Exhibition: Photographing Protest: Resistance Through a Feminist Lens

This exhibition showcases images by photographers who have used their cameras to support political struggle and social change in Britain from 1968 to today.

The exhibition centres the voices and perspectives of women and nonbinary photographers, and those who have been making work within a feminist framework.

Photographing Protest considers the politics of seeing and being seen. It poses a challenge to the male-dominated history of protest reportage and asks what this means for the representation of resistance. From sit-ins to street theatre, candlelight vigils to deportation campaigns, the exhibition foregrounds the work of activist photographers, for whom the acts of witnessing and participating in protest are intrinsically linked.

Photographing Protest reveals how images of resistance resonate across generations. The exhibition opens with rarely seen images by activist photographer Sally Fraser, who captured defining social movements of the 1968 era, from the Hornsey Art College student sit-ins to the fiery beginnings of the Women’s Liberation movement. Social protests of the 1980s and 90s are shown through the prolific work of Format, the all-women photo agency: at the Greenham Common women’s peace camp, on the Miner’s strike frontline, at Reclaim the Night marches and more.

Alongside, the exhibition explores a new generation of photographers engaging with contemporary struggles: anti-racism, LGBTQI+ community rights and climate justice among others, to ask how feminist protest photography can be an agent for today’s political change.