Category: Photography

The British photographer Franki Raffles (1955-94) died shockingly young, as a result of complications following the birth of twin daughters. But by then she had already amassed almost 40,000 images of women at work the world over. Her photographs are as strong as their subjects. Raffles photographed women in the Philippines, Israel and China, the Orkneys, Mexico and Ukraine. She portrayed harvesters at dawn and cleaners at midnight, seasonal onion pickers, part-time teachers and lifelong factory workers. She was a tireless activist of the camera.

Her photographs amounted to campaigns – look and learn, see what is going on, what it is like for these women, then do what you can – sometimes with a specific end in mind. Anyone who waited at the bus stops of Edinburgh in the 80s, for instance, as I did, will remember Raffles’s devastating photographic protests against male violence.

I have never forgotten her image of an elegant woman in a New Town flat, leafing through a magazine before a working Georgian fireplace. Above runs the caption: “She lives with a successful businessman”. Below runs the punchline, so to speak: “Last week he hospitalised her”. Some of the images from this campaign could, alas, be run all over again at British bus stops today.

After a philosophy degree at St Andrews University, Raffles moved to the remote village of Callanish on the Isle of Lewis in the 1970s. There she worked as a self-employed weaver for the Harris tweed industry to support her first child, and her fledgling photography. What she knows informs what she sees.

A young woman in an anorak toils over a handloom in a cold, bare room, the light so poor she has to bend right down, close to her work. Others are stacking products in a nameless stone barn. There are weatherworn farmers out in the fields, some of them cutting ancient peat from the land in overalls and specs, or wrangling the local sheep.

A sequence of sheep shearers is especially moving for the sight of elderly women in what must once have been their good hats and coats kneeling on the ground, practically eye to eye with the wriggling animals. Later, one of them looks straight out of a closeup portrait indoors. Bill Brandt-like in its grainy darkness, it is by no means as dour, for the Lewis woman is beaming straight back at Raffles.

That smile is almost a characteristic of the 300 images on show at Baltic. Two – or is it perhaps even three – generations of Russian women in overalls have paused, momentarily, from their haymaking for Raffles’s camera. They recede towards misty mountains, a collective smile slowly breaking towards the youngest at the back. Teachers, typists, nurses, dinner ladies, across several continents, all share their conversation and their humour with her camera.

Her photographs are almost all in black and white, without staging or hyperbole. Raffles worked mainly in long-shot, avoiding character studies, her eye always on situation and context. Lot’s Wife, funded by a Wingate Trust scholarship in the early 1990s, shows the bitterly hard lives of Jewish women emigrating to Israel after the collapse of the USSR. Nearly all had significant jobs but are now unemployed, marooned at home with small children; in accompanying texts, nearly all speak of losing their sense of community.

And that is perhaps what strikes the viewer today, before these dense walls of Raffles’s photographs: that they are about what they show, which is collective experience. They were meant to enlighten – shown as much in libraries, public halls and the media, as in art galleries – and so they still do, except that this intense portrait of women worldwide now presents a spirit of community that feels like disappearing history.

Hannah Perry (born 1984) is an ideal partner to Raffles, with her multimedia exhibition upstairs at Baltic. Manual Labour concerns the intersection between women’s experiences of class, work and childbirth, and the heavy industry of Perry’s native north of England. It runs from the sublime to the brutal.

A very beautiful choral work of women’s voices in roundelay, almost ecstatic, echoes through the high gallery as a gigantic bronze pelvis, mounted on scaffolding, gradually starts to shift. Anyone familiar with childbirth will know that the great structure – somewhere between a Henry Moore and a muckle seafaring propeller – is about to separate in two. But Perry goes further, producing an abrupt and startling surprise.

On a vast cinema screen, girls push prams through shopping centres, visit clinics, are rebuked by overworked doctors. A pregnant woman turns among mirrors in nightclub darkness (the artist herself), intercut with the pelvic motions of a pole dancer in an actual club. Molten metal, concrete, furious industrial sound and light are intercut with these young women’s lives in complex film collage.

Sheets of taut metal, stretched on poles through the gallery, vibrate ever more anxiously to the sound of nameless rumbling, as clocks chime and bells ring. At times, the film on the screen seems to quiver and pulsate like the sheet metal. The world of toxic industry (or is it masculinity) streams in and out of these evocations of women’s experiences to an alarming degree, at times too rough to behold.

But when the elements – hydraulic, sculptural, harmonic, cinematic – do come together, Manual Labour mobilises a sharp polarity between men and women’s work. And at the same time, it appears to be drawing parallels between them – between the intense physicality of both kinds of labour.

