My first experience with art censorship was not on social media, it was at a Walmart supermarket in rural US. As I waited for a set of self-portraits at the photo desk, the clerk excused himself and a manager replaced him. In a voice loud enough to alert surrounding customers of my indecency, I was told that my prints would be destroyed and that “we usually call the police in this situation”. Genuinely surprised and more than a little confused, I pressed the manager who had threatened me, asking why. Eventually, the answer was, “It shows your nipples”.

After witnessing my artwork reduced to illicit material for the mere fact that I was a woman and my nipples were showing, I was struck by the sheer inequality of the premise. If a man had taken the same self- portraits he would be walking out with them in his hands, whereas I walked out with only anger and shame. Stalking back to my car, I devised my revenge plot: I would put my nipples everywhere.

One nipple sticker at a time, I would prove that a nipple alone is not just harmless, but genderless. The idea was amusing, serious and popular, and soon it would acquaint me with the boundless joys of art censorship on social media. As post after post was removed for that very same ‘it shows your nipples’ rationale, I found that my skirmish with content moderation was just one battle in a long war over nudity and women’s bodies in art online, a war that has destroyed far more art and artists than any prudish Walmart manager could dream.

“If a man had taken the same self-portraits he would be walking out with them in his hands, whereas I walked out with only anger and shame. Stalking back to my car, I devised my revenge plot: I would put my nipples everywhere”

Let the fight begin

The first battle began in 2008, when a Facebook group of new mothers grew sick of their photos being removed for ‘pornography’ and organised a ‘Nurse In’ at the company’s California headquarters. With chants, songs and breastfeeding both in person and online, the ‘Lactivists’ took a powerful first shot at Facebook’s treatment of the female-presenting body.

From the 2008 protest to 2014, Facebook slowly allowed more breastfeeding images, an increase that coincided with rising support for public breastfeeding in the US. Acknowledging visibility to be an influential factor in public acceptance, the US Surgeon General wrote in 2011: “Although focusing on the sexuality of female breasts is common in mass media, visual images of breastfeeding are rare, and a mother may never have seen a woman breastfeeding.” The coincidence of more visibility on social media and a bump in public acceptance is notable, and suggests that ‘real’ lives are not just reflected online, but influenced by online interactions.

The correlation between visibility and social acceptance is well-documented, and particularly significant for underrepresented and marginalised groups as it can mitigate stigma and push society forward. In the case of Instagram vs Lactivists, giving visibility was simply a matter of listening to users and adjusting accordingly. This ‘win’ for breastfeeding sketched out a potentially simple solution for the treatment of marginalised groups on social media – less discriminatory content moderation and an interest in protecting freedom of expression. Despite this, the battle over the female nipple sans baby and the sexualisation of women’s bodies has proven not so simple.

In the years following, Facebook (now Meta) cracked down hard on all sorts of female-body related content. The inflexibility of Meta’s stance, particularly its anti-female nipple policy, has for years kept artists from changing the narrative around the female body. This has had particularly frustrating outcomes for the photography community, who, despite a heritage of over 200 years, still struggles to be explicitly represented by guidelines that currently state they “allow photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures”, without defining what “other art” means.

With Instagram’s continual rise as a professional tool, the repeated erasure and censorship of these artists has left them with just a few, unsatisfying options: mar their artwork with self-censorship, keep projects off social media, or change their practice to adapt to restrictive guidelines. The end result is a stagnant representation of the art world, limited opportunities for at-risk artists, and entire bodies of work created specifically with gender-based censorship in mind.

Rise of legal issues

Those who complain about discrimination online are often reminded that private companies make their own rules, and until recently that was pretty much true. Over the last few years, however, a worrisome shift is threatening freedom of expression across the internet, and is particularly concerning for artists who have yet to be welcomed on platforms such as Instagram.

Efforts to regulate the internet and control platforms are being legislated around the world. In most circumstances, particularly in the UK and US, these efforts purport to protect children and vulnerable groups by going after CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) and sex trafficking. Noble concerns, but ones that have fed into surveillance and partisan ideology online. Instagram artists first experienced these effects when, around the start of 2021, they began to receive a violation notification of “sexual solicitation”. This new accusation levelled at artwork was more than offensive, it was a signal of something more sinister.

Instagram was responding to pressure from a new US law, SESTA-FOSTA, championed by the powerful conservative organisation NCOSE (previously Morality In Media), which has campaigned against pornography, sex work and same-sex marriage, has supported art censorship and targets women’s bodily autonomy. Now Instagram and other platforms became legally liable for anything users posted, spooking them into purging content deemed even potentially illicit, rather than face penalties. This result, when free expression is hindered in an indirect way, is known as the ‘chilling effect’. Beyond social media, this chilling effect has also resulted in the termination of artists’ websites, online shops, newsletters and payment processors.

Digital-rights groups are sounding the alarm on numerous other impending legal changes, and pointing to the fallout from SESTA-FOSTA as proof of the damage that badly designed and partisan legislation can wreak. Laws that are meant to punish websites for illicit material and surveil users will only push actual bad actors deeper underground and target already marginalised communities, meaning that artists are among the first to be impacted. As digital-rights groups warn of a chilled free expression online, human rights groups are reporting the rapidly increasing rate of art censorship around the world. It is apparent we are seeing a global conservative backlash of anti- sex, anti-LGBTQIA+ and anti-feminist values, and that the online culture we have all grown to depend on is a target.

Many of us fight Instagram because we love Instagram – the connection it provides us to opportunities and each other is unparalleled and we want it equally for all. But Meta has only sat down with artists once and any acknowledgment of its mistreatment of artists has been due to public missteps or embarrassment at the hands of the rich and famous. While Instagram’s guidelines correctly note that its policies “have become more nuanced over time”, this progress has been too slow.

