Profile

Judy Dater (born Judy Rose Lichtenfeld on June 21, 1941, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California) is an American photographer and feminist. She is known for her photographic work from a distinctly female perspective, particularly her self-portraits, depictions of the female nude, and images exploring identity and the relationship between humans and nature. Dater is regarded as one of the few highly successful women photographers of her generation and is often described as someone who “has never been swayed by trends and has remained true to her own vision.” Her work is closely tied to the feminist movement and the shifting landscape of photographic expression from the 1960s through the 1980s, and it continues to be culturally significant.

Throughout her long career, Dater has participated in numerous exhibitions. One of the most notable is the large-scale retrospective “Judy Dater: Only Human,” held at the de Young Museum in San Francisco in 2018, which provided a comprehensive overview of nearly fifty years of her work. Her photographs have also been featured in several group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, including Photographs of Women (1971), Artists by Artists (1977), and Mirrors and Windows (1978), where her contributions drew attention within the contexts of contemporary photography and feminist art. In recent years, she has continued to exhibit actively, with thematic solo shows such as “Poets, Prophets and Pioneers” (2024) at Modernism Inc., which presented newer works alongside earlier pieces.