Worth another look...
Modern Women Living Alone
Toronto police officer fights Texan rapist
RAPE - At the centre of this story is "Ann Doe", age 33, a mother of two from the GTA... She was brutally raped while visiting Houston, Texas on a business trip in July 2008. It changed her life irreversibly.
But what really stings is how when she tried to get justice they all ignored her.
She went to the Houston police.
She went to the Durham police here in Canada.
She went to her local MP.
None of them helped her.
In steps Toronto Constable Shari MacKay.
MacKay and the Toronto police have nothing to do with the case, but MacKay believes strongly in truth and justice. (You go girl!)
MacKay wrote dozens of letters to officials in Houston, everyone from the chief of police to the mayor, and she pushed investigators to reopen the case. MacKay even made approx. 7 trips to Houston.
In October 2010, the rapist John Frangias was convicted of rape and sentenced to 8 years at the Texas State Penitentiary.
MacKay has since won the International Association of Women Police’s Mary Jo Blahowski Leadership Award for 2011.
“Shari saved me,” says Ann Doe simply, without any fanfare. “She took the case under her wings, she went way above and beyond.”
“She [Ann Doe] had no other advocate, there was no one else to look after her,” says MacKay. “What happened was horrific … I wanted to see him convicted for what he did.”
What the rapist John Frangias did is etched in Ann Doe’s memory.
Doe, who ran a consulting business with offices in Toronto and other cities, was in Houston for a conference in July 2008. The Lancaster Hotel was overbooked despite her reservations so she went to the Athens Hotel Suites.
After four days there and on the last night, a Thursday, she was walking down the hall to her room. It was approx. 11 PM when she opened the door to her room and someone shoved her in from behind.
She recognized the man who had been at the front desk, John Frangias, as her assailant. (John Frangias was the manager of the hotel.)
John Frangias grabbed her by the hair, pulled it hard and started groping her breasts.
Then he raped her. The rape lasted approx. 15 minutes, the worst 15 minutes of Ann Doe's life.
Reliving the memory is still hellish. “It takes you right back to those moments. I can feel it, hear it, taste it, smell it … when I talk about it,” says Ann Doe, her voice cracking. “When he left, I was numb,” says Doe. “Like a zombie, I got into the shower and scrubbed every inch of my body to get the stench off.”
Ann Doe's flight back to Toronto was early next morning and initially she tried to forget anything had ever happened. But when Doe landed back in Toronto she confided in a best friend what had happened and they persuaded her to go to the police.
She did, the same day.
Durham police sent her to the hospital where it was established that she had been violently raped. Confirmed evidence of it. Within days, she gave video testimony and everything was passed on to investigators in Houston.
Then the investigation stopped. Houston police were apparently doing nothing.
Meanwhile Doe stopped travelling and she rarely left the house. She was a mental wreck.
Eventually Doe bumped into Shari MacKay. Their kids went to the same daycare together. Their kids wanted a play date and sometime in February 2009, MacKay brought her kids to Doe’s home.
Their children became friends, so did the two women. But it still took another couple of months for Ann Doe to confide in MacKay. “I just wanted an insight into how investigations work,” says Doe. She was concerned why the case was going so slow and there was no response from the Houston police.
When MacKay heard her story, she instantly knew what had happened. Houston police weren't taking the rape incident seriously. A hotel manager rapist was raping tourists (possibly more than 1) and getting away with it. The local police weren't even given the case the time of day.
The next day, MacKay called up the investigators in Houston and was shocked to hear that they hadn’t even gone to the scene and had classified the complaint as “he said, she said. It blew my mind,” says MacKay.
“I was also politely told it wasn’t my jurisdiction.”
So yeah. Houston police are apparently patriarchal bastards who don't take rape seriously.
But MacKay wasn’t about to give up. She wrote dozens of letters to the chief of police, the mayor, the District Attorney’s office. The investigation started again and Doe was asked to come down to Houston. MacKay accompanied her.
“Shari was like a pit bull,” says Doe. “She wouldn’t let go.”
(Again, you go girl!!!)
“Houston cops resisted her … she didn’t let it deter her. I wish we had more police officers like Shari here,” says Alexis Bruegger, assistant DA in Houston.
“He [Frangias] was horrible,” says MacKay. “He had an elaborate story … that [Doe] was impaired and had fallen outside the hotel. The jury didn’t believe him.”
Eventually justice was served to John Frangias, 8 years at the Texas State Penitentiary.
That is simply proof that truth, justice and karma always win in the end.
We KNOW there are rapists out there who have yet to be caught, but they're living in rotting shells of a life. Karma catches up to everyone eventually.