Real change in the face of rising art censorship will take the combined efforts of a united art world demanding protection for artists and an end to the “needlessly aggressive gatekeeping” online, as described by anti-art-censorship group Don’t Delete Art (DDA). The DDA manifesto, which aims to bring these voices together, puts it this way: “As social media companies are held to different and changing regulatory standards in the US, Europe and the UK, it will be critical for at-risk artists to be considered and valued as companies adapt.”

With the advent of Instagram and online tools, artists had access to the kind of means and reach they had only dreamed of, an art world finally open to all. In reality though, this access was always obstructed by ingrained sexism and ignorance. Whether torn up in a rural shopping mall or accused of sexual solicitation, art that is restricted by bias will go unseen and artists will suffer obscurity. Through visibility, we can conquer stigma and push our visual narrative beyond the stagnancy we currently risk effecting. Otherwise, if art is not seen, did it ever exist at all? Pics or it didn’t happen.

Emma Shapiro is editor-at-large at Don’t Delete Art, a campaign and resource centre protecting artistic expression across social media platforms

Halfdan Venlov

In March 2020, on the eve of what was due to be a three-week trip home to Copenhagen for Halfdan Venlov, a student at the Glasgow of School of Art (GSA), the UK government announced the first national lockdown. Sensing that his plans to return after Easter might fall through, he packed his cameras, negatives and prized possessions. He felt lucky that he could return to his family home when some students were less fortunate. He has remained in Denmark. 

Surprisingly, Venlov regards the past year as the most successful of his education. At GSA, he developed a love for the darkroom process, and hand-printing became an important part of his practice. When he returned home, Venlov joined forces with two creative friends to set up a shared workspace, which allowed him to continue printing, but also meant he was no longer dependent on GSA’s facilities. 

Despite his positive outlook, Venlov laments the loss of the education he had moved countries for. More than a year and a half after leaving the city, he describes feeling disappointed that he couldn’t bid farewell to Glasgow in a “meaningful way”. However, looking back at his time there, he says, “I felt alone. Moving to a new country is difficult, no matter where in the world it is”. 

Venlov tells me GSA took the decision “very early on to not support a physical [graduation] show. Many students were surprised and really let down by that”. Instead, his cohort came together with other courses to create an exhibition of their own, a citywide Alternative Degree Show Festival. Unfortunately, the costs of travelling and potentially having to isolate meant that Venlov could not participate. 

The photographer hopes to create a book from his final university project, Tomorrow’s Dream, which is set in a Copenhagen cemetery. “Instead of just photographing people, I wanted to make it about a place,” he says. Young people, whom the work centres around, use the space like a park. A central theme of the project is the juxtaposition of youth and leisure in a place characterised by death. Although the ongoing project is not about Covid-19 explicitly, it is a by-product of the pandemic and Venlov making an unexpected journey home. 

halfdanvenlov.com
@halfdanvenlov

Eleanor Beale

When the UK went into lockdown in March 2020, Eleanor Beale was working on community-engaged projects at Bristol’s University of the West of England (UWE). After the institution closed its doors, her peers turned to social media to display their creative responses to the pandemic. At home, seeing the work of others made Beale anxious. “The pressure of it was really intense,” she recalls. 

Adjusting to online study was also challenging as lectures were plagued with technical problems. “It was like everything was working against you,” she says. However, Beale’s tutor, Jack Latham, was supportive, offering his personal contact details to students who were struggling with work and the situation more broadly. At the time, Beale was fortunate to be living with course-mates, who together converted their shared bathroom into a darkroom. 

For her final year, Beale had planned to travel to Africa to produce a body of work. However, due to the pandemic, she turned her focus closer to home, collaborating with her younger sister, Daisy, who was diagnosed as autistic in 2012. “Covid-19 has been awful, but it has matured my practice,” she reflects, describing the process of making the work, A Leaf in the Daisy Field [overleaf], as a dance between her and her sister. Indeed, one can sense the collaboration that fuelled the images. Beale points to a photograph of Daisy balancing on a wooden pallet, a pose that was suggested by her sister. “There’s a lot of guilt in this project,” she continues. “Four years ago, we didn’t really have a relationship, I didn’t understand her as a person.” Unexpectedly, Covid-19 brought them closer. 

eleanorbeale.squarespace.com
@eleanorbealephotography

Carlos Anguera

As a result of Brexit and Covid-19, Carlos Anguera, originally from Spain, brought forward a planned post-graduation move to Berlin to March 2020. Prior to this he had been living in Scotland and studying fine art photography at Glasgow School of Art (GSA). When I speak with him, Anguera has rushed back to Glasgow for a month to clear out his study and move his remaining belongings to Berlin.

Anguera emphasises that issues existed at GSA before the pandemic. In May 2014, a fire ravaged parts of the school’s library and west wing. Then, in June 2018, as a £35 million restoration of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s art nouveau masterpiece neared completion, a second blaze tore through the building, jeopardising its future. Anguera describes this, and its negative effects on the institution’s finances and its staff, as creating a “precarious” atmosphere across campus. 

Since 2014, GSA has had three different directors and two different heads of the School of Fine Art. As of 2015, the university also planned to increase the student population by 25 per cent, with no evidence of an increase in already “stretched” staff to reflect this, resulting in widespread dissatisfaction among students. Anguera talks of a culture of inconsistency and lack of transparency from the university, which the pandemic only served to exacerbate. In his opinion, one of GSA’s strengths was its creative community, which has been “broken” by the pandemic and the other problems affecting the school.