Star ratings (out of five)
Franki Raffles: Photography, Activism, Campaign Works ★★★★
Hannah Perry: Manual Labour ★★★

Zal Riani calls himself a shadow hunter. The Brazilian photographer lives in Rio de Janeiro, and likes to take a walk along Ipanema beach to relax after work.

He says: “I love the light at the end of day, and the shadows that appear when the sun is leaving. Whenever I go out to take photos in the late afternoon it’s because I’m looking for the longest shadows I can find.”

On the beach, you come across groups playing altinha, a Brazilian version of keepy-uppy. “You don’t let the ball fall, and keep it up high, without using your hands, but in the most beautiful way possible,” he says.

The exchange rate in Brazil prohibits Riani from upgrading his iPhone 6s Plus to a newer model, but he perseveres. “On the 6s Plus, shooting at night is impossible, but I can still make interesting images in the day,” he says.

Editing is a point of pride for Riani: “My professional background is in the creative side of advertising, so tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator are essential to my creative process. I deconstructed this entire photo and cut out the major elements, including Morro Dois Irmãos, the two mountains in the background. Then I worked on the background and remade the image, leaving only the elements that interested me. This was the resulting image.

“Some people think I use AI, but everything is manual, pixel by pixel,” he adds. “What makes me happiest is when people say my images look like a dream.”

I know what you’re thinking: “Whatever happened to sexy tyre calendars? I really miss those.” You’re in luck. The 2025 Pirelli calendar has been shot ultra-sexy, with tasteful nudity/near-nudity again. This is after the Italian company spent years reacting to #MeToo and accusations of pandering to the male gaze by shooting clothed campaigns.

Annie Leibovitz was involved in taking the photos at one point. There were photos of Yoko Ono, Serena Williams, Patti Smith and more… but they had their clothes on, so who cares?

The photographer for the 2025 calendar, Ethan James Green, said: “#MeToo really forced everyone to take a pause, which is really good.” He added: “My initial thoughts when I was approached were, ‘If I’m going to do Pirelli, I want to do Pirelli. I wanted to go back to the sexy classic, like what we think of when we think of Pirelli.’ ”

It turned out that Pirelli wanted the same thing. “Which was perfect,” said Green. Perfect sounds about right. This is a perfect example of Post#MeToo creep. Look around, and Post#MeToo creep is gathering pace, and has been for some time. It’s there in the lingerie company Victoria’s Secret, as predicted, bringing back the signature wings for fashion shows. It’s in reports that there could be a resurgent appetite for sexy films and TV shows. It’s in the cyclical skirmishes when a male actor, usually an older, established one, moans about on-set intimacy coordinators.

There seems a palpable push to put #MeToo in the rearview mirror. And, call it my overactive imagination, but, sometimes, with Post#MeToo creep, there’s a palpable undercurrent of: “Jeez, enough of the PC claptrap already, we’ve all said our mea culpas – time to move on!”

To an extent, it’s understandable. Sometimes things do have their season. Sometimes things (people, culture, sexy tyre calendars) do move on. Still, let’s be clear on a few issues before years of valuable sexual safety activism are casually binned. Let’s get some things straight before long-overdue, actually fairly mild and reasonable, on-set safeguards and protocols are derided and dismissed.

Perhaps a good place to start is the definition of #MeToo.

Green is mistaken. #MeToo didn’t force “everyone to take a pause”. It wasn’t a token moment’s silence for victims, then everything could resume the way it was before. #MeToo was and is supposed to be a live mandate telling men to stop sexually abusing, harassing and coercing women in the workplace, whether on film and TV sets, in offices, in hotel rooms with Jacuzzis, or anywhere else.

While the film producer Harvey Weinstein was one of the first and biggest scalps taken, #MeToo struck a universal chord because these pressures, outrages and worse were not confined to Hollywood. Ranging from galling to humiliating to terrifying, these were Everywoman experiences of a culture of embedded sexual extortion.

It’s also inexorably coiled around the entertainment industry. This, after all, is where “difficult” women saw their careers turned into roadkill because they wouldn’t sleep with someone, or they wouldn’t disrobe, or they objected to yet another sex scene.

All this going on and the thing to complain about is the intimacy coordinator? Sure, parts of this new form of ethical choreography do sound funny (“Put your hand there… Don’t pull an orgasmic face yet… Are you comfortable with his pumping speed?”). It’s doubtless a faff to relearn how to do sex scenes but perhaps these put-upon men could view it as a saleable skill for their thespian CV, like horse-riding, sword-fighting or speaking fluent Mandarin.

