Marie Docher
thumb|2024, by Gérald Garitan
Marie Docher (born 1963 Auvergne) is a French  photographer, filmmaker and feminist activist. She was an organizer of the  La Part des femmes collective, which fights against the invisibility of women in the world of photography. She was awarded the Chevaleresse des Arts et des Lettres.

She used the pseudonym Vincent David.

 Life 
She graduated from the ESC Clermont Business School, but was more interested in the photo laboratory than in her studies.

She began her career in Paris in 1987 as a publishing executive. She sometimes hired studio photographers. In 1994, Marie Docher gave up working as a salaried worker to open her own agency and, the following year, met the photographer and visual artist Isabelle Rozenbaum, who had just created an image bank. She encouraged Docher to reconnect with photography and commissioned her to create a series of images on religions.

In 2002, Marie Docher sets off to walk on the Camino de Santiago. During this trip, she photographed her face every time she drank water. This work is exhibited under the title Santiago at the Voies Off d'Arles 2003. Marie Docher also worked as a photographer for  Sciences et Vie and Sciences et Vie Découvertes.

She was inspired by her visit to the exhibition elles@centrepompidou, which between 2009 and 2011 brought together works by women artists from the collections of the Musée National d'Art Moderne (MNAM) at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. 

In 2012, her project L'Île sans rivages brought together photographs and videos taken on a repetitive and daily basis on a Norwegian island, exploring the question of the passage of time and aging.  She met with  Odile Fillod which led her to read the  feminist theorists.

From 2014, Marie Docher  created the blog Atlantes & Cariatides in which she challenges institutions about gender inequalities in art, hidden under the male pseudonym Vincent David. She says that "in the openings, we talk a lot about this feminist man who we find great."

In 2016, she became a member of the feminist action group La Barbe. As part of an exhibition at the MFC-Michèle Didier gallery in Paris followed by a symposium at the Maison des auteurs SACD, she apostrophizes institutions and gallery owners who preserve and perpetuate male art in contempt of female creators. The following year, she was at the origin of the creation of La Part des femmes, a collective committed to the visibility and recognition of women photographers. In a manifesto read at the 2018 Paris Photo fair, the collective noted that "the majority of graduates of specialized schools, [women] represent barely 20% of the artists exhibited in galleries, festivals and other institutions." A letter, published in the newspaper Libération, is addressed to the director of the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles about the lack of visibility of women photographers within the festival. In the following edition, 51% of women appeared in the solo exhibitions.

 Exhibitions 

 2014: Island Without a Shore, Gallery 916, Tokyo
 2016: L'Île sans rivages, Focales en Vercors festival, Villard-de-Lans; Présence Photographie festival, Montélimar
 2018: Time-Climate-Scenery, MYD Gallery, Tokyo

 References 

Category:1963 births
Category:French photographers
Category:Living people