The photographer reflects that momentum was building in his practice before 2020. He was experimenting and making the most of GSA’s facilities, notably its studios. However, when Covid-19 hit, Anguera experienced a “hard cut” after the university initially shut down. With access to space and equipment remaining a problem until spring of this year, he wonders how his practice could have otherwise developed. “I’ve learned a lot by working differently,” he says, “but I haven’t had time to digest or reflect properly.” Despite establishing a new space to work in, Anguera was left with little choice but to incur significant fees when taking his film to private labs in Berlin. 

Nonetheless, there have also been positives. “I’ve matured within my practice, but I still want to go back to some of the things I was doing from a different perspective,” he continues. Previously Anguera’s work was “more poetic and less intentional”. Now it is increasingly focused on the subject matter instead of aesthetics. Anguera also speaks about growing increasingly confident in exploring complex themes, such as capitalism, which he attributes to time spent working with limitations. After the unpredictability of the past 18 months, he is more inclined to embrace the unknown.

carlosanguera.com
@carlosanguera

Over one year since the advent of the pandemic, how much of this move to online programming has truly centred on the needs of disabled communities, who have been calling for remote access long before Covid-19? With vaccination programmes ramping up in the UK, there is talk of a ‘post-Covid’ society. It is reductive to presume that we are through to the other side of the pandemic, especially with many countries still experiencing rising infection rates, deaths, and limited access to vaccinations. However, the idea of a post-pandemic society does raise questions about what the lasting effects might be. For cultural venues, it remains to be seen whether flexible working will impact attendance numbers once people can return to the office. And there is the overriding concern as to whether Covid-19 has transformed display culture. As galleries and museums reopen, how much online programming will remain in place?

The launch of theVOV – a new online viewing platform – in April 2021 suggests there may be a permanent alteration to the way we access culture. theVOV has initiated the digitisation of historic exhibitions from 15 leading British institutions, including Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Spike Island and Goldsmiths CCA. Rethinking how we engage with artworks online, theVOV simulates the gallery experience through coded replicas of archived exhibits. Viewers can navigate the viewing space using the arrow keys on the keyboard and mouse. It is the first time that many of these shows – such as Andreas Gursky’s 2018 retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, and Ibrahim Mahama’s Parliament of Ghosts at the Whitworth in 2019 – have been available online. theVOV has opened up considerable potential for remote access. Yet to what extent has this technology-led initiative kept disabled communities in mind?

As someone who is adept at using technology, even I found the functionality of theVOV challenging. Moreover, there is a wider implication for the institutions involved. Moving forward, will they select a limited number of shows to reproduce online, or will they incorporate remote access to their entire programme? Arguably, access adjustments should be built in from the start to ensure that disabled communities can experience events in the same timeframe as able- bodied people. Archiving exhibitions opens up historic culture, but without the same concessions in the present we cannot mark these adaptations as truly disabled inclusive.

Comparatively, London-based gallery HOME by Ronan Mckenzie, which launched in November 2020, presents its exhibitions online through installation photography. A click-through function clearly displays each artwork, without having to manoeuvre the viewpoint. Providing online imagery of installations is not a new phenomenon, but for leading cultural institutions, such as Tate, publishing online photographs of paid exhibitions that depict all the works on show is not standard. Nor does the institution offer an online option behind a paywall to maintain their ticket revenue.

Significantly, online viewing is not the only accessibility adjustment HOME has made. Essays are provided with an audio accompaniment, and the website clearly outlines its disability policy. Modelled on Carolyn Lazard’s open resource, Accessibility in the Arts: A Promise and a Practice, it includes measurements of the gallery’s lift and toilet, as well as clear information on transport links and available seating.

While Tate galleries do have dedicated accessibility pages, they simply state the availability of “accessible toilets” and a “large lift” (the latter based on Tate Britain’s information) without providing measurements. Planning a visit to a public space as a disabled person is complex and time-consuming. Lazard’s guide notes that qualifiers such as ‘large’ are imprecise and do not allow visitors to ascertain if their mobility aids will be accommodated. A lack of information leads to less clarity around whether a space can actually be accessed. Artist Abi Palmer emphasised this in a series of tweets in August 2020 about the display of her work at a Tate Lates event. Palmer wrote: “I live 20 mins from Tate and have never attended a Tate Late because they provide zero access info.”

Accessibility cannot begin or end with online programming. Remote access is a necessary component in ensuring no one is frozen out from culture. But for institutions to be truly disabled inclusive, their online platforms must be usable. Remote access alone does not ensure that disabled communities can easily navigate and engage with a gallery’s output. Adjustments that need to be considered include (but are not limited to) navigable user-friendly interfaces, audio versions of written text, British Sign Language interpreters for online talks, subtitling and audio description.

While arts institutions are taking steps to break down the barrier of having to physically exist in a space to engage with art, we must ask: who is this truly for? If online outputs are still built for able-bodied and neurotypical people, then a move online is driven by audience numbers, not disabled inclusivity. As we enter a new era impacted by Covid-19, we must ensure that disabled communities are not locked out; they must be front and centre.

jamilaprowse.com

It has been a tough year for artists. Across the globe, exhibitions, commissions, commercial deals and editorial shoots have been cancelled or postponed. With the Covid-19 pandemic, we are witnessing major shifts in the photographic industry; some of these come as a result of long term issues, others are born from new dilemmas. In the first article in this series, we asked how art institutions can improve in 2021. In our second, we asked the directors of art festivals how they adapted to a year of lockdowns. Here, we turn our attention to the individual. Over the last year, how has the artist adapted, and how do they use their spaces differently?

