The Ties That Bind Us: How Photography Unifies the Female Progressive Movement

When you share an image, are you sharing it as a woman? As a person with a disability? What about as a civil rights advocate? Your art is a part of who you are and how you chose to express yourself reflects the sum total of your identity.

Intersectionality is a powerful concept. First coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in the early 1980’s, the framework allows us to explore how our experiences of gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability affect our lives. When we share those experiences, we can’t separate who we are from our circumstance. Our digital and creative world is a complicated patchwork of images, ideas, and viewpoints that bring us together. By sharing who we are and what matters to us, we can better understand how our current socio-political world is changing those experiences.

What does it mean to share an image during a protest? How do we react to divisive political figures in a 24-hour media cycle? During Photography in an Intersectional Field, Aruna D’Souza will be exploring these concepts in relation to the imagery we create.

Meet the Speaker
Well known writer and critic, Aruna D’Souza, will be offering a commentary at 3 pm during the free, one-day event to share how modern feminism has shaped her thoughts on the topic. Known for her work in modern and contemporary writing on both feminism and politics, and as a known anti-bias and anti-racist advocate, she will highlight some excellent and poignant key thoughts on the intersectional views of feminism as well as the highly-charged political debates of currently existing tensions in society at large. Aruna’s essays have been featured in ArtNews, the Wall Street Journal, and Art in America. She has also consulted for the Whitney Museum on structural bias and antiracist practices.

For more details about FotoFocus or the upcoming symposium, please be sure to visit FotoFocusSymposium.org and join us at Memorial Hall in Over-The-Rhine on October 7th, 2017.