This 15 minute paper was part of the panel 'From Local to Global: Feminist Activism and Documentary Photography'. This Session was convened by Vivian K. Sheng (University of Hong Kong). The paper was delivered at The Association for Art History's Annual Conference 2025, at University of York (9-11 April 2025).

This panel aimed to gather scholars, artists, curators and activists to shed fresh light on researching, archiving, exhibiting and disseminating feminist photography, provoking reassessment and revalidation of feminist social documentary work since the 1970s in its local, transnational and global contexts. While the power imbalances of documentary photography have been rigorously critiqued since this decade, many feminist practitioners have remained invested in the social and activist capacities of the documentary form. This panel sought to build on ongoing reassessment of documentary photography in relation to intersectional feminist debates and transnational frameworks.

How can a curatorial ‘context sensitive’ (Lind, M, 2010) appraisal of Sandra George and Franki Raffles’ photography draw out their process, methods, aims and message through exhibition-making? My paper explored the curatorial methodologies of two separate solo exhibitions I have curated of their work: (Sandra George, Glasgow International, 5 Florence Street, 2024, in partnership with Craigmillar Now, the heritage organisation in Edinburgh that holds Sandra’s work) and Franki Raffles (Franki Raffles: Observing Women at Work, Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, 2017, in partnership with Edinburgh Napier University, Professor Alistair Scott and the University of St Andrews). Both photographers contribute to the histories of social documentary photography in Scotland and the UK. Both George’s and Raffles’ work had been missing from feminist art history discourse at the point of the exhibitions I curated of their work.

The other speakers were Lucy MacKenzie Howie, University of St Andrews; Alicia Bruce, Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh; Natassa Philimonos, The University of Edinburgh; and Yanru Dong, University of St Andrews.