But what really stings is how when she tried to get justice they all ignored her.
She went to the Houston police.
She went to the Durham police here in Canada.
She went to her local MP.
None of them helped her.
In steps Toronto Constable Shari MacKay.
MacKay and the Toronto police have nothing to do with the case, but MacKay believes strongly in truth and justice. (You go girl!)MacKay wrote dozens of letters to officials in Houston, everyone from the chief of police to the mayor, and she pushed investigators to reopen the case. MacKay even made approx. 7 trips to Houston.
In October 2010, the rapist John Frangias was convicted of rape and sentenced to 8 years at the Texas State Penitentiary.
MacKay has since won the International Association of Women Police’s Mary Jo Blahowski Leadership Award for 2011.
“Shari saved me,” says Ann Doe simply, without any fanfare. “She took the case under her wings, she went way above and beyond.”
“She [Ann Doe] had no other advocate, there was no one else to look after her,” says MacKay. “What happened was horrific … I wanted to see him convicted for what he did.”
What the rapist John Frangias did is etched in Ann Doe’s memory.
Doe, who ran a consulting business with offices in Toronto and other cities, was in Houston for a conference in July 2008. The Lancaster Hotel was overbooked despite her reservations so she went to the Athens Hotel Suites.
After four days there and on the last night, a Thursday, she was walking down the hall to her room. It was approx. 11 PM when she opened the door to her room and someone shoved her in from behind.
She recognized the man who had been at the front desk, John Frangias, as her assailant. (John Frangias was the manager of the hotel.)
John Frangias grabbed her by the hair, pulled it hard and started groping her breasts.
Then he raped her. The rape lasted approx. 15 minutes, the worst 15 minutes of Ann Doe's life.
Reliving the memory is still hellish. “It takes you right back to those moments. I can feel it, hear it, taste it, smell it … when I talk about it,” says Ann Doe, her voice cracking. “When he left, I was numb,” says Doe. “Like a zombie, I got into the shower and scrubbed every inch of my body to get the stench off.”
Ann Doe's flight back to Toronto was early next morning and initially she tried to forget anything had ever happened. But when Doe landed back in Toronto she confided in a best friend what had happened and they persuaded her to go to the police.
She did, the same day.
Durham police sent her to the hospital where it was established that she had been violently raped. Confirmed evidence of it. Within days, she gave video testimony and everything was passed on to investigators in Houston.
Then the investigation stopped. Houston police were apparently doing nothing.
Meanwhile Doe stopped travelling and she rarely left the house. She was a mental wreck.
Eventually Doe bumped into Shari MacKay. Their kids went to the same daycare together. Their kids wanted a play date and sometime in February 2009, MacKay brought her kids to Doe’s home.Their children became friends, so did the two women. But it still took another couple of months for Ann Doe to confide in MacKay. “I just wanted an insight into how investigations work,” says Doe. She was concerned why the case was going so slow and there was no response from the Houston police.
When MacKay heard her story, she instantly knew what had happened. Houston police weren't taking the rape incident seriously. A hotel manager rapist was raping tourists (possibly more than 1) and getting away with it. The local police weren't even given the case the time of day.
The next day, MacKay called up the investigators in Houston and was shocked to hear that they hadn’t even gone to the scene and had classified the complaint as “he said, she said. It blew my mind,” says MacKay.
“I was also politely told it wasn’t my jurisdiction.”
So yeah. Houston police are apparently patriarchal bastards who don't take rape seriously.
But MacKay wasn’t about to give up. She wrote dozens of letters to the chief of police, the mayor, the District Attorney’s office. The investigation started again and Doe was asked to come down to Houston. MacKay accompanied her.
“Shari was like a pit bull,” says Doe. “She wouldn’t let go.”
(Again, you go girl!!!)
“Houston cops resisted her … she didn’t let it deter her. I wish we had more police officers like Shari here,” says Alexis Bruegger, assistant DA in Houston.
“He [Frangias] was horrible,” says MacKay. “He had an elaborate story … that [Doe] was impaired and had fallen outside the hotel. The jury didn’t believe him.”
Eventually justice was served to John Frangias, 8 years at the Texas State Penitentiary.
That is simply proof that truth, justice and karma always win in the end.
We KNOW there are rapists out there who have yet to be caught, but they're living in rotting shells of a life. Karma catches up to everyone eventually.
The Truth about Father's Day
The third Sunday of June is Father's Day, a day on which we children celebrate our father's, give thanks to them and remind them how much we care about them.
The first observance of Father's Day actually took place in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908. It was organized by Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, who wanted to celebrate the lives of the 210 fathers who had been lost in the Monongah Mining disaster several months earlier in Monongah, West Virginia.
