Women, Work, and the Weight of Expectation
ANTHEA CARLING
The Trouble With Women opens as part of Coastal Currents Festival on 5-6 and 12-13 September in the artist’s own home in Hastings Old Town.
Writing troubles on a photo
We’re told we can have it all – but at what cost? If you have children, you’re expected to sacrifice but also to bounce back. If you don’t, people question why. If you work full time you feel guilty for not being there enough. If you stay home you’re asked when you’ll get back to work. Whatever choices you make, someone always has an opinion, as if your worth is up for debate.
That question sits at the centre of The Trouble With Women, a new body of work by documentary photographer Lauren Joy Kennett. Over the past year, across Hastings, she has photographed women in their own homes. Each figure is then hand-cut from the print and collaged back into the room she came from – altered, distorted, displaced. Her life, but not as it should be.
Each woman was asked a single question: “What has been hardest to hold together?” Their answers are written by hand, in gold pen, directly onto their own portraits.The women who took part include single mothers, women who have lost pregnancies, women who have chosen to remain childless, those who have ended toxic relationships.
Kennett herself lost an unplanned pregnancy during the making of the work. “The women in this project were so brave,” she says. “To let a stranger into their home, to sit in front of a camera and write their own truth on a photograph of themselves.”
A woman’s peak earning years are the same years she is expected to have children, but even in these times, society isn’t built to support either. Whether she’s raising a child, longing for one, or choosing a different path entirely, the weight of expectation follows her everywhere.
The work is shown in the artist’s home so visitors stand inside the subject matter rather than looking at it from a distance.
Exhibition shows 12-13 September at 6 Old Humphrey Avenue, 11am-6pm. Lauren Joy Kennett, photography and handcut collage.
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