist art history · Turkey women artists · first female opera singer Turkey · forgotten women artists · art history you weren’t taught · Istanbul · Atatürk · Turkish Republic · Hamburger Bahnhof · surrealist self-portrait

06/09/2026

She had never held a brush.
Then she had a dream that changed the path of her life.

In 1949, Zubeida Agha held Pakistan’s first exhibition of modern art…and a prominent critic, Attiya Fyzee called it “art of the addled type, fit only for mental asylums.”

It nearly caused a riot.

She didn’t flinch. She kept painting. She built institutions. She trained generations of artists! And history called her the Mother of Pakistani Modern Art.

In Pakistan they said her work was too Western. In Europe, critics praised the Eastern quality of her work. She was impossible to define. Which is what makes art interesting!

She hated the word feminist. But she spent 16 years building the institutions that made Pakistani modern art possible.

She received the President’s Award for Pride of Performance in 1965.


My studio documents women who were ahead of their time.

I apologize if my pronunciations aren’t perfect, I’m definitely learning!

To support women’s empowerment in Pakistan today, consider following and supporting the Aurat Foundation who have spent 40 years of advocating for women’s rights. af.org.pk

Sources: Wikipedia · AWARE Women Artists · The National · Bonhams · Asia Art Archive

My studio makes sure your name is never forgotten.
DM me or drop MUSE below 🤍

Zubeida Agha · Pakistani modern art · women in art history · feminist art history · forgotten women artists · art history you weren’t taught · Pakistani artists · South Asian art · women painters · abstraction · modern art history · Mother of Pakistani Modern Art

Yadrah.
06/08/2026

Yadrah.

06/08/2026

She was the first woman to paint The Last Supper.

At seven meters wide and two meters high, it was the most demanding subject in Renaissance painting…an elite milestone attempted only by the greatest male artists of her era. And she did this with no formal training.

Her name was Plautilla Nelli. Born in Florence in 1524, she entered a Dominican convent at age 14 and spent the rest of her life within its walls. With no academy access, she taught herself to paint by copying drawings left by the master Fra Bartolomeo. Soon, she built something extraordinary…a thriving, all-female artists workshop inside the convent, training fellow nuns and supplying art across Florence.

Even the famous Renaissance historian Giorgio Vasari praised her talent, noting she would have achieved “marvelous things” with the formal training men received. Yet, she still conquered the ultimate artistic milestone, signing her masterpiece with four haunting words: Orate pro pictora. Pray for the Paintress.

Her talent was incredible. And her work was stunning. She deserves to be recognized.

Sources: Smithsonian Magazine · The Art Newspaper · Daily Art Magazine · Advancing Women Artists Foundation

Plautilla Nelli · Renaissance art · women in art history · feminist art history · Italian Renaissance · first female Last Supper · forgotten women artists · art history you weren’t taught · Florence Italy · Dominican nun artist · Advancing Women Artists · Pray for the Paintress

06/07/2026

She documented a world. She loved a woman for 55 years. And asked for nothing except to rest beside her.

Born in Staten Island in 1866, Alice Austen taught herself photography at age ten. By 18, she was an absolute master of her craft… she was logging exposures, lenses, and light conditions on her negative envelopes. She dragged 50 pounds of equipment on her bicycle, climbed fenceposts, and captured what others ignored…immigrant street vendors, women holding hands, and everyday joy.

In 1897, she met Gertrude Tate. They built a beautiful life together for over half a century. But when the 1929 stock market crash stripped Alice of her fortune, they were eventually evicted and separated by families who disapproved of their love. Devestating.

Alice was forced to live in a local poorhouse, though Gertrude visited every single week.In 1951, her photos were rediscovered and published in Life magazine, rescuing her from poverty before she passed away in 1952.

Their families denied their final wish to be buried side by side.They tried to erase them, but her art outlived them!

In June 2025, more than 7,500 of her original prints and negatives officially returned home to her beloved estate, Clear Comfort where they belonged.

Sources: Alice Austen House Museum · NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project · Colossal (June 2025) · Bonnie Yochelson, Too Good to Get Married (2025)


Alice Austen · LGBTQ art history · q***r art history · le***an art history · women in art history · Victorian photography · feminist art history · Staten Island history · Pride Month · forgotten women artists · art history you weren’t taught · Clear Comfort · Gertrude Tate

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