“In 2020, I had 17 exhibitions cancelled,” Juan Brenner explains. Brenner, based in Guatemala City, left a career in fashion photography 10 years ago. Now, his practice  focuses on Guatemalan identity. His project Tonatiuh was his first monograph, and was supposed to be exhibited at four different solo shows around the globe. Some 13 other exhibitions were planned, but none went ahead. “It was supposed to be my year, I dedicated so much time to the book and the shows. It was really, really bad.” In the aftermath of these cancelations, with limited resources and no access to a photo lab, Brenner began taking pictures of whatever he could find around him. “I really wanted to do something with the city. It was empty, and I was able to just walk around with my camera and just shoot the people, the streets, and the fashion,” he explains. “This new work was shot on 100 rolls of film that I couldn’t see, I just kept shooting.”

Brenner explains that despite his geographical isolation, the internet kept him connected. “Instagram was my weapon, it opened so many doors for me,” he says. “I was in the middle of nowhere, but in terms of putting my work out there, Instagram has been amazing.” Brenner is clear that since national lockdowns began, the platform has become essential. Brenner met his current agent, along with a community of fans, over Instagram. “I’ve made amazing friends all over the world, all great artists. There’s a real community on these apps,” he explains. “The pandemic made it evident that the tools are there, and that they work.” 

Some photographers have used the internet to change their practice completely. During the first few months of the pandemic, photographer Charlotte Schmitz turned her focus towards her new project The Journal, a global collective of women photographers. Like Brenner, she too faced the mass cancellation of all her work assignments and shows. “It was evident that many of us were quite isolated and losing income opportunities,” she explains. “[The pandemic] has disproportionately affected women in the industry. In just a few days, more than 400 women applied to The Journal. It developed quickly into a unique global collective. We’re divided into smaller groups that produce work collectively, and share it through our instagram account. We make sure that images by women become part of the history of this time,” she says. Collectives such as The Journal have become support networks. “I quickly focused on conceptualising, teaching and consultancy,” she explains “I don’t want to separate art from social entrepreneurship anymore. It’s wonderful to push collectively for an equitable society. I didn’t focus much on my personal art projects last year, but rather on global and digital projects, such as The Journal,” Schmitz explains.

“I found myself quite lost without a personal workspace, but it’s really good to have time to think about what you want to make. When you’re running on that ‘treadmill’, you don’t have time to think about what you want to do. It’s nice to reassess things.”

-Harley Weir

Faced with the loss of a physical space, many photographers have used the last year to reflect. One of them being fashion photographer Harley Weir. “I got turfed out of my studio in the middle of the first lockdown,” she explains. “I found myself quite lost without a personal workspace, but it’s really good to have time to think about what you want to make. When you’re running on that ‘treadmill’, you don’t have time to think about what you want to do. It’s nice to reassess things.” The pandemic allowed the artist time to breathe, a period in which slower, more insightful research can be conducted. 

Nevertheless, the lack of a physical workspace can prove challenging. “For me, having a studio was a grounding,” Weir explains. “I need a space just to make a mess and experiment. You have to make mistakes to get somewhere different. I have definitely learnt how important a good workspace is.”

In this time of uncertainty, photographers have adapted their practice, working in tandem with Covid-19 conditions in order to produce new work. Josué Rivas is an Indigenous futurist, creative director, visual storyteller and educator. His photography, which focuses on BIPOC in America, has been featured in National Geographic as well as The Guardian. Rivas shoots his subjects via video call. “I saw [lockdown] as this opportunity to be proactive,” he explains. “Photographing over FaceTime or Zoom became a ritual to me.” Rivas also covered the Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, once again using the confines of his environment to create new photographic spaces. “I had been out shooting the protests, and we printed the work and handed them out,” he explains. “We ended up asking local stores if we could put the prints up on their boarded up windows, and they said yes.” The resulting work became a makeshift outdoor exhibition, with Rivas’ protest images exhibiting on the very streets they capture. “As a storyteller, and as a community member, we can use our tools to heal,” he explains. 

Covid-19 has brought a sense of innovation to those working in photography, but it is yet to be seen what that will mean beyond the pandemic. “We are a new hybrid,” Brenner explains, speaking about the blending of spaces and practices; online and physical, “Many of us have realised how important spaces and institutions are,” explains Schmitz. “Many things work online, but art touches people, and I believe it needs physical encounters. I think that we will probably work more with hybrid spaces, combining the online and the offline.”

Juanbrenner.com

charlotteschmitz.com

the-journal.org

Josuerivasfoto.com

“Proving to people that their perceptions were wrong became central. People were telling me, especially in Spain, that these problems belong in the past or other countries. I knew from my research that this was not true.” 

Laia Abril

Laia Abril’s On Abortion (2015), part of her series A History of Misogyny, is a gut-wrenching exploration of the repercussions of not having access to safe, free and legal abortion. Every year 68,000 women around the world die due to botched, illegal procedures. Those who survive risk imprisonment or exile from their community, while millions are forced to continue their pregnancy against their will.

Abril’s research took her worldwide, investigating issues from the history of birth control to dangerous DIY methods women have used for centuries. She collected harrowing personal testimonies from survivors and learned of the violence inflicted on abortion providers. Through complex visual strategies that borrow from ethnography, journalism and social science, Abril maps how patriarchal institutions have long controlled female fertility.

What ignites the work is the ways in which Abril plays with ideas of perception and time. This methodology illustrates the public’s detachment and apathy around this urgent threat to women’s freedom.

“Proving to people that their perceptions were wrong became central,” Abril explains. “People were telling me, especially in Spain, that these problems belong in the past or other countries. I knew from my research that this was not true. My reaction was to dispel these myths and show them that these restrictions could happen tomorrow, anywhere.” Abortion rights are a thermometer of a country’s democracy, and the work articulates how deeply entrenched women’s bodily autonomy is with political strategy and power. 

