Miami Photo Fest 2019 and Photos de Femmes is proud to announce its premiere exhibition “womenSEEwomen”
Photos de Femmes organization is dedicated to giving a powerful voice to iconic representations of women and to continually promote positive depictions of women around the world.
Throughout her career, photographer Renée Jacobs has heard men tell her how women “should” be portrayed. She’s photographed hundreds of women and exhibited across the globe, all the while facing comments like “Women can’t look like this” and “They must look like that.” Now, she’s pushing back with Photos de Femmes, a traveling collection of images that depict women in ways that are truthful, raw, and resonant. Jacobs, along with her wife and collaborator Wendy Hicks, unveil their first exhibition of many, womenSEEwomen, at Miami Photo Fest 2019.
womenSEEwomen includes nine female photographers, including Jacqueline Roberts, all bound by what Jacobs calls a quality of the “dreamy,” “mystical,” or “ethereal.” These images are truly labors of love, and multiple artists have employed time-consuming alternative processes–and devoted many hours to the darkroom–in bringing them to life.
That sense of timelessness extends also to the women in the photographs, who range from girlhood into old age; Carmen de Vos photographs pregnancy, Roberts photographs her daughter in childhood and adolescence, and Maggie Steber photographs her mother.
Still, in spite of their dreamlike sensibilities, the images represented in Photos de Femmes do not exist outside of time or space. Jacobs and Hicks have introduced this project at a crucial turning point in women’s history; in the background, we can hear the raised voices of the many women around the world who are at this very moment fighting back against abuse and oppression.
They created the project in the belief that “Women can’t be heard if we can’t be seen,” and for that reason, the exhibition feels just as urgent as it is enduring.
https://www.miamiphotofest.org/renee-jacobs-photosdefemmes-womenseewomen/