Apart from documenting women photographers who have marked their presence in the profession, Gadihoke’s study aims to uncover the reasons behind their earlier invisibility. She also expects her research to advance her thinking on larger issues pertaining to the use of technology and career choices in the media for women.

While Gadihoke does not posit inherent differences between men and women, she makes out a case for differences in perceptions and realities based on a person’s experience, socialization and historical positioning. Women and men do not create images in a vacuum, she argues, and one cannot ignore that they are products of society, and that their identity intervenes in their artistic production. Her study would foreground gender, therefore, while critically viewing it against other factors that may impinge on artistic sensibility.

The larger questions in her reading of the newly emerging group of women photographers thus have clearly feminist goals. Does the presence of women in the fashion industry alter certain relationships of viewing through the lens, she asks. How do these women view their relationship with their subjects? Does the presence of a woman photojournalist make a difference in the sphere of news reporting? Why do so many women prefer to work on photo-features documenting the ‘inner worlds’ of people?

While noting that women have always been defined in particular ways by the camera, Gadihoke also points out that they have a discursive relationship with the technology. Technologies too, she argues, are designed for specific social contexts and with certain users in mind. Latest developments in technology may have made the profession more accessible to women, but they have also gone hand in hand with the devaluation of the image of women, as reflected, for instance, in current advertising.

The victimization or exclusion of women, however, is not the main concern of the study. Through the work of contemporary professionals, Gadihoke will attempt to highlight how “women actively negotiate and work with technology, subverting structures of power, using various survival techniques and strategies.”

Much of Gadihoke’s research will feed into an ongoing dissertation on women and technology at MCRC. In the long term, she feels her research may also lead to a three-part film on women photographers. Photographs and other material procured with the grant will be housed both at Mediastorm and MCRC.

Gadihoke’s more enduring goal, however, is the applicability of the research to her profession as a teacher in the area of media studies, developing curriculum and attempting to strengthen and shape thinking on a subject dear to her heart.