On Abortion is part of a new exhibition, Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency, on show at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. The show directly confronts the history relating to women’s reproductive health, which has long been shrouded in shame, affected by bad science and discrimination. The near-silence in our culture around miscarriage, menstruation, menopause and how that affects a multiplicity of intersecting identities has either been overtly politicised or rendered invisible.

The exhibition, curated by Karen Irvine and Kristin Taylor, features seven other artists: Krista Franklin, Candy Guinea, Candice Breitz, Elinor Carucci, Doreen Garner, Carmen Winant and Joanne Leonard. Each one explores the psychological, physical and emotional realities of how the female body has long been a site of injustice.

“It’s a deeply political issue, and the more research you do, the angrier you get,” Irvine says. “It became important for the exhibition to call out the suppression of women’s basic human rights by male authoritarian leaders that exist in all different types of societies. It was vital for us to think about the links to capitalism and the labour force and how reproductive health is tied to all of those political concerns.”

The exhibition opens with Carmen Winant’s work, A History of My Pleasure (2019-20), which recognises that women’s historical lack of autonomy over their bodies is inextricably linked to sexuality. “Female pleasure has always been a threat to the patriarchy,” Irvine reflects. “It has been misrepresented both in science and popular culture and is directly related to all the issues around reproductive justice. It’s where it all begins.”

Winant assembles hundreds of images, found in publications and journals produced during the 1970s feminist movement, that collectively shift our perception of what pleasure looks like. The photographs describe sexuality, sensuality and touch in myriad forms. They present the female body as one able to enjoy sex and hold power simultaneously, in direct opposition to forces seeking to politicise and subdue a woman’s libido. Taylor adds, “Winant’s work is equally about sensuality as it is about taking the idea of pleasure away from the objectification of the female body in the forms that we normally see it.” 

Other works on show include Franklin’s book project Under the Knife (2018). It details her relationship to her body after a long struggle with uterine fibroids, a condition known to cause infertility and one that disproportionately affects Black women. There is also Mariposa (2017), a film by Guinea that depicts the heteronormative childbirth industry from the perspective of a queer Latinx couple.

“This work is so personal,” Taylor explains. “Most of the artists in the show had to take a leap to make work that they may be judged for, that may not sell or that carries the risk of never being exhibited. In curating this show, we have seen that there is a huge audience for this work. People are so relieved to finally see these experiences expressed visually and talked about.”

The bigger picture

For decades the camera has played an essential role for feminist artists to critique forces of state-sanctioned oppression. Image-makers like Carrie Mae Weems, Suzy Lake, Renee Cox, Linda Troeller and Mary Beth Edelson used their bodies to confront and reimagine the female experience. In Abigail Heyman’s iconic book Growing Up Female (1974), she deals with themes of birth, pleasure, abortion and the everyday complicated and contradictory aspects of being a woman that had rarely, if ever, been acknowledged in the art world. Let us consider some other examples of contemporary artists offering alternative visions of women’s freedom. 

The late Hannah Wilke made work that examined and critiqued the depiction of women and female sexuality in art history and pop culture, drawing attention to the ongoing objectification of their bodies. The pioneering artist, known for the confrontational use of her body, made her most radical work towards the end of her life.

Intra-Venus (1991-93) recorded Wilke’s long battle with lymphoma through large-format colour photographs and a multi-channel film piece. Adulterated by illness, she refused to be defined by her body and its appearance.

“People usually don’t let themselves be seen sick, without their hair and bloated from chemo,” Barbara Tannenbaum, curator of photography at Cleveland Museum of Art, says. “Her willingness to show what happens with the ravages of time and disease, and let go of that vanity was a real statement of taking control, even when her body wasn’t meeting societal norms. In a way, inflicting the experience on the viewer to say this is a part of life.” Wilke used the work to validate her womanhood and her right to be seen, untethered from cultural codes and expectations.

“The idea of visibility has been such a cornerstone for activists for decades now. Someone like Zanele Muholi is using the simple act of standing in front of the camera as a powerful statement. The extent of their archive highlights the important presence of queer and trans individuals in South Africa.”

Sophie Hackett, Art Gallery of Ontario

Sophie Hackett, curator of photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario, agrees and notes the invaluable contribution of South African photographer, Zanele Muholi. “The idea of visibility has been such a cornerstone for activists for decades now,” she says. “Someone like Zanele Muholi is using the simple act of standing in front of the camera as a powerful statement. The extent of their archive highlights the important presence of queer and trans individuals in South Africa.”

While much of Muholi’s work directly addresses the ongoing violence that LGBTQIA+ people face, perhaps their most radical work is the joyful documentation of the community, reversing a history of invisibility. Being (2006-ongoing), on show at Tate Modern until 17 May, celebrates the everyday intimacy between lesbian couples. In addition to countering visual strategies that uphold the misconception that queer life is ‘unAfrican’, Muholi creates a safe space for lesbians to be free from patriarchal violence and fully embody their love and pleasure.

Likewise, Muholi’s portrait series Brave Beauties (2014-ongoing) collaborates with trans women, gender non-conforming and non-binary people, many of whom are beauty pageant contestants, holding space for bodies that are constantly under threat. 

In The Notion of Family (2001-2014), LaToya Ruby Frazier uses the photograph as a platform for social justice and representation, explored through three generations of women enduring life in the shadow of a steel mill. Grounded in her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania – once a bustling steel town, now a tragic consequence of post-industrial decline – she visually renders the tangible repercussions of environmental racism, government abandonment and political indifference.

