Gifted Woman

In b & w photographs, each accompanied by a capsule biography, Shatz portrays 50 accomplished women of the San Francisco Bay area, in recognition of their achievements and of what he believes is an improved career environment for women. His subjects include such widely known figures as writers Jessica Mitford, Maxine Hong Kingston and Isabel Allende, Reps. Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi and Delancey Street Foundation director Mimi Silbert. Others have forged careers in a wide range of disciplines--art, drama, journalism, therapy, music, law, natural history, poetry, design, medicine, restauranting, television. Schatz's full-page photographic portraits of them are appealing, at times interpretive, elegant, warm, merry, ingenious, suave. This is an informative, unself-conscious and uncontentious addition to feminist documentary history. (Oct.)