Work in Progress

An Eye for Freedom - An Exhibition of Photographs by Gille de Vlieg

This online exhibition focuses on images made by anti-apartheid activist Gille de Vlieg in the last two decades of apartheid. de Vlieg's work illuminates the critical part women played in the struggle, both as political activists and through the essential forms of labour and love that hold life together even under the most dire circumstances.

Anti-apartheid activist Debora Marakalala, Free Mandela Rally, 1986. Photograph by Gille de Vlieg

Special Issue on Photography and Resistance of the Journal MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture

Photography, as Yvonne Vera writes, ‘has often brought forth the most loaded fraction of time, a calcification of the most unequal, brutal, and undemocratic moment of human encounter’ (Vera 1999). It has also been used as a form of resistance to repressive regimes, to oppose war and violence, and as a means of challenging heteronormative patriarchy. It can serve as a tool of critique, granting visibility to events, people or demonstrations of power that are otherwise not intended to be seen. This special issue focuses on how women and nonbinary photographers have taken up cameras to produce entirely new visual vocabularies, to reimagine the world and challenge hegemonic ways of seeing.

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The special issue will be published in early 2022.

Photograph: Melaw Nakehk’o is Dehcho Dene and Denesulene from Liidlii Kue, Denendeh Northwest Territories. She is a Mother, Artist, Moose hide tanner, Actress and and co-founder of the Indigenous organization Dene Nahjo.

From the series, “Resilience and Resistance”, by Kali Spitzer, 2015.

 Image courtesy of Kali Spitzer

Women, Photography and Transnational History

A book about Jewish women photographers at the time of the Second World War that will include chapters on the work of Anne Fischer, Dora Kallmus, Emmy Andriesse and Grete Mannheim.

The image shows my grandmother Stella and her mother-in-law walking in Johannesburg, c. 1940, photographer unknown.