Women At Depth
Curated by Joan Koven and Susan Leonard
November 17, 2006 – June 1, 2007
Underwater Photography by members 
of The Society of Woman Geographers
Photographs by:
Idell Conaway
Joan Koven
Susan Leonard
Cherie Northon
Michele Westmorland
Nevada Wier
These photos are © by the photographers.
They may not be copied or used without permission.
Please contact us for additional guidance.
Idell Conaway
Having traveled in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Idell Conaway has photographs of remote indigenous people, their children and habitats. Scuba diving extended her reach to far off oceans that nurture the boat people know as the Sea Gypsies, From her ongoing underwater photography of marine species has merged a fine art collection, “The Underwater World of Idell Conaway,” many images from which have been displayed in many office building lobbies in Manhattan. The Pfizer Corporation has hung an exhibit of Conaway’s work in their corporate gallery at 150 East 42nd Street in New York. In January 2007, the American Museum of Natural History in NYC will open a major show in the Akeley Gallery of Conaway’s coral reef photography to run through July of that year.
Joan Koven
Joan Follin Hughes Koven is Founder and President of Astrolabe, Inc., a non-profit organization formed in 1988 to promote coral reef studies and reef conservation. The principle activities are on the Astrolabe reefs of Fiji in conjunction with the University of the South Pacific (USP). Joan’s research has concentrated on the invertebrate diversity of this reef system. Over 10,000 invertebrate and habitat images as well as transect photos have been digitized and are being identified for incorporation in a database for these reefs. The molluscan collections have been digitally photographed and will constitute a major portion of the USP’s collections.
She has recorded the devastation of the coral bleaching event of 2000 and its subsequent effects that are compounded by over-fishing. She is working with the local community to establish some areas of these reefs as marine reserves.
She is also Secretary, Treasurer, and a director of The MARPAT Foundation, a grant-making institution.
For more information about Joan’s Astrolabe, please visit view the video.
Susan Leonard
Susan S. Leonard graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in French and a minor in Art History. She furthered he studies in art history courses at the University of Pittsburgh and the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. After graduate work at Duke University, she worked in several public and private schools. She is currently Director of the Middle School at The Birch Wathen Lenox School in New York.
Leonard, a member of the Society of Woman Geographers and a Board member of Astrolabe, Inc. and MERI, the Marine Environmental Research Institute, has studied photography with the Nikon School and underwater photography with various experts. She has given illustrated lectures in oceanography at numerous schools, and her photographs have been used in lectures on the medical aspects of scuba diving. Leonard has had four one woman photography shows and has participated in several group shows as well. Her love of the undersea world has taken her to reefs throughout the Caribbean, Hawaii, Palau, Tonga, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and Vanuatu. She has recently been swimming with sperm whales and dolphins in the Azores.
Cherie Northon
Cherie Northon has a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley Geography Department. She is a practicing geographer and cartographer, who now lives in Anchorage, Alaska, and travels extensively. Her career includes university teaching, research, lecturing around the world, and owning a successful cartography firm. Besides being a member of SWG, she was elected in 2001 as a fellow to the Royal Geographical Society (UK) and elected to Phi Beta Kappa upon receipt of her B.A. in 1980.
Michele Westmorland
Michele Westmorland is a freelance photographer and runs her business, Westmorland Photography, LLC in Seattle, WA. Westmorland has created a vast library of imagery from around the world. Her skills in underwater photography have been recognized by a large community of divers and non-divers alike. Her topside photography includes the wildlife, landscape and culture of exotic locations.
Westmorland and photographer Karen Huntt carried the SWG flag on their 2005 journey to Melanesia in search of the sites of portraits of indigenous people by Caroline Mytinger from 1926. They spent two months photographing and video taping existing cultural practices on which Westmorland reported to the SWG. The Smithsonian Magazine published an article, “A Gibson Girl in New Guinea,” about Mytinger and Westmorland’s project in April 2006.
These images are from Michele Westmorland’s book Ocean Duets published by Fulcrum Publishing Fall, 2006. All text was written by Barbara Sleeper and is also from the book.
Nevada Wier
Nevada Wier is an award-winning photographer specializing in the remote corners of the globe and the cultures that inhabit them. She has traveled on numerous expeditions and private explorations in search of unusual places and photographs. Her work has appeared in numerous national and international publications including: National Geographic, Geo, Outside, and The Smithsonian Magazine. Wier’s books include The Land of Nine Dragons – Vietnam Today (Abbeville Press), Adventure Travel Photography (Amphoto), A Day in the Life of Thailand (Collins), and Mother Earth(Sierra Club Books). She has been a frequent photographer on Canon Photo Safaris (OLN & ESPN), a regular guest on The Travel Channel, and featured in a Northwest Airlines international television and print ad campaign. Nevada Wier was recently featured on National Geographic Explorer and Through the Lens about her expedition down the Blue Nile, Ethiopia for National Geographic magazine. She is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In April 2005 I traveled the length of Myanmar’s southern coast, the Mergui Archipelago, from Kawthaung to Mergui. The some 800 idyllic islands scattered along 250 miles of the Andaman Sea are home for the Moken “sea gypsies,” a small nomadic sea culture. Extended families live on small wooden boats, living on land only during the monsoon. They live primarily off what the sea offers. In order to express how absolutely comfortable the Moken are in the water, I went free-diving with them, photographing with a small digital camera, as they hunted for fish, mother-of-pearl shells, and sea urchins.
Guest curators for “Women at Depth”
Joan Koven
Susan Leonard