Fast Forward’s Networks of Solidarity: Anna Fox and Maria Kapajeva on Women in Photography
Recorded on 15 June 2021.
This week, Anna Fox and Maria Kapajeva join us from Fast Forward: Women in Photography. An acclaimed photographer, Fox is the director of Fast Forward, a research project concerned with women in photography based at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, where she is a professor. Kapajeva is the project manager and researcher at Fast Forward, and is an artist whose work focuses on women and their peripheral histories. In this episode, we expand our understanding of the networks that interrogate and exhibit South Asian art. The conversation acknowledges that even when rooted in a specific context, no art practice exists in isolation.
Left: Anna Fox, Director, Fast Forward: Women in Photography.
Right: Maria Kapajeva, Project Manager and Researcher at Fast Forward: Women in Photography.
Fox and Kapajeva observe that the Euro-American perspective of photographic history often ignores its evolution across the globe and negates the contributions of women. It is only recently that these stories are being reclaimed. This work is being done by researchers who are investigating the commercial and artistic spaces in their towns and cities to examine what photography means in different settings. Based in the United Kingdom, Fast Forward works with institutions worldwide—including Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi—to encourage new debates and feature the work of emerging women photographers from varied backgrounds.
From the Series Country Girls. (Anna Fox. 1996–2001. Image courtesy of the artist and James Hyman Gallery, London. Copyright Anna Fox.)
Still from video work 10 Ways Not To Become the Invisible Woman After 40. (Maria Kapajeva. 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.)
With technology making photography more accessible than ever before, Fox points to the paradox that Paul Graham identifies in his 2009 essay, “Photography is Easy, Photography is Difficult”: "It is simply a way of recording what you see—point the camera at it, and press a button... It is so simple and basic, it is ridiculous. It is so difficult because it is everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now." Fast Forward's Instagram page adds another layer to this argument for our times: it is easy to show your work on digital platforms but so difficult to have it seen, because of the deluge of content. For this reason, the organisation's work is not restricted to the past, but actively seeks to ensure that the erasure of women's histories does not continue.
To read about women in the early history of photography, please click here and here.
The ASAP Cast series is supported by the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts.
