Writer and photojournalist Deborah Copaken Kogan on her career and her experience with gender bias:
“It’s 1999. I sell my first book to Random House, a memoir of my years as a war photographer, for twice my NBC salary. I’m thrilled when I hear this: a new job; self-reliance; the gift of time to do the work I’ve been dreaming of since childhood. The book is sold on the basis of a proposal and a first chapter under the title Newswhore, which is the insult often lobbed at us both externally and from within our own ranks—a way of noting, with a combination of shame and black humor, the vulture-like nature of our livelihood, and a means of reclaiming, as I see it, the word ‘whore,’ since I want to write about sexual and gender politics as well. Random House changes the book’s title to Shutterbabe, which a friend came up with. I beg for Shuttergirl instead, to reclaim at least ‘girl,’ as Lena Dunham would so expertly do years later. Or what about Develop Stop Fix? Anything besides a title with the word ‘babe’ in it. I’m told I have no say in the matter.”
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