Since then the idea has caught on globally and it is now a tribute to quality dad's around the world.
And a burning admonishment of those father's who were never there, are now sitting at home lonely and wondering what they did wrong. Or maybe they know what they did wrong and now feel guilty, but either haven't apologized or their apology wasn't considered sincere enough.
Regardless...
What I really to talk about is MY FATHER. Donald or Don MacNevin.
My father was always sort of quiet and reserved, although he did like to talk sometimes and would not stop talking when he really got going. I take after him in that way.
He was traditional in many ways, but he was always supportive of everything I did.
He didn't treat me like a girl. Or a boy either. He treated me like a person. He valued my opinion, especially when it came to clothing. He just didn't seem to have a knack for matching ties to the clothing he was wearing.
Today, even though I am in England and he is over in Canada, I will be phoning him via Skype and it will be the first time he has ever used the device. To him these new fangled technologies are nothing more than a modern miracle and the idea that he can phone his daughter over the internet, across the Atlantic Ocean and see her via a webcam is like Moses parting the Red Sea.
I love my father. I think he is one of the best dad's in the world. Oh sure, he makes mistakes but they're honest mistakes. He's a meat and potatoes, salt of the earth, honest to a fault sort of guy. And he's my dad and I will always be proud of him.
So if you get a chance say so. Lift up your wine glass, beer can, coca-cola or whatever you have handy and give thanks to a parent who was always there, always supportive, always loved you and you loved them back through thick and thin.
Yours Truthfully,
Suzanne MacNevin
Father's Day 2011
The first observance of Father's Day actually took place in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908. It was organized by Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, who wanted to celebrate the lives of the 210 fathers who had been lost in the Monongah Mining disaster several months earlier in Monongah, West Virginia.
Since then the idea has caught on globally and it is now a tribute to quality dad's around the world.
And a burning admonishment of those father's who were never there, are now sitting at home lonely and wondering what they did wrong. Or maybe they know what they did wrong and now feel guilty, but either haven't apologized or their apology wasn't considered sincere enough.
Regardless...
What I really to talk about is MY FATHER. Donald or Don MacNevin.
My father was always sort of quiet and reserved, although he did like to talk sometimes and would not stop talking when he really got going. I take after him in that way.
He was traditional in many ways, but he was always supportive of everything I did.
He didn't treat me like a girl. Or a boy either. He treated me like a person. He valued my opinion, especially when it came to clothing. He just didn't seem to have a knack for matching ties to the clothing he was wearing.
Today, even though I am in England and he is over in Canada, I will be phoning him via Skype and it will be the first time he has ever used the device. To him these new fangled technologies are nothing more than a modern miracle and the idea that he can phone his daughter over the internet, across the Atlantic Ocean and see her via a webcam is like Moses parting the Red Sea.
I love my father. I think he is one of the best dad's in the world. Oh sure, he makes mistakes but they're honest mistakes. He's a meat and potatoes, salt of the earth, honest to a fault sort of guy. And he's my dad and I will always be proud of him.
So if you get a chance say so. Lift up your wine glass, beer can, coca-cola or whatever you have handy and give thanks to a parent who was always there, always supportive, always loved you and you loved them back through thick and thin.
Yours Truthfully,
Suzanne MacNevin
Father's Day 2011
150 years until equal representation
POLITICS - After the May elections for local governments in England the representation of women in local government remains stagnant and shockingly low. At the current rate of change we face another 150 years before women have an equal say in government, according to a new report.
The Centre for Women and Democracy report says political parties are key to getting more women into town halls.
‘Representative Democracy? Women in the 2011 Local Government Elections in England’ examines the elections held in May 2011 and found:
1. There was a net increase across over 3,500 seats of just 20 women councillors.
2. At the present rate, it will be more than 150 years before there are equal numbers of men and women elected to English local councils.
3. There were 318 wards where all the main three party candidates were male, 14 times as many as the 22 wards where all candidates were female.
Nan Sloane, report author and Director of the Centre for Women and Democracy, says:
Anna Bird, Acting Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society says:
The Centre for Women and Democracy report says political parties are key to getting more women into town halls.
‘Representative Democracy? Women in the 2011 Local Government Elections in England’ examines the elections held in May 2011 and found:
1. There was a net increase across over 3,500 seats of just 20 women councillors.
2. At the present rate, it will be more than 150 years before there are equal numbers of men and women elected to English local councils.
3. There were 318 wards where all the main three party candidates were male, 14 times as many as the 22 wards where all candidates were female.
