1914 Emmeline Pankhurst being carried away by Superintendent Rolfe outside Buckingham Palace. 20,000 suffragettes gathered to demand votes for women.
Happy New Year 2016 to you all.
I’m starting the year with a historic photo and a quick catch up of my recent writing over at Photofusion before posting more content. Today I’m pointing you to my bimonthly theme/opinion piece on Photography and the Removal of Images and bimonthly Photofusion Members’ Project Review, plus two, monthly photobook reviews. Follow the links below.
YOU CAN’T SHOW THAT! Photography and the Removal of Images
“At a recent group art exhibition, ironically titled Passion for Freedom held at The Mall Galleries in London, I was handed a sealed envelope by one of the organisers of the event. Inside there was a postcard with a photograph from a series of seven photographic light box images ISIS In Sylvania by London-based artist Mimsy that had been removed because they were deemed by the police to have “potentially inflammatory content”. (continue by following the link). http://www.photofusion.org/blog-post-photography-and-the-removal-of-images-by-miranda-gavin/
“Get that woman out of here!” screamed the North African bureau chief for The AP when wire service reporter Ruth Cowan arrived in Algiers to begin her war reporting career. Cowan and nearly 140 other American women reporters were accredited to cover WWII, but journalism, military and social conventions were against them.”
One of the upsides of social media is that it allows people, who may never have had a chance to meet, to make contact. Just after I had posted on the exhibition at the IWM London Lee Miller: A Woman’s War, and wrote that I knew nothing of Toni Frissell and Dickey Chapelle and would need to do some research, I received a lovely and informative email fromMichele Midori Fillion (Hurry Up Sister Productions), director of the documentaryNo Job For a Woman: The Women Who Fought To Report WWII.
Midori Fillion emailed me about some of these women saying: “Before World War II, war reporting was considered to be ‘no job for a woman’. But when the United States entered the war, American women reporters did not want to miss covering the biggest story of the century so they fought for and won access. But there was a catch: women reporters would be banned from the frontline, prevented from covering Front Page stories about generals and battlefield manoeuvres, and assigned ‘woman’s angle’ stories about nurses and female military personnel. Several refused to abide by these journalistic conventions and military restrictions and, instead, brought home a new kind of war story: one that was more intimate yet more revealing. They reached beyond the battlefield, and deep into human lives to tell a new story of war.
“This 60-minute historical documentary film focuses on three American reporters—photographer Dickey Chapelle, magazine writer Martha Gellhorn, and wire service reporter Ruth Cowan. Margaret Bourke-White is a main secondary character and Lee Miller and Toni Frissell are honorable mentions in the film through the use of their photographs and an ID photo of each them. Miller and Gellhorn were good friends.
“Needless to say, this subject— women war reporters—has been my passion for many years since first discovering the incredible life of Dickey Chapelle while I was in journalism school in 1990. I met Toni Frissell’s daughter and gained her permission to use Frissell’s photos in the film. Both she and Miller, being fashion photographers first, were incredible war photographers for the light and detail they captured in their images.
“The women, therefore, had to figure out how to work within the restrictions (Ruth Cowan) or by-pass them altogether (Martha Gellhorn) or a combination of both (Dickey Chapelle). Margaret Bourke-White was in a different reporter category altogether, male or female. Being Life Magazine’s star reporter, she had a path paved for her, but even still, she was treated differently because she was a woman. For example, she was sent by boat to North Africa along with the nurses because it was thought to be safer to send the women on a nice big boat and not with the male reporters who were flown over. The boat the women were on was torpedoed. But because Margaret Bourke-White had the reporters knack of being in the right place at the right time, she got an incredible story out of being in a torpedoed boat. Her male colleagues were furious not to have such ‘luck’.
“American women reporters had to fight every step of the way to report the war: from getting accredited to fighting the restrictions imposed on women reporters once they were accredited. The restrictions included no access to Jeeps or mess halls, no going to the front lines in the war zone, no sitting in on press conferences etc. In other words, all of the things that a reporter would need access to in a war zone to cover the war and/or report career-changing stories.