Photographing herself, her mother and her grandmother, Frazier testifies to the ways in which corporations control and assert power over human life. Her longtime collaboration with her mother creates the project’s most disarming and affirmative images. The women pose together or photograph each other as a mode of self-expression to resist the dehumanising stereotypes inflicted upon them. Frazier’s sense of care, compassion and responsibility offers a deeply personal and profoundly political vision. 

Looking to the future

While many of these photographic works play a critical role in opening up lines of inquiry and dialogue in culture, the question of whether this hierarchy can ever be toppled remains. Dr Jennifer Good, course leader of photography at the London College of Communication and a leading academic focused on the relationship between photography and violence, cites Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) and the male gaze theory as critical in thinking about this work.

She explains: “Firstly, we should acknowledge the theory’s limitations, as it is positioned in a very binary, cis, heteronormative space, but this theory is still deeply important. There are two layers to male gaze theory: the first is that women’s bodies are coded in a certain way to be consumed and objectified by a heteronormative, straight, masculine viewer.

On a deeper level, Mulvey argues that the history of representation of women’s bodies in this way has been so powerful and ubiquitous that it’s changed women’s self-identification and awareness on a deeper level.

“It’s this idea that as a cis woman, I have this kind of internalised male gaze within my consciousness. I’m always watching myself. It’s about how those images have changed our subjectivity, our psyche and our sense of being in the world. It’s a type of power that is, in a sense, insurmountable.”

Dr Jennifer Good

“It’s this idea that as a cis woman, I have this kind of internalised male gaze within my consciousness. I’m always watching myself.” Good continues: “It’s about how those images have changed our subjectivity, our psyche and our sense of being in the world. It’s a type of power that is, in a sense, insurmountable. For me, when we’re talking about feminist image practices that seek to undo, comment, critique and draw attention to these power relationships, which is really valuable, we first need to recognise that they are so structurally powerful that we can’t ‘reclaim’ or truly change that dynamic, as that would require us to undo a lot of history.”

Where progress is beginning to slowly manifest is within art institutions. Exhibitions such as Reproductive at MoCP Chicago is a trailblazer in both its depth and breadth of ideas. “Museums are a safe space to have dangerous conversations,” Tannenbaum says. “It takes these kinds of dialogue to allow people to look at the world through different filters, through somebody else’s eyes. And that kind of broadening of perspective is valuable.”

Beyond redistributing power and providing greater equity for women artists, one of the biggest challenges facing museums is how they confront centuries of bias in art history. This critical task involves pushing beyond inserting women artists into the existing narrative, but more distinctly changing a culture of thinking to reimagine entirely new narratives. 

It would be remiss to not reflect on the role of the audience. To look at work like Abril’s is to elicit urgent and strong provocations – not merely to ask why this is happening, but more acutely, why have we allowed this to happen? In her groundbreaking book The Civil Contract of Photography, the Israeli author and professor Ariella Azoulay considers the “citizenship” of photography and argues that photographs can transform the world and elicit action.

The problem is not images; it is the audience. Hackett reflects: “The limits of the photograph and the camera are the limits of humanity in any given moment. We’ve seen moments throughout history where a photograph has made a difference, but there has to be an audience willing to be affected by what they see.” 

Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency is on show at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago until 23 May 2021.

mocp.org

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, many artists and curators had begun to grow tired of the gallery. That is to say, the standard exhibition space seen across most of the world; artwork hung on silent white walls, normally in expensive areas of metropolitan cities. Photography festivals, for the most part, exhibit in these buildings. Because of the pandemic, they have been forced to rethink how, and if, they  will continue to do so. Lockdowns, travel restrictions, social distancing and a sudden lack of funding has disrupted galleries. This has created a sink or swim moment, forcing adaptation.

While galleries remain closed or at a restricted capacity, many festivals have been innovating  despite current situations. These success stories beg a question: where do we go from here, and will the gallery ever be the same again?

“The pandemic has taught us that the cultural sector is perhaps not as accessible as we once thought.”

Shoair Mavlian, director of Photoworks Festival

“Prior to Covid-19, we had already begun to research and interrogate the relevance of the traditional photography festival model, which is now more than 50 years old. Specifically, we asked who photography festivals are for, and who the traditional format reaches,” explains Shoair Mavlian, director of Photoworks Festival in Brighton. When it became apparent that travel would not be possible for many, Mavlian and her team created  the Festival in a Box, a mailed collection of posters, text and prints reflecting the exhibitions that would have been shown at the physical festival, bringing the exhibitions into both homes and schools. By “flipping the traditional ” model and hierarchy of curator/viewer, Photoworks brought in new festival goers. “Eliminating the traditional gallery space allowed us to reimagine who our potential audience could be,” Mavlian says.

“The pandemic has taught us that the cultural sector is perhaps not as accessible as we once thought,” Mavlian explains. “It has taught us to question everything, and just because something was always done a specific way doesn’t mean it’s the only way it can be done. The pandemic has really highlighted how many people fall through the cracks of traditional arts programming, and that we can all do much more to propose new ways of experiencing arts and culture.”

Calls for change have been heard (and unheard) from within and outside the art world for decades. “Festival in a Box gives the audience a hands-on experience with photography. Instead of showing precious objects framed behind glass, the festival is functional and affordable,” Mavlian explains. 