Nan Sloane, report author and Director of the Centre for Women and Democracy, says:
“Only 31 per cent of councillors are women, and this isn’t improving. If the annual increase in women councillors stays as it is – just 20 across the sample of 3,500 seats we looked at – it will be many generations before women have an equal voice in local decision-making. This is shocking, and goes against all the rhetoric that we hear so often about the need for more women in public life."
“Since over 90 per cent of councillors belong to one of the big three parties, their candidate recruitment processes are key. But we also think that it’s astonishing that nobody has responsibility for the diversity of democracy nationally, and we shall be taking steps to ask government, the Electoral Commission and elections officers to do this, both in terms of providing support for the identification and training of candidates through a Democracy Diversity Fund, and by monitoring who is standing for election in the first place."
“In a genuinely representative democracy women would not be regarded as an added extra. They’re 51 per cent of the population, they’re more likely to be both the users and the providers - as employees - of local services, and they pay equal taxes. It’s high time they were equally represented."
Anna Bird, Acting Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society says:
“Nearly a century on from winning the vote, women remain outsiders in the corridors of power. We are underrepresented in town halls across the country and in Westminster – where men outnumber women 4 to 1."
“This report should act as a wake-up call for those who think business as usual will deliver the step change in women’s representation we so urgently need. Wishing and hoping isn’t working, it’s time we took a new approach."
The Truth about Being One of the Guys
FEMINIST - I opened an email earlier today forwarded from a friend in Canada and it started off like so...
"I think they're trying to contact you guys."
What I thought was amusing was that it was an email being forwarded to two women, and yet he had chosen to refer to us as "guys".
Not gals.
Not chicks.
Not Utero-Americans.
Guys.
And I think this is a positive thing, because what it implies is that guys is now an unisex word which means a group of females or males, and there doesn't have to be 1 male in the group.
Unlike French/Francais, in which if there is 1 male in a group its automatically upgraded to the masculine form of the word. We should be so fortunate that in English we don't worry about masculine and feminine words on a constant basis.
But we do pay attention to specific instances, and being referred to as a guy is a positive sign feminism is headed in the right direction.
So now that we femmes are "one of the guys" what should we do next?
Should we also become dudes? (As opposed to dudettes, a word I find annoying.)
Or how about man? As in "Hey man, wazzup?"
I think I shall start calling all my female homies "man" from now on. If I stick with it maybe we can start a trend that spans the globe.
Which begs the question if men and man becomes an unisex term, should we use a strictly masculine word for people with penises? Perhaps 'heman' or 'He-Man'?
Repeat after me...
"Hey He-Man, wazzup?" (Masculine only.)
"Hey man, wazzup?" (Unisex, singular.)
"Hey guys, wazzup?" (Unisex, plural.)
"I think they're trying to contact you guys."
What I thought was amusing was that it was an email being forwarded to two women, and yet he had chosen to refer to us as "guys".
Not gals.
Not chicks.
Not Utero-Americans.
Guys.
And I think this is a positive thing, because what it implies is that guys is now an unisex word which means a group of females or males, and there doesn't have to be 1 male in the group.
Unlike French/Francais, in which if there is 1 male in a group its automatically upgraded to the masculine form of the word. We should be so fortunate that in English we don't worry about masculine and feminine words on a constant basis.
But we do pay attention to specific instances, and being referred to as a guy is a positive sign feminism is headed in the right direction.
So now that we femmes are "one of the guys" what should we do next?
Should we also become dudes? (As opposed to dudettes, a word I find annoying.)
Or how about man? As in "Hey man, wazzup?"
I think I shall start calling all my female homies "man" from now on. If I stick with it maybe we can start a trend that spans the globe.
Which begs the question if men and man becomes an unisex term, should we use a strictly masculine word for people with penises? Perhaps 'heman' or 'He-Man'?
Repeat after me...
"Hey He-Man, wazzup?" (Masculine only.)
"Hey man, wazzup?" (Unisex, singular.)
"Hey guys, wazzup?" (Unisex, plural.)
Eff Off Hef!
FEMINIST - British feminists are planning a 2nd protest against the new London Playboy Club. The first protest took place days ago on May 26th and a second protest is coming up June 4th.Organized by OBJECT and UK Feminista, picketers will greet Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who is flying over from Los Angeles for the launch of the new Playboy Club, with calls to, “Eff Off, Hef!”
The London Playboy Club is situated on 14 Old Park Lane, Mayfair, London. W1K 1ND. If you want to join the protest please contact: Anna van Heeswijk on 07732 075835 / anna@object.org.uk or Kat Banyard on 07775 855037 / kat@ukfeminista.org.uk.
