What can a woman do with a camera?

Jo Spence & Joan Solomon (Eds.). (1995). London: Scarlet Press

In the introduction to this book, Solomon writes we become who we are through contacting a welter of representations conveyed in images as well as our positions determined by our gender, race, class and sexual orientation, thus put an emphasis on creating our--in this case, women's-- own images to redefine themselves. To achieve this goal, she stresses photographing innermost feelings through an engagement of psychic reality that turns to wider political context. Within this context, her criticism about family photo album is insinuated in that we often deliberately leave out painful or shameful moment and preserve idealistic moments only. According to her, this practice only re-inscribes traditional values and misconception. (pp.9-14).

By boldly yet engagingly revealing her own secrets through her camera work, Spence maintains using cameras thinkingly is importance in constructing our own meanings of the world by scrutinizing the complexity of our own existence. In a sense, she sees her art as reflexivity: "I see my artworks as a kind of 'politicized exhibitionism' about particular psychic and social issues which have enraged me. In this respect I have used myself as a kind of case study" (pp.94-95). By delineating that some secrets are conflated with social taboo, Spencer places her public work in a political arena, which encounter two types of criticism: most of all it comes from the notion that it is rather narcissism rather than politically investigation. Besides, academics, which are so soaked in objectivism with suppressed subjectivity, do not acknowledge the endeavor made to such personalized language. (Jo Spence, woman in secret. pp. 85-96).

Grey describes an exemplary group work between a cultural studies team and young homeless in the mid 1980s in England. Her evaluation of the work is as follows: "[P]hotographs played a useful role in helping the young women and men to assert their sense of identity and place at an otherwise chaotic and sometimes disturbed time in their lives. Photographs presented positive images of an up-to-date self, a new person established in his or her own right at a distance from the recent past with its traumas of family upheaval and homelessness. The pictures located them in a new social context, amongst their friends and engaging in new interest" (p. 144). Here are some quotes from a comment made by a young homeless participant:

"I suppose it's a bit novelty to see yourself."
"I'd much rather not be interviewed on TV; not be asked, 'How do you feel about being homeless?' I'd rather someone gave me a camera and said, 'Show us how you feel.'"
"The aim of the exhibition was to challenge stereotypes of homeless people created through the media. I have the media, as it is now anyway. The experience of making the exhibition gave me a lot of confidence, especially now, seeing all the work I did for it. I appreciate doing that more than ever, and realize how it has helped me to get work now, as well as giving me experience then.For example, I'm doing a BBC video with a friend from the hostel. It's semidocumentary but a video diary as well.
I've gone from being a shy anti-social person who hated being in a hostel and classed as homeless to being this real radical youth who was just out on her personal mission to put the world straight about homelessness."(Claire Grey, give me a camera and i'll show you how i feel. pp. 143-152)