How have women photographers in Scotland taken control of their own image? This online symposium will reveal neglected stories of Scottish women in photography, including feminist social documentary photographer Franki Raffles, folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw and more. ‘Ways of Seeing’: Women and Photography in Scotland, Thursday 29th October, Online
Inspired by and featuring collections from The National Trust for Scotland and GWL, these sessions explore photographic portrayals of women through time and will challenge institutions to better use photographic collections to tell women’s stories.
The NTS photographic holdings feature many women as takers, collectors, preservers and subjects. These include the collections of folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw, aristocrat Violet Brodie and Glaswegian typist Agnes Toward, all of which frequently depict women.
This paper explores the possibilities of recovering ‘unknown women’ in early photographic practice Scotland. It does so by taking as its starting point two figures; the chemist and protophotgraper Elizabeth Fulhame (fl.1794) and the voiceless subject, Elizabeth Johnstone Hall - one of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson’s Newhaven ‘Fishwives’. A photographic 'outtake' depicts Johnstone Hall just moments before (or after) the ‘iconic’ shot that by which she is known. In this extraordinary version, however, she stares back, and disrupts a century of analysis of her ‘seductive shame’.
Using re-enactment and montage, the article interrogates Hall’s experience of being photographed and asks how our understanding of early photography might be enriched by examining the medium through the lens of the subject, in this case, working class, fisherwomen sitters.
In addition, Caroline Douglas explores the autobiographical dimensions of her research as a living decedent of the Newhaven fisherwomen, and reflects on the ethics of speaking for others. Included in the presentation are calotypes and salt prints made by the artist.