The new club comes 30 years after its previous location was shut down by a police raid for suspected gambling irregularities. Playboy Clubs are just one many products licensed by Playboy Enterprises, which includes a mix of magazines, films, websites, TV programming, clothing and even children’s stationary. (The latter of which has since been dropped by many stores due to public outrage.)Kat Banyard, Director of UK Feminista, says:
“When it comes to today’s pornography industry, all roads lead back to Playboy. It was Hugh Hefner who laid the political and cultural groundwork for the brutal, violently misogynistic pornography that now floods society. But sadly for Hefner, you can’t trademark sexism, and Playboy’s retro brand of ‘gentleman’s porn’ can no longer compete with the extreme degradation of modern internet pornography. Hence we see this endless diversification into nightclubs, video games, clothing and even children’s stationary."
“But whatever product Playboy stamps its logo on, the basic brand concept is the same: woman reduced to sex object for man’s sexual satisfaction - and Playboy’s financial gain. Naturally Playboy Club London embodies this brand, offering champagne and sexism. So Eff off, Hef. And take your club with you.”
Anna van Heeswijk, Campaigns Manager of OBJECT, says:
"Far from a symbol of sophistication and class, the opening of a new Playboy club in London signifies a worrying step backwards in the quest for equality between the sexes. It entrenches the legitimacy of a porn empire which makes its fortune out of degrading women as fluffy animals who exist as sexual playthings for wealthy men. It opens the floodgates ever wider to the pornification of our popular culture. And it serves to embed further a porn emblem which insidiously grooms girls into accepting and embracing sex object culture by marketing its brand to children through playboy pencil cases and bed covers."
"It is time to cut through the crap of the Playboy PR machine. Sexualising and objectifying women as bunny rabbits is not sexy and it is not empowering. It is sexist, and everyone knows it. This is why hundreds of women and men across the country are signing up to the OBJECT and UK Feminista campaign to object to the opening of the new Playboy club. Our message is clear - ‘Eff off Hef and stop degrading women!’"
Fawcett Society: Rape needs to be taken more seriously
The Fawcett Society has responded to policy proposals unveiled by the UK Government yesterday around sentencing for sex offenders.
Anna Bird, Acting Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society says:
Anna Bird, Acting Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society says:
“Every years thousand of women across the UK are the victim of rape. To suggest that some of those rapes are not ‘serious,’ that there are shades of sexual consent, is offensive and legally incorrect."
“The majority of sexual violence occurs between two people that know each other – partners, friends, colleagues. The stranger in the alleyway scenario is comparatively rare – but remains the most likely image people have of rape. It is not just women who are victims of rape, but also men.
“Far from challenging wrong ideas about what constitutes rape, the way in which today’s policy proposals have been presented by the Minister suggests common misconceptions about sexual violence exist at the heart of government.
“The Ministry of Justice urgently needs to tackle shockingly low reporting levels – almost 90 per cent of rapes are never even reported to the police, and the shamefully high attrition rate – few of those cases that are reported make it all the way to court.
“In the light of today’s events, we call on the government to restate its commitment to tackling sexual violence in all its forms and to clarify that rape is always a serious crime, the perpetrators of which should always face the full force of the law.”
British Women Artists during WWII
FEMINIST - I found this great article in The Independent (which I am including below without permission, but including a link so hopefully they won't mind). For the original article go to http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/women-at-war-the-female-british-artists-who-were-written-out-of-history-2264670.html
Women at war: The female British artists who were written out of history
The job of portraying battle has, traditionally, been seen as a male preserve. But Arifa Akbar discovers that women war artists also played a crucial role.
April 8th 2011
Images of war, rendered on canvas, have traditionally been presented to us in the most morbid forms: John Singer Sargent's chilling trench portrait of blinded troops in Gassed, Picasso's orgy of civil-war violence in Guernica, bloodied battlefields and frontlines from which artists capture live conflict as bombs whizz past them.
What is not so well documented is the women who work on war's hinterland, both as artists and as subjects. Few would be able to name a female counterpart to Sargent – it is assumed that a creative response to such violent destruction can only be delivered from a male perspective, a Siegfried Sassoon or a Rupert Brooke crouching in a foreign field.
Yet women have, since the turn of the 20th century, been interpreting and illustrating war, casting a fascinating light on the forgotten social, industrial and personal histories born from conflict which, while not as graphic as the front line, are invaluable in fleshing out a fuller picture of the human cost of war.
From the early 1900s, when it was indecent for women to be witnessing war from the brutality of the front, female artists produced their own images, many creating unofficial portraits surreptitiously as they worked in weapons factories, in hospital wards and in the ambulance vans of the First and Second World Wars, others in Belsen and at the trials at Nuremberg, and more recently, at the mass graves in Kosovo and the bombed borders of Iraq.
