30.07.15 7th Julia Margaret Cameron Award
Clodagh, was shortlisted for the 7th Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers within the portrait category. This year a group of 103 images were selected by the well-known photographer and juror Jill Greenberg, from 1,203 participants from 51 different countries. Currently in its 7th edition, this prize is an open call for woman photographers that includes different sections such as landscape, portrait or documentary, among other themes. The award aims to create a platform to recognize women through the years, and within the world of photography itself. The shortlisted work is part of an ongoing project with an approach towards the art narratives and morality of 19th century‘s early feminism, taking inspiration from names such as Virginia Woolf, Julia Margaret Cameron or Vanessa Bell. By focusing on these writers and artists I aim to investigate the beginning of this ideological movement and its essence since, in my opinion, this relies on the realm of the domestic. These women created liberating realities from the intimacy of their homes using photography, painting or literature on an attempt to reach freedom, or perhaps an ability to choose, that society could not offer to them yet. For the first time an art practice became a radical form of representation as it was used as a way of undermining the role of women in society. In this series of portraits, the methodology has to do with the domestic idea of life for women, through the creation of specific scenes, to register moments of intimacy – the privacy of the self. On the other hand, I also try to create theatrical instants of disruption in which the spectator can make an educational guess, can find himself in a moment of tension that reveals that something is about to happen. Clodagh alludes to a stillness in time. Finally, I would like to create an analytical glance towards the past in order to relate this particular movement of the 19th century with the renewed critical forms of the present by the means of photography.
“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf