By Kirsten Magas Photo by Carina Lourdes Staiti Elizondo Driving in Saudi Arabia Until 2018, the punishment for a woman driving in Saudi Arabia ranged from enduring physical abuse from police to confiscation of her and her husband’s passports for a year. On 6 November 1990, 47 women decided to drive in the Saudi Arabia…
To celebrate International Women’s Day, the femLENS documentary photography workshop participants from Cameroon have created a common project featuring women in their different manifestations across Cameroon! It doesn’t matter where we are, all women want the same fundamental rights in society – equal pay, equal legal rights, equal representation in local and national politics, a…
By Maria Vesselko Illustration by Magdalena Xochitl Burtnik Urueta International Women’s Day comes this year with the mobilisation of all forces to tackle inequality, which is not possible to hide any more amid the pandemic and the growing economic crisis. The events of the last year will take an important place in the history of…
By Payten Humphreys Every year on 8 March, celebrations and protests across the globe signal the historical observance of International Women’s Day (IWD). Recognised in over 100 countries, this day honours the progress that women have courageously fought for through centuries of patriarchal paradigms, while simultaneously shedding light on the disparities women still face today….
By Jessica Couloute Illustration by Magdalena Xochitl Burtnik Urueta | Photo by Ewa Drewa The first known photograph was taken in France between 1826 and 1827 by Nicéphore Niépce. According to the University of Texas, developing this photo took eight hours under sunlight and in asphalt, resulting in the fuzzy image of the “View from…
By Mary Ellen Dowd Illustration by Magdalena Xochitl Burtnik Urueta | | Photo by Denise Bergt Why have there been no great women artists? This is a question posed by Linda Nochlin in reference to the lack of female greats in art history. In her article published in The Feminism and Culture Reader, she questions…
By Mary Ellen DowdIllustration by Magdalena Xochitl Burtnik Urueta In a 2018 series “Unlearning Decisive Moments of Photography”, Ariella Azoulay points out some problems with widely held knowledge about the history and usage of photography. Challenging us to rethink our commonly held beliefs about photography, Azoulay connects the birth of photography with the creation of…
Text by Mary Ellen Dowd Illustration by Magdalena Xochitl Burtnik Urueta | Photo by Agata Reid When referencing Greco-Roman storytelling, most minds immediately produce the names of famous oral storytellers, like Homer or Aesop. Less often would one mention Sappho, a female poet who lived in Greece during 600 B.C.E. Although Sappho was arguably the…
by Emily Chai and Jekaterina Saveljeva “Women’s rights are human rights.” We see these words on banners at protests and demonstrations, on signs at Women’s Marches, on T-shirts and stickers. It’s common sense – women are humans, and therefore their rights are human rights. But when we say that women’s rights are human rights, what…
femLENS presents the top photographs from our 2020 documentary photography workshop participants. femLENS ran four series of workshops in 2020. One in Narva, Estonia, and three online with women coming from across Russia, Estonia, Germany, Mexico, DRC, West Bank and England.