In an effort to bring these extraordinary, yet forgotten, artists to public attention, the Imperial War Museum in London is to stage a comprehensive exhibition on the subject of women as eye-witnesses, participants, commentators and officially commissioned recorders of war, entitled Women War Artists. The exhibition, opening tomorrow, will bring the work of those from the early 1900s alongside a contemporary wave of artists, including the Turner Prize shortlisted artist Fiona Banner, and the Palestinian video-artist, Mona Hatoum.
Kathleen Palmer, the show's curator, hopes the museum's survey will redress the enduring myth of the war-artist as an intrepid man dodging bullets, gun in one hand and sketchpad in the other.
"It's often misunderstood what the role of the war artist is," she says. "A lot of people think it is frontline sketching. War art encompasses far more than battle scenes or life at the frontline – it is about artists' creative responses to all aspects of war as seen and experienced by ordinary people, civilians, as well as servicemen and women. We look at women who find themselves in the war zone but also at those producing images unofficially, without the permission of the government in the First and Second World Wars, and also at women entering male workplaces in order to draw them, which was a radical thing to do then."
The first official war-artists' scheme was set up by the British government in 1916, mainly for propaganda purposes and for memorialising the nation's war effort. A host of artists were commissioned for this purpose, though only four women compared to 47 men, and of these four, three had their work rejected, while one did not take up the commission, so there was effectively no "official" female representation. However, the more determined artists, working independently and without government aegis, found themselves close to the frontline through medical work in hospitals and ambulance units, and began recording what they saw.
Olive Mudie-Cooke, already a trained artist who was driving ambulances for the British Red Cross in France from 1916, was one such woman. The images she produced departed from "official" fare: they featured hospital and auxiliary staff – images of the forgotten army of wartime helpers that would later be dramatised and in the novels of Pat Barker, and Sarah Waters's The Night Watch.
"Olive Mudie-Cooke served in France and Italy as an ambulance driver," says Palmer, "and she created work that responded to the situations she found – other women, the brands of tanks, landscapes, dramatic watercolours of nurses and ambulance staff lighting a cigarette, or ambulances being loaded with equipment."
At the start of the Second World War, women artists were given more leeway after the government's War Artists Advisory Committee (Waac) was set up, though there were still grave imbalances. More than 400 artists were involved – 52 of whom were women, the latter receiving fewer and shorter commissions, lower pay and far less publicity. Two women were given overseas commissions but only one, Evelyn Dunbar, was entrusted with a salaried position, and both were allowed to travel abroad only after the fighting had ended.
It was not until 1982, when Linda Kitson was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to record the Falklands conflict, that a British female artist was sent overseas to accompany troops going into battle, although women were not permitted to stay overnight on naval vessels at the time so Kitson had to travel on the QE2.
In 1945, as victory in Europe looked likely, an artist called Mary Kessell was preparing to go to Germany. By the time she arrived, the war was over but she created memorably intense charcoal drawings of homeless women and children in Berlin, as well as the destruction of Hamburg. Kessell also produced images of the Belsen resettlement camp, home to refugees and displaced people including some ravaged survivors of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp a few miles away.
Another female artist to be given an overseas commission in the 1940s was Dame Laura Knight. At the time she was painting, women auxiliaries had become more common, although female involvement in combat was strictly prohibited. Corporal Daphne Pearson, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (Waaf), sat for a portrait by Knight and revealed in a letter to her mother that the artist originally painted her with a rifle. The final painting features her brandishing a respirator instead of the weapon. It is not clear whether Knight was instructed to modify the image to make it less shocking, or whether she decided to tone it down herself. Corporal Pearson wrote in 1940: "I am being painted in a tin helmet and holding a rifle – Air Min [Air Ministry] will be furious but Dame Laura says my helmet is rather like a bonnet on the back of my head and the rifle makes a good line – Waafs are 'not to carry arms' – controversy is still raging and this will upset the apple cart. Dame Laura is adamant and firm."
Knight went on to become the first female artist since 1768 to become a full member of the Royal Academy. Her high standing enabled her to request an assignment to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945, which resulted in her painting The Nuremberg Trial. The tribunal tried 21 leading Nazis, headed by Hermann Goering. Knight was deeply disturbed by what she heard during the trial, and the realism of the courtroom in her painting is ruptured by the rubble of the city of Nuremberg shown as a ghostly backdrop.
"The trials just fired her imagination," says Palmer. "She drew many of the key Nazis in the dock. Unusually for her, it showed the back wall of the courtroom to have dissolved and the ruins of the city of Nuremberg lying there. She felt the destructive force of war needed to be in the painting."
