Amelia Earhart, Gloria Steinham, Mae West, Martha Gellhorn; some of the countless women we have long admired for providing the inspiration to live a life that defies expectations and ignores boundaries. Now we can add to that list a whole host of un-named women from all over the world found in a series of images celebrated in a new book.

Snapshots of Dangerous Women is a collection of photographs sourced over two decades from flea markets and estate sales by the art collector Peter Cohen. In candid snapshots from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, he discovered images of girls doing activities deemed extremely unladylike at the time – smoking, drinking, riding rodeo or playing football, each one as playful as the next, giving the boys as good as they get.

The photographs are essentially a showcase of Girl Power in its original form. Be they sharing cigarettes in pin up style swim suits or swash buckling in britches and boots, wearing men’s clothing with unapologetic aplomb or swigging beers behind the bike sheds, the women in Cohen’s collection of photographs are all breaking boundaries and crashing through the barriers of expectations – and having a wild time doing it. Each one celebrates a certain sort of spirit that we at KOTUR love – the spirit of a woman who is a renegade, a breath of fresh air and the best sort of rebel. As Mia Fineman, associate curator of the department of photographs at the Met, puts it in the book’s introduction, “She’s a tough dame, an adventuress; harridan, daredevil, badass.” This book celebrates her in all her unapologetic glory. A great gift for the adventuresses in all our lives.

Snapshots of Dangerous Women is published by Rizzoli

Photo Courtesy of Rizzoli