The Photoworks Festival in a Box represents only one answer to the Covid-19 dilemma. Through the use of both physical galleries and digital exhibitions, the upcoming FORMAT Festival (12 March – 11 April 2021), the biannual UK-based photography event, has doubled in size. “With the online festival, you can go into this world, this virtual space. Everyone will have an avatar with the ability to talk to each other,” says Louise Fedotov-Clements, the festival’s director. FORMAT has collaborated with LA-based New Art City, a digital exhibition design company that launched during the pandemic. Working with artists, galleries, schools and festivals, New Art City facilitates online meeting spaces that achieve environments that could not exist in the real world. The online FORMAT festival avoids one of the largest issues physical exhibitions encounter: a lack of space. With a virtual gallery, the viewer can peruse at their own pace, scrolling through the halls for as long as they like.

“An unlimited number of people can visit. We’re hoping that our audiences will come together, and the artists can be present in the space. All throughout we’ll be holding events there,” says Fedotov-Clements. By opening the festival to the online world, people who wouldn’t usually attend the festival now can.

Meanwhile in Kiev, the Bird in Flight photography prize addressed similar issues with completely different solutions. Kiev is a city plastered with posters and advertisements. When a physical, indoor gallery became impossible, co-curators Asya Zhetvina and Dmitry Kostyukov decided to utilise the city’s urbanised image culture, by displaying the festival across Kiev’s streets. Footage of the posters were live-streamed online via CCTV, allowing the people of Kiev to engage with the work, as well as an international audience.

“There is no border between online and offline anymore.”

Dmitry Kostyukov, Bird in Flight co-curator

At the heart of all of these festivals, accessibility has been achieved on a level rarely seen in physical galleries. From the comfort of your own home, you can tune into the art world. For those outside the festival circuit, this engagement allows for a non-invasive, non-elitist, and non-judgemental approach to art. “There was this 16 year old, I asked him if he would go to a gallery normally, and he said of course not, because they’re always full of millennials.” Kostyukov says.

An important question to ask is: What’s next? Once we begin to imagine a return to ‘normality’ within the arts festival circuits, will we go back to what it once was? The issues raised against the white-walled gallery predate Covid-19 by quite some time. What the last year of Covid-concious festivals has shown is that non-physical spaces are not just a secondary or reactionary response to a lack of physical galleries, but a wholly different form of art consumption. “There is no border between online and offline anymore,” Kostyukov explains.

“Covid-19 has allowed for this playground, this space to experiment,” Zhetvina and Kostyukov say. All of these alternative measures, from outdoor venues, online exhibitions and mailed festivals, have existed for years. Covid-19 has not invented them, but allowed the experiments to run. What is still yet to be seen, is what lessons we take with us, and which ones we leave behind.

A full list of FORMAT Fesitval’s events can be found here, with links to view the Bird in Flight festival here. Photoworks Festival in a Box can be found here.

It comes as no surprise that arts institutions, heavily reliant on ticket sales and public funding, are severely impacted by the ongoing Covid-19 crisis. It wasn’t only the sheer number of redundancies that sparked outrage, however, but the fact the job losses disproportionately affected Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) and People of Colour (POC) employees. The 2020 protests exposed what many already knew: the deep-rooted systemic racism and inequality ingrained within the arts.

Though institutions such as Southbank, Tate and the Barbican have publicly shown support for Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti-racism movements, and promote programmes supporting diversity, a different story has emerged from the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS). Its reports claim that the redundancies at the Southbank Centre reduce the BAME and POC workforce from 20 per cent to 14 per cent, with “at least 71 out of 365… positions under threat currently filled by BAME people”. The Tate Enterprise teams, where the majority of Tate’s cuts are being made, are also some of its most diverse. Similarly @barbicanworkers revealed that its casual staff – the lowest paid and most diverse group of workers at the Barbican – would only receive 80 per cent furlough compensation compared to contracted staff who received the full sum.

Addressing the accusations of structural racism, Maria Balshaw, the Tate director, in an email to all Tate employees, stated that, “it’s likely” the proportion of BAME employees “will stay the same… at the end of the process”. In December 2020, Tate stated that an Equality Impact Assessment had been undertaken to analyse the impact of the restructuring on their BAME staff. Some 17.2 per cent of its workforce identify as BAME, compared with only 4.9 per cent of heads of department – although this number rose in 2019-20. It was also reported that of the mooted 313 redundancies, Tate eventually made 295, and the restructure did not disproportionately affect Black and minority ethnic staff. However, it remains that the redundancies have hit those in the lowest-paid positions hardest.

Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle De La Puente (also known as The White Pube) were among those speaking out, calling out Tate’s duplicity in pledging support for BLM while continuing to receive money from collector Anthony d’Offay, who posed for a selfie with a golliwog in 2017 (Tate cut ties with the former benefactor and patron in September). They also campaigned for the removal of a mural by Rex Whistler, titled The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, that adorns the walls of the restaurant named after the painter at Tate Britain. It depicts enslaved Black children on a leash and caricatures of Chinese figures (Tate issued a statement that the future of the restaurant is under review). In a series of posters that went up in London and Liverpool in January this year, The White Pube addressed Whistler’s mural: “Ideas for a new art world. 001: If I were the Tate I would simply remove my racist paintings.”

So how can institutions do better in 2021? In the wake of two pandemics – one cultural, one the force of nature – how can we rebuild museums, galleries and arts organisations in the UK to genuinely improve access, equality and inclusion? “This pandemic has made absolutely universally visible the plain fact that we live in a Bad Society, and that social inequalities have obvious, measurable and devastating effects on whether we live or die. These are things that you’d have to be powerfully stupid to ignore,” The White Pube write in an article published on their site. 

The art world has long been focused around London; in data published for 2018-19, it receives the largest portion of Arts Council funding (one third of the total available) – but perhaps it’s time to look to the smaller, yet significant venues across the UK. As The White Pube underline: “The cultural sector has been resistant to change, it has held on to antiquated balances of power like no other area of society, and that rigidity has affected the way we distribute resources.” They add: “We can start by making sure we’re funding grassroots organisations and community arts organisations doing important and politically urgent work.”