The British Red Cross, meanwhile, commissioned Doris Zinkeisen to reflect their work in Europe in the 1940s, and she produced Human Laundry, a stark, searing image of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp's starving survivors. Of her time there, she later said: "The shock of Belsen was never to be forgotten... The stable was used to wash any living creature down before sending them into hospital to be treated. Each stall had a table on which to lay the patient – the German prisoners did the washing. The church was used as a hospital for those that were alive.'" Despite her personal horror, Human Laundry is in some ways, a seminal work in women's war-art as it proved that women could unflinchingly present the most discomforting aspects of war.
Social realities on the home front were also being presented more robustly the 1940s. Women with some artistic training were sneaking sketchpads into factories, without permission, depicting the civilian population contributing to the war effort, while others drew street scenes that captured air raids, shelters; sometimes these were comical or bittersweet images, at other times, shocking and violent. This work would have been considered dangerous and illicit had the authorities known about it, as imagery around war was tightly controlled for fear that it could used as negative propaganda.
Palmer says: "Women's images of the Blitz were hard-hitting. They were working independently, so doing more their own thing. Priscilla Thornycroft was an artist who was quite closely associated with the Communist Party, making drawings of places in Camden Town, people in the streets with air raids going on. They were dark and quirky and they really captured what was happening to individuals. Officially, the Blitz was reflected in a more abstract way but her work was specific about the working-class experience of war on the home front. It was quite a nice counterpoint to the official commissions." A previously unseen work by Thornycroft in the exhibition features a scene that took place early on in the Second World War when an air-raid warning frightened a bolting horse that became impaled on railings. She painted it in the 1950s in a lustrous style to highlight both the beauty and tragic outcome of the horse.
Margaret Abbess had completed her foundation course at the Royal College of Art but was conscripted and sent to make Spitfire parts in a factory before she could take her art training further: "She documented the factory work when she shouldn't have done. She didn't have permission but was covertly making sketches in her rest breaks and going home to work on the images. She was thinking of throwing them all away in 2005 when a family member told her to bring them to us," says Palmer.
The question of how female war-artists chose to represent ordinary working women during these decades is an interesting one. Images of women on the home front were not always "feminist" in the modern sense; some adopted the style of their older male counterparts while others painted women in stereotypically glamorised incarnations, even in factory scenes which, in reality, would have been sweaty places of industry.
The most iconic example of this glamorisation is an image of Ruby Loftus, a 21-year-old "shop girl" who mastered the difficult skill of screwing the breech ring of the anti-aircraft Bofors gun, a technique that normally took men almost a decade of dedicated experience. Her story was picked up by the Ministry of Information, which was trying to encourage women into weapons production at that point. Her portrait was painted by Knight and promptly exhibited at the Royal Academy.
Yet the image must have borne little resemblance to the reality of her work: "Ruby Loftus was painted in the middle of the mechanical process but in a way that reinforced the female stereotype. She was made to look very glamorous, wearing lipstick and with machinery that gleamed. It made her job look easy," says Palmer.
The image may have added to the conspiracy theories bubbling around that suggested Ruby Loftus was a fraudulent poster girl of the war, who could not, in fact, have been strong or clever enough to do the job.
More contemporary wars have led to different kinds of artwork: the rise of photo-journalism, and images delivered daily on our television screens from conflict regions, have progressively reduced the shock value of frontline artwork. War artists these days can be seen to be taking an "alternative" perspective, pioneered by female artists of earlier decades, that bring creative, personalised responses to war. Mona Hatoum, for example, renders hand-grenades as jewel-like coloured glass objects that encompass a terrible beauty in her piece, Nature morte aux grenades, while Rita Duffy transforms a weapon into confectionery in Dessert, which features a gun, cast from an AK-47 rifle that was decommissioned through the Northern Ireland peace process, but made out of chocolate.
The message in both these works appears to critique the fetishised status that the weaponry of war has assumed in contemporary culture.
"[Duffy's] piece embodies the attraction of violence, the temptation of the empowerment which comes from joining paramilitary organisations" and yet, "the gun is neutered: only made of chocolate, it cannot be used," comments Palmer.
The German artist Frauke Eigen, who photographed scenes from Kosovo in 2000 following its ethnic cleansing, has explained why she decided to photograph the personal effects from bodies exhumed from mass graves of genocide victims in Kosovo, rather than the bodies themselves.
"The sight of these bodies and the strong stench of formaldehyde made me leave the place, and on my way out I saw these clothes laying there in the sun for drying after they had been washed. For some reason, maybe because these clothes were much more human-like and recognisable than the bodies, I felt far more touched and disturbed and started to take pictures." Hatoum, similarly, has said she resists the demand for the literal horror of war.