Just as directors and producers who can’t figure out a way to make their art exciting without a gratuitous plethora of topless shots or full-frontals should perhaps consider a future away from the creative industries.

“Sex sells” is a truism but it’s also the case that sex is an easy way to spice up a flagging film, rev up an otherwise dull television series, even titivate some deep-tread tyres. On screen, sometimes sex comes from a creative, meaningful and interesting place; other times, it’s a “tell” of behind-the-camera desperation and mediocrity. That’s why some sex scenes work, and many, many others don’t. Still, #MeToo was never fundamentally a protest against sexual content per se; #MeToo was a protest against abuses of power.

Here then is the disingenuous problem with Post#MeToo creep. It’s not that they’re trying to reintroduce sexual content on screen, on catwalks or in calendars, but that they’re acting as if they’re on a moral crusade, courageously standing up against suppression and censorship. That they haven’t simply tired of faking concern over societal issues. Or that they haven’t done a few calculations and decided that levels of woke fatigue are high enough to risk some potentially problematic optics. No, it’s all for artistic impression, to bring back fun, colour and excitement. When all that it’s really doing is slyly pushing the dial back to where it was.

Something has to be off when beholding the glorious visions of the unfettered Post#MeToo landscape. It all looks eerily familiar. As Post#MeToo is upon us, at least don’t misrepresent what #MeToo was and is. It wasn’t pro-censorship, it was pro-women. It wasn’t a politically correct sacred cow – there was ridicule, disbelief, diminishment and defamation from the off. As for rumbling on and on, #MeToo spanned a paltry seven years. That wasn’t allowed to last long, was it?

Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist

Elle St Pierre grew up on a dairy farm in Montgomery, Vermont. When the Olympic 1500m runner graduated college and joined New Balance Boston, a professional running team based in the city, she deeply missed life on the farm. After a few years, she came to a compromise with coach Mark Coogan: she would come to Boston for key workouts, but Vermont – specifically, her high school sweetheart turned husband Jamie St Pierre’s family dairy farm – was home.

“If she puts her mind to something in a race or a workout, she usually gets it done,” says Coogan.

Focusing on workouts comes naturally to St Pierre, and so did the pull of motherhood. In 2022, she stepped off the path followed by most superstar college athletes: in the prime of her career, having broken two American indoor records on the track and finished 10th in the 1500m at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she announced that she and Jamie were expecting their first child.

“Making that decision was just me following my heart,” St Pierre said over the phone at the end of July, just six days before she was due to compete in the first round of the women’s 1500m in Paris. “You only get one life.”

Less than a year after giving birth to her son, Ivan, she claimed her first world title, an indoor 3000m victory. In post-race interviews, Ivan stole the show as he happily pulled the microphone toward himself.

“I feel just like a different person and a different athlete,” she told me. “It just makes my priorities different.”

St Pierre talked about her training, other mothers in the running world, and how her second Olympics would feel. The conversation also turned to her son, who like all young children brings his fair share of daily drama. “Ivan won’t eat the shepherd’s pie I prepared,” she said, laughing. “He keeps shaking his head.”

Despite these hiccups, motherhood has brought calm to St Pierre’s training and racing.

“Ivan’s most important and my family’s most important, and that’s more clear after becoming a mom. And it makes me feel like I’m not just defined by who I am as a runner,” she said.

When St Pierre stood on the track before the Olympic 1500m final on 10 August, she knew she was ready. She’d done workouts in the lead-up to Paris that she’d never been able to do before. Whatever happened on the track, she’d still be happy off-track.

“[My goal is] a medal, but also to be proud of myself for making it here,” she said.

When the field of runners ran the first 400m in under 60 seconds, a faster tempo than world-record pace, St Pierre went with it.

“Once I saw the split, I knew that was too fast, but it was kind of too late at that point,” she said.

As St Pierre crossed the line in eighth place, she put her hands behind her head, and looked up into the sky, gasping for breath. She didn’t get the medal she came for, but she doesn’t have any regrets.

“I always knew that I would be more happy if I tried to run the pace than if I didn’t and came up short. I would rather try to give myself a chance,” she said.

She’d had the courage to put herself on sport’s grandest stage because she knew her family were there.

“You’re so vulnerable in the race and everything’s really high-stress, and it seems like the most important thing,” said St Pierre when I spoke to her three days after the race. She was already back at the farm in Vermont, her Team USA uniform replaced by mud-splattered work clothes. “And then you’re just back to being a normal person and with your family. That’s pretty nice, to be honest.”