The first monograph dedicated to the Hackney Flashers collective, a group of nine activist women who engaged in agitprop from 1974 to 1980 in the working-class neighborhood of Hackney in London.
The book uniquely brings together and reproduces all three of their series: Women and Work (1975), Who's Holding the Baby? (1978), and Domestic Labour and Visual Representation (1980).
Hackney Flashers' works denounce wage inequalities between women and men, the double burden of work for mothers, and the half-infantile, half-glamorous images of women disseminated by the media of the time. Photographer, journalist, editor, graphic designer, illustrator: the profiles of this non-mixed socialist feminist group gave its practice of public display a distinctive character, featuring panels composed of images, text, slogans, and illustrations.
The Hackney Flashers produced a form of propaganda, to use their own words, addressing a range of social discriminations—essentially, an intersectional practice before the term was widely used.
Camille Richert is a French art historian, art critic, teacher and curator.
The Hackney Flashers, a women's photography collective, was formed in 1974 and remained active until 1980. It was started by a small group of photographers and an illustrator with the purpose of making a photography exhibition about women at work. This was part of a trade union event celebrating 75 years of union activity in Hackney, East London.
The group eventually also included a designer, a writer and a book editor. Over time members described their individual political positions as feminist or socialist feminist.
Between 1974 and 1980 the Hackney Flashers produced two exhibitions of photographs and cartoons focussing on two key areas of women's lives: paid work, and the lack of childcare for working mothers.
These exhibitions, "Women and Work" (1975) and "Who's Holding the Baby?" (1978), were intended first and foremost as agitprop—to raise consciousness about the issues involved and support relevant action.
They were shown in community settings like health and community centres and libraries and in political contexts such as women's movement meetings and trade-union conferences.
The Hackney Flashers collective developed within the context of the rapidly growing Women's Liberation Movement which believed, along with the political Left, that collective action was a vital element in bringing about social and political change.
In 1979 "Who's Holding the Baby?" was shown in the Hayward Gallery's first photography exhibition, "Three Perspectives on Photography" as an example of socialist photographic practice.
