Review: A dangerous field: women artists and the photographic image. Magdalen Road Studios, Oxford.

by Martin Stott

The theme of PhotoOxford2020 is ‘Women and photography: ways of seeing and being seen’. The

theme enables contemporary artists, photographers and curators to rediscover and celebrate

women photographers whose work has been overlooked or marginalised over the years. Helen

Muspratt, (1907-2001) a photographer I had never heard of until this year, is a case in point. Her

archive is now in the Bodleian Library who are staging a remarkable exhibition of her work in the

Weston Library.

But ‘A dangerous field: women artists and the photographic image’ stands out not only because the

work is very much by living artists, but also because the participants are primarily artists, and only

secondarily photographers. They use photography in their work but they do not define themselves

as photographers. In doing so they bring a different perspective to their practice and this is

dramatically displayed in this exhibition.

First off it is worth saying that as with so much else these days, the exhibition is virtual, an online

exhibition which eschews the complicated virtual ‘staging’ that some other exhibitions in this

Festival attempt. Rather, it sticks to what works well on screen, a 14 minute film and a set of

photographs for each of the twelve artists, accessed by the simple procedure of clicking on each

ones ‘tile’. Content over form.

The work is varied and reflects the primary practices of the artists, from etching to ceramics and

embroidery. From a photographic point of view several contributions stand out. Cally Shadbolt’s

‘Through the forest behind the trees (experimental work)’ reflects the current interest in nature and

landscape. Set in two woodlands there are strong references to Martin Parr’s early work ‘Bad

weather’ (1982); monochrome, the flash used in the rain producing an almost gothic sense of

disorientation in what is a quintessentially English experience, rain. Annabel Ralphs in ‘Swanage,

printed postcards’ riffs on that most quotidian of photographic experiences (at least until the advent

of Instagram) the seaside postcard. John Hinde for the 21 Century. Muspratt had her first studio in

Swanage, and Ralphs acknowledges this connection while creating postcards that are consciously

decontextualised - ‘any seaside’. Wig Sayell’s take on the seaside in ‘Penarth Pier 2020’ is rather

different. There is sadness at the memory of the time spent there with a dying friend, and the

meanings walking along the beach and the pier after visiting her, evoke. There are echoes of Paddy

Summerfield’s work in another Welsh resort, Barmouth, memorialising and celebrating his parents

lives as they come to a close, in the exhibition ‘Voyage around my mother’ also part of PhotoOxford

2020.

Claudia Figueirdo has a different take on loss and moving on in ‘Who are you anyway and where do

you come from?’ photographs of her daughter’s room and the objects in it, after she left of

university. Like the work of Anna Fox, it situates change in that apparent citadel of stability, the

home. Teddy bears, a row of shoes, a star spangled ‘my little pony’ admiring itself in the mirror, all

part of yesterday’s life. Memories both joyful and sad captured in a few images soon to disappear as

the room is repurposed.

Which brings me finally to the most explicitly feminist interventions in the exhibition, those by Asma

Hashmi and Helen Ganly. Hashmi’s ‘He loves me knot, 2020’ is a challenging set of photographs

where her ‘focus has been patriarchal values and gender-based violence in Pakistan’. As she puts it

‘Seemingly mundane activities such as patchwork and embroidery reference the female and are a

form of catharsis’. Stitching rose petals, individually shaped like pudendum onto canvass referencing

the childhood game ‘he loves me, he loves me not’, the work is a critique of the ideology which

associates family honour with female virtue. Ganly’s photographs are another very personal

reflection on this the issue of male power and the male gaze. Tellingly entitled ‘Self harm 2019’ she

remarks in the film that is an important part of the exhibition, that for her ’The dangerous field is the

subject of self-portraiture’, a subject covered from a feminist perspective by Jo Spence in ‘Putting

myself in the picture’ (1986). It is not difficult to see why. The first photograph of her was taken in

1987, naked apart from a tightly fitting plastic sack that she retrieved from a building site

emblazoned with the words ‘basic slag’, the picture surrounded with other derogatory terms for

women. The second is one taken last year of her with a very pronounced black eye. The immediate

association is with the inevitable results of the mind-set articulated in the first photograph - male

violence. The effect is shocking. Ganly reinforces it by quoting Dale Spender’s ‘Man-made language’

(1980) to illustrate her point; the English language has 220 words for a sexually promiscuous woman,

but only 20 for men.

‘A dangerous field’ is a fascinating collection of artists reflecting on photography with very diverse

perspectives; whether it be to record or research their subject whilst engaging in the examination of

their practices, or pushing their creative boundaries by using photography to explore or subvert their

‘field’. What is so striking about this exhibition as a whole is that it demonstrates the success of both

approaches, and in doing so expands the range and depth of photography as a medium itself. There

are not many exhibitions that can lay claim to that.

Marin Stott is a member of the Oxford Photographers Group, Chair of Writers in Oxford and father

to two daughters.