"Catching the right expression": Amateur and Professional Women's Photography in The Woman at Home , 1893–1918

Abstract: By analyzing the treatment of both amateur and professional women's photography across feature types in The Woman at Home , including ads, nonfiction profiles, and competitions, this paper explores how discourse on photography reflects the relationship between women's work, pastimes, and the domestic. This essay argues that photography can be read as distinct from other forms of women's work that have been explored more thoroughly within The Woman at Home because of its inextricable links to the materiality of the periodical. Professional and amateur women photographers are not only thematic material for the magazine's text; they also contribute to the magazine's representation of domestic femininity by manufacturing images reproduced within its pages.