Given the new techniques and conditions of production, as well as the emerging platforms for sharing contemporary documentary footage, many scholars now agree that the conventional labels – in the form of, by way of example, cinéma-vérité or observational cinema – are at best inadequate, and thus call for reinvention. Now that a new group of documentarists have joined an established community of filmmakers, and a young generation of documentarists working in completely different media has rapidly emerged, it is our contention – taken as the point of inception for this volume – that this pivotal turn or paradigm shift in the production of the documentary image precipitates an urgent need for a scholarly study of the specific relationship between female authorship and the documentary image.

The book, as well as its companion volume, Female Authorship and the Documentary Image: Theory, Practice and Aesthetics, comprises an internationally focused study of female authorship in relation to the documentary image. Addressed by a group of scholars at the forefront of contemporary views on this issue, these two volumes are defined by a collaborative effort to map and report on authorship from a global perspective. Given the widespread interest in documenting, and indeed almost obsessional need to document, ourselves and the world around us in the contemporary moment, this two-volume monograph addresses issues as varying as: How do theory and praxis coalesce (if at all) for female practitioners within documentary image making practices? How does technology and contemporary media shape the strategies that inform female authorship and subjectivity? Has the digital turn brought about any major shifts in terms of female subject formation and activism? What is the central mode of address currently in the field? What are the key issues being dealt with? How is female authorship made manifest within a global context? Why is the notion of authorship of sustained relevance and importance to female documentary practitioners? Is female authorship always implicitly or explicitly imbricate with feminist theory?

It is commonly agreed that women's increasing claim to equal societal rights and vocalisation on a global scale have, had a decisive impact on female agency in relation to the documentation of contemporary issues.