16 Days of Activism Book List 2024

I didn’t choose domestic violence. It chose me.

I wanted to try to understand why the structures of justice and law enforcement were not only failing survivors, but actually encouraging perpetrators by preserving particular power dynamics and social norms.

… a gesture of disobedience toward the communist regime that treated feminism as a bourgeois import from the West (Sanja on describing herself as a feminist).

… her murder can’t have been politically motivated because she wasn’t a real journalist, she was just a pretty presenter so it must have been  a sex crime, beautiful women will always be objects of desire, so it’s their own fault if they get raped. (Dinev summarising the response to the murder)

Natasha is a nickname given to prostitutes with Eastern European looks. Sex-trafficked girls hate it.

Bertlmann’s art insistently addresses the physical and emotional violence perpetrated on women by patriarchy (Patricia Allmer, p. 52).

I’m going to tear your mother to shreds with an oyster knife

She fell down on her bended knees, For mercy she did cry. “Oh Willy dear, don’t kill me here, I’m unprepared to die!“

This multi-layered volume of haunting black and white images is a reimaging of murders that took place in the Gothic South as conveyed through the songs of 19^th and 20^th century murder ballads. The book shows the lyrics of the ballads (with the violent parts crossed out but readable) juxtaposed against landscapes of places where these murders might have taken place (with names such as “Poison Cove” and “Blood Creek”) interspersed with portraits of women, depicting the victims; men, depicting the perpetrators. After all, it was the women that met the tragic end after their “lovers” decided to poison, drown or shoot them.  A further layer is added by the fictional text by Rebecca Bengal.  Although the individual images are not disturbing, when everything is taken together it leaves the reader with a feeling of disquiet about the omnipresence of the threat to women.

He turned out to be a sadistic psychopath. He physically, mentally and sexually tortured me. He treated me like a prostitute.

In/Visible is a collection of 48 portraits of 48 women who have survived acid attacks or immolation.  Most of the attacks were carried out by men, but some were carried out by women – there are cases of women harming themselves or being attacked by mothers-in-law or jealous wives to avoid bringing shame on the family. The underlying cause is the same as other acts of gender-based violence – a patriarchal society that treats women as second-class citizens or worse, and knows no boundaries to maintaining the status quo.

Some of the images are distressing, and yet the book is an inspiration, a testimony to the resilience of these women, the remarkable lack of self-pity and their optimism for the future.

“When I was 18, I was molested by my college professor. He was a very respected man, and when I tried to share what happened, no one was ready to listen.

Channelling a personal and traumatic experience and using it to champion the cause of women in similar situations is a testament to Smita’s strength of character and her will to bring about positive change through her work. We Cry In Silence  investigates the widespread issue of trafficking minors for sex between Bangladesh, Nepal and India. The project unveils the vulnerability of girls and highlights what leads them into the traps of traffickers. The book seeks to address this complex, global issue at the local level, and open a dialogue to move people to work towards a regional solution.

Published in English, Bengali and Hindi, Smita ensured that the privacy of her subjects wasn’t compromised, using shadows to cover their faces where needed. The images (anonymous or otherwise) show the women in their domestic surroundings or with their families — a mundane life. The idea is to enable people to look at them and think beyond the crime that happened to them.

We cry in Silence was the winner of the 2023 Lucie Photo Book Prize in the Independent Category.

Our sexual obsession remained one of the hooks. One night, he battered me severely, almost blinding me.

Often the places where many of the victims’ bodies were found are unmarked. They were ordinary places, overlooked and inconspicuous. The banality of the sites was disturbing and heartbreaking.

In the series, The Other End of the Rainbow, Kourtney explores the history of murders and disappearances along the ‘Highway of Tears’ – Highway 16 in Northern British Columbia.

Her photographs were made on five separate journeys over a period of two years. During this time, she met many of the people, who had been affected by the murder or disappearance of a loved one on the notorious 720km long road.  The work documents the injustice faced by the families of these missing and murdered women and girls, reflecting the colonial prejudice, racism and indifference from the authorities.

The Other End of the Rainbow won the Prix des libraires photobook of the year in 2023. The series was made possible with the support of the Centre national des arts plastiques (National Centre for Visual Arts), France.

The killer telegraphs his contempt and misogyny through his final efforts to degrade his female victims in death

The casual reader could be forgiven for thinking this is a quote from a crime novel – it’s not.  It is real life as witnessed by forensic photographer A J Hewitt. This candid and compelling memoir immerses readers in the harrowing world of forensic photography. As one of the few women in the field, AJ shares her personal experiences as a Scotland Yard photographer, providing a unique perspective on this often-underappreciated profession.

‘What if,’ Suzanne Lacy asked Judy Chicago in 1970, ‘we brought an audience into a theater, lowered the lights, and simply played audio tapes of women recounting, in elaborate detail, the story of their rape?’

So run the opening lines of Unspeakable Acts.  Award-winning author, Nancy Princenthal, traces the history of performance art as a feminist activist tool, exploring how artists from the 1970s to the current day have transformed taboo subjects into public discourse.  She offers an overview of how different artists and curators have handled the theme of sexual violence – some more successfully than others –  but all adding to the heroinic conversation that started in the 1970s and continues to grow.  And yes, Suzanne Lacy and Judy Chicago did realise their “what if” scenario as Ablutions (1972) – a collaborative performance between them, Sandra Orgel and Aviva Rahmani.