Observing Women at Work
The Reid Gallery,
Glasgow School of Art
4 March 4 – 27 April 27
www.gsa.ac.uk
FRANKI Raffles, who died at the age of just 39 in 1994, was an Edinburgh-based photographer. She photographed women at work and in their everyday lives, in Scotland, and across the world.
When she died, she was establishing a reputation as a campaigning feminist photographer with her innovative work on the first Zero Tolerance campaign, funded by Edinburgh District Council’s Women’s Committee. Her powerful constructed images raised awareness of the issue of men’s violence against women and children with a wholly new approach. Short text statements which presented evidence of the stark facts about the reality, and prevalence, of male violence, were juxtaposed with black and white photographs of girls and women of all ages in familiar, ordinary domestic settings.
The campaign was public photography on a large-scale and it was the first time mass media social marketing techniques had been applied in a feminist campaign.
After her death for over two decades her work as a photographer remained largely forgotten. In 2013, with support from The Raffles’ Estate, Alistair Scott, of Edinburgh Napier University, who had known Franki since their undergraduate student days, began a research project to investigate and re-evaluate her work.
Observing Women at Work at Glasgow School of Art's Reid Building presents a selection of black and white photographs and material by Raffles from three bodies of work; To Let You Understand (1987-88), Women Workers in the USSR (1984/1989), and material from the first Zero Tolerance campaign (1992), entitled Prevalence.
Raffles’ work will also be contextualised in this exhibition with works by other key photographers, including Margaret Fay Shaw (1903-2004), Helen Muspratt (1907-2001) and The Hackney Flashers, a collective set up in 1974 by Jo Spence with Neil Martinson.
The exhibition is curated by GSA's Exhibitions Director, Jenny Brownrigg, produced in partnership with Dr Alistair Scott, Edinburgh Napier University, who established The Franki Raffles Archive and with University of St Andrews Special Collections and Zero Tolerance.
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