Between Women: Franki Raffles, Feminist Activism and Documentary Photography History of Art Research Seminar

Event details

Dr Vivian K. Sheng (Univeristy of Hong Kong)  and Dr Catherine Spencer (University of St Andrews_ will be discussing the research for their current collaborative project on the feminist documentary photographer Franki Raffles, whose work is currently showcased in a major exhibition at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. This project has grown out of a Global Visiting Fellowship that Vivian held at the University of St Andrews in 2022.

Vivian and Catherine will be discussing the research for their current collaborative project on the feminist documentary photographer Franki Raffles, whose work is currently showcased in a major exhibition at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. This project has grown out of a Global Visiting Fellowship that Vivian held at the University of St Andrews in 2022, and from Catherine’s writing on Raffles’ work in Scotland and the USSR. Our project takes its departure from the work produced by the Marxist feminist photographer Franki Raffles (b.1955-d.1994) from her base in Edinburgh in its multiple local and global contexts of documentary photography and feminist activism. These material networks expand beyond Scotland to include work made internationally, particularly an important trip Raffles made through the Soviet Union to China in 1984-85, which catalysed her focus on women at work. Raffles aimed not only to record women workers, but to explore the contrasts in power and privilege between women, particularly in relation to the socially reproductive contexts of labour, domesticity, care and education. Raffles’s work illuminates possibilities for, and the challenges of, transnational feminist connections across different geographic and cultural contexts, posing questions for feminist art history today and in particular histories of feminist documentary practice.

Image reference: Franki Raffles, Propaganda wall, 'Healthy babies, Healthy Children make China Strong' with people on bicycles on the foreground, October 1984 - February 1985, digital scan from negative © Franki Raffles Estate, all rights reserved. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums and Edinburgh Napier University, ID: 2014-4-T-CT064.