#jo farrell

[emulsivefilm]

Hundred Heroines: join The Royal Photographic Society in celebrating inspirational women in photography

Launched earlier this summer, The Royal Photographic Society’s Hundred Heroines is an international campaign celebrating women in photography today. The RPS is inviting the general public – not just professional photographers or RPS members – to nominate inspirational female ...

https://emulsive.org/articles/hundred-heroines-join-the-royal-photographic-society-in-celebrating-inspirational-women-in-photography

#shootfilmbenice, #filmphotography, #believeinfilm, #DelBarrett, #HundredHeroines, #IsabelCurdes, #JoFarrell, #MargaretHarker, #MonikaMarsRover, #RachelBrewsterWright, #TheRoyalPhotographicSociety, #TheRPS, #YanWangPreston, #Articles

[hyperallergic]

As the last generation of Chinese women with bound feet ages into their final decades, Jo Farrell set out to photograph the survivors of this brutal beauty tradition. Their toes contorted under and flattened over time, their heels pulled tight into a bracing arch, these “lotus feet” are now wrinkled by time and a life not of luxury, but of labor.

Last of China’s Lotus Feet Women

[formlesspotwarz]

Jo Farrell

[globalizinggendersexuality]

Foot Binding

On page fourteen of Grewal and Kaplan's article, "Warrior Marks: Global Womanism's Neo-Colonial Discourse in a Multicultural Context," they mention foot binding as one of the practices that "have come to symbolize the 'barbarism' of non-Western cultures," along with "suttee, seclusion... and female circumcision."  While I had heard of foot binding before, I was not entirely clear on the practice.

I found the Wikipedia page, which describes the practice, a webpage that describes the actual process, and curiously enough, an article detailing a Kickstarter that was meant to fund a British photographer, Jo Farrell, who wanted to document the last living "survivors" of foot binding.  I was particularly interested in this quote: "Part of that imperative lies in linking us to our past, Farrell insists.  Modern women aren't so different from the grannies she's found, she writes at Kickstarter, judging by our love of 'Botox, FGM, breast augmentation, scarring and tattooing, to rib removals, toe tucks, and labrets.'"

While Farrell's statement is much more charged, it echoes ideas presented by Grewal and Kaplan in their article: that women in the U.S. also undergo surgical modifications in order to achieve a standard of beauty.

--HAT