“There were so many stories that I would have loved to include in the film and so many other reporters whose work I would also have liked to highlight, but I was constrained by funding and the parameters of making a contained 60-minute story. The film combines rarely seen archival footage and stills, actors reading the written words of the three main characters—they read from the women’s reports, letters, notes from their diaries, or selections from their memoirs—as well as interviews with contemporary female war reporters. Julianna Margulies narrates the film. No Job For a Woman is distributed by Women Make Moviesand has been aired on PBS channel over the last three years.”
“… the power of the images is in their direct connection to the viewer. We remember our own schooldays and wonder what happened to our own classmates. By presenting different pupils, different schools, different year groups, Germain asks questions about contemporary educational practices and social divisions. Already we can imagine the life trajectories of some of these young people. Here are faces full of hope and promise. Here also, is the silent threat of failure. Aspiration competes with apathy …” Tom Shakespeare. Archive Magazine, October 2005
JULIAN GERMAIN THE FUTURE IS OURS: CLASSROOM PORTRAITS 2004-2015
Today I am posting some photos taken on my iPhone from the opening night of British photographer and artist Julian Germain‘s The Future is Ours: Classroom Portraits 2004-2015, a major exhibition at the Towner art gallery in Eastbourne, East Sussex running until 10 January 2016. This body of work began in schools in North East England in 2004 and was extended to schools throughout the UK the following year. Since 2005 the archive has grown to include schools throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, South East Asia, North and South America, and a special commission for this exhibition, four Eastbourne schools that Germain visited and photographed in July.
The Future is Ours: Classroom Portraits 2004-2015 is a long-term project exploring universal themes of school and childhood from 19 countries worldwide and is thus a global archive documenting 461 school classrooms. Using his own photography technique, he captured the students in the natural environment of their classrooms and also canvassed some of the pupils about their lives. His work resulted in the publication Classroom Portraits 2004-2012 (now out of print) and an exhibition at Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam.
Bushra, 16, takes a photo of men playing cards in her camp. Photo: UNICEF/Iraq/2015/Mackenzie
I’ve learned so much. I learned to communicate with people. I’ve built up much more confidence. Now I want to become a photojournalist. Bushra, aged 16.
Another quick post to point you to a UNICEF-supported photography project that aims to empower Yazidi women through photography. These young women are in a camp (near Dohuk in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq) for displaced Iraqis, who have fled the advance of ISIS. The women met every day for two months and were taught photography techniques by two Kurdish photographers.
I’ve just watched a news story about the participants and wanted to share it with you as soon as I could.
Follow this link for more information: Empowering Yazidi Women through photography. The full article from which the quote is taken is by Lindsay Mackenzie, a consultant with UNICEF Iraq.
The Roaming Eye (tRE) is back in the Czech Republic and is on the look out for, and is enjoying coming across, some random photography. With this in mind, the q cafe has a small show downstairs in the cafe on Opatovická 12, Praha 1 until 28 July.
Czech photographer Jiří Třeštík accompanied and documented three men living with HIV in three different European cities Prague, Munich and Zurich.
So here’s a preview for those who may be interested in the small cafe/bar show…
If you have any suggestions for content, or want to know more or are having problems with the blog, feel free to contact me: mirandagavin@hotmail.com
About the Roaming Eye blog
WELCOME to The Roaming Eye (formerly Hotshoe Blog).
Expect an eclectic dip into the world of contemporary photography and lens-based media from a multidisciplinary perspective.
Catch up on news, announcements, exhibitions, interviews and multimedia.
Check out the unique mobile photography Photo Stroll experience covering the latest shows and events.
I am co-founder of Tri-pod, a creative initiative supporting lens-based artists with personal projects in process, and am a regular contributor to Photofusion Photography Centre's website, as well as contributing essays to Hotshoe, a quarterly contemporary photography magazine. Previously, I was the editorial content manager and project developer of Frame and Reference, an online visual arts magazine for the South East from 2013-14.
The Roaming Eye is curated by Miranda Gavin. All views are my own.
If you have any suggestions for content, or want to know more or are having problems with the blog, feel free to contact me: mirandagavin@hotmail.com
theroamingeye.wordpress.com 