Another Eye: Woman refugee photographers in Britain after 1933, and some thoughts on Brexit

A really interesting online exhibition supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, as part of the Insiders Outsiders festival on refugee artists who fled to the UK from Nazi Europe. They've also included a Curator's Recommended Reading list. 

Guardian write up: Female photographers who escaped Nazi persecution - in pictures.

The exhibition includes a variety of photographs from women photographers that range from studio portraiture, social documentary, reportage, street photography and fashion. 

A photograph of bathers by Erika Koch, who was forced to leave her school in Berlin because she was Jewish, and sought refuge in the UK at the end of 1936. Photograph: Erika Koch Archive.

Miners’ wives chatting in a 1948 image for Picture Post by Elisabeth Chat. Photograph: Archive/Elisabeth Chat

Some thoughts on Brexit:

These photographs and this history have brought to the fore anew my feelings and thoughts around Brexit and in moments where I have witnessed racist interactions, mostly on the tube. I've been thinking about my position in the UK as an immigrant. More specifically, a Jewish immigrant, who, despite having olive skin, often "passes" as white. I live and work in the UK as a result of my Portuguese passport, which took three years to acquire through a reconciliation initiative offered by Portugal to Jews who can trace their origin to the Iberian Peninsula, and who would have, as a result, been expelled during the Spanish Inquisition. 

I have often thought about the irony of this history and my complicated relationship with it. My passport came through just months before Brexit was official. I am only here because of a scheme founded on making up for a past of exclusion. The Second World War, while it is not recent history anymore, is still not in the too distant past. Right wing movements are gaining momentum in global sweeps. Antisemitism, along with many other anti- sentiments feel a looming possibility, a conceivable threat in both overt acts of violence and racist, but also in the smallest comments slipped during disagreements gone too heated, a sneer under one's breath, an unconscious bias that solidifies inequality, or in the most subtle, but definitively communicative glance. 

And while I don't always "signify" as anything other than white, all four of my grandparents come from Arab countries. My brother is much darker-skinned than I am. But as a white(-ish), Canadian woman, I am welcomed here. The precariousness and randomness of this position is not lost to me. Safe for now, through for somewhat arbitrary reasons, may not always maintain this secure status. I am aware of the fragility of acceptance. 

The notion of "home" has interested me for a long time for a variety of reasons. I've considered what home means to me as a Canadian settled in the UK. Canada, while home in certain ways, is not the country of my heritage, the place of origin for generations of my family. Home has always felt flexible, and I have benefitted from this openness, opportunity and freedom. When people shout at others from a place of hatred and intolerance to "go home", aside from this statement being one of despicable racism, it is also one of rigidity, limitation and stagnation. 

'Lockdown should be easy for me, so why is it like doing time?' Ottessa Moshfegh in The Guardian

Ottessa Moshfegh's thoughts in the Guardian on lockdown after having written My Year of Rest and Relaxation a couple of years ago, which I really enjoyed. The novel is about a woman in her 20s who decides to spend an entire year in isolation and asleep for as much of it as possible.  

In dreams, we mine ourselves for wisdom that we can’t access with our conscious mind. And there is something ineffable about that wisdom. We can attempt to recount our dreams narratively upon awakening, but it’s nearly impossible to do it accurately. Dreams are more poems than short stories, but I think they have a fabulist, parabolic quality that makes them feel like allegory, even though the who-what-where of them might seem random to anyone but the dreamer: we each dream in a language peculiar to our own lives. Equally, sleep is a universe of self.

[...]

My dreams these days are about my husband falling out of love with me. I wake up desperate and shaky, imploring him to confirm that he has not abandoned me while I’ve been asleep. “I love you,” I say. “Do you still love me?” I understand that this is my mind resting on the only real thing it knows outside of itself: love. Without it, life is just “doing time”.

Snake plant drawings

Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge is a beautifully written and tender book about a woman, her marriage and the people in her community in coastal Maine. The narrative follows different individuals in each chapter who each try to determine what love looks like in the context of their challenging relationships.

This novel is explores how people recognise and accept love, reject or ignore love, crave it, are repulsed by it, confused or vexed by it, and overwhelmed with it. The characters investigate what it means to feel angry or betrayed by those they love and invested their love in, what it means to have had love and not known how to respond to it, and how loving someone in one way may have caused them a tremendous amount of hurt and baggage. These loves are manifested between husband and wife, friends, siblings, neighbours, strangers, lovers, parents and children.

Some questions:

How do we love people ways that are bad for them?
Is love most acknowledged or felt once it is lost or absent?
Can we forgive the dead for compromising memories of love through betrayals?
Can we forgive the living for loving us in painful ways?
Can we learn to love those we hate?
Can we understand our hate/repulsion as coming from a place of love?
How do we understand our acceptance and endurance of a love that is not respectful or equal?
How can we understand surprising moments when we love without feeling or knowing we are able?
Do we have reserves of love, sympathy and compassion that we are not aware of?
Do we have a finite amount of love or can we always muster more?
How much does our sense of our own "loveability" determine how we are loved or choose to be loved?

Uses of 'nature'

I've been playing around with the word nature and the malleability of its uses.

Some variations:

- natural world
- it's in my nature
- the nature of this message
- it's only natural / that's not natural
- nature vs. nurture
- naturally / the natural thing to do is...
- natural peanut butter or other products

Meanings:

- wild / of the earth
- essence / personality / soul / temperament / disposition
- characteristic
- understandable
- DNA / genetic makeup
- obviously / obvious
- organic / without artificial additives

Ansel Adams, Rushing Water, Merced River, Yosemite National Park (1955)

Anna Atkins (1799-1871)

Cyanotypes by Anna Atkins, botanist and photographer. 

"English botanical artist, collector and photographer Anna Atkins was the first person to illustrate a book with photographic images...

Anna's self-published her detailed and meticulous botanical images using the cyanotype photographic process in her 1843 book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. With a limited number of copies, it was the first book ever to be printed and illustrated by photography.

Two more volumes were produced between 1843 and 1853. In the volumes held at the Museum there are 411 plates each, with their scientific names handwritten by Anna...

Women were restricted from professionally practicing science for most of the nineteenth century as it was an area dominated by men. Botany, however, was a subject that was accessible to all - in particular botanical art and illustration, which were considered a suitably genteel hobby for women."

- Natural History Museum

 

Cecil and Jordan in New York: Stories by Gabrielle Bell

Always love getting lost in Gabrielle Bell's comics... feels like home.