“We don’t want to go back to ‘normal’ because that wasn’t good enough,” she adds. “I hope this pandemic has given institutions pause-for-thought, and that they act on it and don’t just put out knee-jerk, rhetorical statements. You’ve got to believe in it.”

Anne McNeill, Impressions Gallery

One such place is Open Eye Gallery, founded in 1977, and situated on Liverpool Waterfront. Its director, Sarah Fisher, says that the last year “has highlighted what really matters to people,” with community among the top priorities. Appreciating the support the photography-focused space received from locals during the pandemic means, “We became better at listening and co-authoring culture that is deeply valued,” Fisher says.

There is also Impressions Gallery, established in 1972 in Bradford and one of the country’s first photography galleries. As a leading UK arts organisation it forms “an important part of the infrastructure around contemporary British culture,” writes artist Sunil Gupta, who exhibited there for the first time in 1990. In the last decade, 43 of the 79 artists showing work at Impressions have been BAME, while their small team of eight staff includes two who identify as such. Anne McNeill, director, emphasises the fact that it’s been left up to the small regional galleries to do important work on diversity and class. “It’s always been part of what we do,” McNeill explains. “We’re in Bradford, and our programme has to reflect where we are and who we are, otherwise why would anyone think we’re relevant?” Around 40 per cent of Impressions Gallery’s current audience identify as BAME. “You need to have a strategic plan about how to treat staff at all levels; diversity and inclusivity has to be part of everything you do: programming, marketing, trustees, staff.  “We don’t want to go back to ‘normal’ because that wasn’t good enough,” she adds. “I hope this pandemic has given institutions pause-for-thought, and that they act on it and don’t just put out knee-jerk, rhetorical statements. You’ve got to believe in it.”

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 in the US, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge also decided on a course of anti-racism action, seeking to root out systemic racism at the gallery and the University of Cambridge museums group it belongs to. Following a statement issued by director Andrew Nairne, on the gallery’s website, is a detailed timeline for concrete actions to change the organisation from the inside; from funding a Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) interpretation focus group, to an audit of staff, anti-racism training and openly recruiting a new Black member to the Kettle’s Yard Committee. Although, at the time of writing there were still no Black Committee members and just two members of colour out of 11. It has also laid out plans to make the paid placement programme exclusively available to BIPOC for three years. 

The effort to hold institutions to account must continue – from both within those institutions and out. Back in London, Osei Bonsu is a curator of international art at Tate Modern. “In the midst of the unprecedented challenges of the global pandemic, our museums were presented with an opportunity to pause and reflect on the ways in which our work is connected to broader issues in society,” he says. At Tate Modern, Zanele Muholi’s stirring documentation of Black queer lives hangs behind closed doors, while Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s elegant paintings are shut up at Tate Britain. Bonsu adds: “In seeking to show support and solidarity for social movements like Black Lives Matter, however, museums also revealed the ways in which our work directly and indirectly supports structures of exclusion and inequality.” Acknowledging a problem might be the first step to improving. Diverse programming is vital, but without implementing the same ideals in the gallery infrastructure, it only pays lip service.

“While our programme, contributors and audiences are often commended for their ‘diversity’ – and we are conscious that diversity covers multiple considerations – our staff and trustees [while generally meeting the approved quotas from our funding bodies] are typically still largely composed of white, economically privileged people. Simply put, however ‘well’ we were doing on the outside, it was clear we were not doing enough on the inside.”

Brett Rogers, The Photographer’s Gallery

Brett Rogers, director of The Photographers’ Gallery, speaks frankly about the changes that need to happen. “Like many arts organisations, we were forced to examine our structural make-up in terms of being fully inclusive – especially to under-represented groups and more specifically people of colour – and we are acutely aware that there is still much that needs to be done on that front,” she says. “While our programme, contributors and audiences are often commended for their ‘diversity’ – and we are conscious that diversity covers multiple considerations – our staff and trustees [while generally meeting the approved quotas from our funding bodies] are typically still largely composed of white, economically privileged people. Simply put, however ‘well’ we were doing on the outside, it was clear we were not doing enough on the inside.”

Rogers believes that meaningful change is possible, but it will take time and commitment. “Importantly it is now at the top of our agenda, and we’ve begun the journey with a thorough review of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policies, HR procedures and decision-making processes,” she says. “We are also committed to less visible but no less meaningful cultural changes that include more active listening to all members of our staff to ensure they feel better represented and making changes to our recruitment criteria to encourage a greater range of applicants.” She adds: “Optimistically, 2021 offers us a chance to learn and do better for everyone’s sake – and we’re thankful for that.” 

The Photographers’ Gallery might look to Autograph, established in Brixton in 1988 as an association to support Black photographic practices. It has expanded to act as an archive, gallery and arts venue, now housed in Shoreditch. Autograph’s sustained support of BAME people – not only photographers and artists, but writers, curators, educators and researchers – over three decades is precedent-setting in the British cultural landscape. 

The coming year might be the tipping point; the time to really reinvent the arts as we know it. “The art world is close to the brink of collapse,” The White Pube write. “We have got to radically restructure the way we do things; no one wants to return to normal, because normal was bad. We have got the capacity to make a mad little industry that’s sustainable, accessible, genuinely diverse, fundamentally joyful, and I think we should do that. Right now.” 

tate.org.uk

southbankcentre.co.uk

thewhitepube.co.uk

openeye.org.uk

impressions-gallery.com

thephotographersgallery.org.uk

autograph.org.uk