"When I started making these works I was criticised for not showing the 'spectacle of horror' but expecting the viewer to imagine for themselves the impending disaster. I personally felt that this was precisely the strength of the work and a sign of maturity in the way the work conjures up certain images in the viewer's mind."
And in her sentiment, Hatoum sums up much of the spirit, imagination and force of a century of women war-artists.
Women War Artists, Imperial War Museum, London SE1 (020 7416 5320)9 April to 6 January
The art of war: women at the front
Dame Laura Knight RA (1877–1970)
Knight trained at the Nottingham School of Art and began by taking her subjects from the world of circus and ballet. These images were well received and established her as a leading artist of her generation. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Knight was the most important woman artist in Britain and the first to be elected a Royal Academician since 1768. Knight worked various commissions for the War Artists Advisory Committee and, at the end of the war, she was granted permission to paint the trial of major war criminals at Nuremberg. She spent the first months of 1946 in Germany, making her one of only three women war-artists commissioned to travel abroad to record the war.
Anna Airy (1882–1964)
Having trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, she was one of the first women to be officially commissioned. Invited by the Munitions Committee of the Imperial War Museum in 1918 to produce four pictures representing typical scenes in munitions factories – the shell forge at the National Projectile Factory in Hackney Marshes (London), a gun forge near Manchester, the aircraft assembly shop at Armstrong-Whitworth, Hendon, and the Singer factory in Glasgow. The conditions under which Airy worked were stringent and included penalties for any delay in her work. One painting, showing munitions girls leaving work, was produced at the request of the Ministry of Information's British War Memorials Committee in 1919. It was rejected by the Committee and later destroyed by the artist.
Margaret Abbess (1922–2008)
Abbess was offered a place at the Royal College of Art (RCA) but was conscripted into war work in 1942. Security was extremely tight in factories engaged in war production. Drawing sensitive subjects or places required a permit – which Abbess did not have. Nonetheless, while working in an aircraft components factory she produced several drawings of factory scenes. This work was produced in secret, often during breaks, and provides an unofficial insight into factory life. Most of Abbess's drawings began as small sketches which she later completed at home from memory. After the war, Abbess finished her studies at the RCA and worked for many years in art education. She kept her war drawings but felt they were of limited artistic value. In 2005 she considered destroying them, but was encouraged by her family to offer them to the Imperial War Museum.
Mona Hatoum (b. 1952)
Mona Hatoum was born in Lebanon to a Palestinian family. She studied in Beirut, moving to Britain in the 1970s. When civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975 she found it impossible to return home, and settled in Britain, training at the Slade School of Art. Hatoum's early work often includes performance and video ("Measures of Distance", above). She uses domestic objects such as kitchen implements and cots, or medical objects, such as trolleys and wheelchairs, to imply a sense of threat or violence. Her artworks have incorporated blades and pulsing electric currents. She now lives and works in London and Berlin. Her work is exhibited internationally and held in museum collections around the world.
Linda Kitson (b. 1945)
Kitson studied at St Martins School of Art and the Royal College of Art, where she specialised in illustration. She then taught at Camberwell, Chelsea and the City and Guilds Art Schools. Her drawings that appeared in "The Times" won her the Falklands commission from the Artistic Records Committee of the Imperial War Museum. Kitson became the first official female war-artist to accompany troops into action during the Falklands conflict in 1982. She travelled on civilian ships requisitioned by the Navy, as women were not permitted on naval vessels at the time. The original intention was for Kitson to disembark at Ascension Island, but instead she stayed with the forces throughout the conflict. She eventually produced more than 400 drawings showing all aspects of the conflict, except the actual fighting, most of which occurred at night. Her drawings were often completed at speed in hostile conditions.
Frauke Eigen (b. 1969)
The German-born artist studied photography at the Royal College of Art in London, and it was while working as a photo-journalist that she made her first trip to Kosovo, in 2000. While there, she was told that a mass grave containing the bodies of genocide victims had just been uncovered nearby. Witnessing the recovery operation, Eigen decided to photograph the clothes and personal items of the dead, rather than the bodies themselves ("Fundstücke Kosovo", left). Eigen recently completed a photographic project in Afghanistan.
Women at war: The female British artists who were written out of history
The job of portraying battle has, traditionally, been seen as a male preserve. But Arifa Akbar discovers that women war artists also played a crucial role.
April 8th 2011Images of war, rendered on canvas, have traditionally been presented to us in the most morbid forms: John Singer Sargent's chilling trench portrait of blinded troops in Gassed, Picasso's orgy of civil-war violence in Guernica, bloodied battlefields and frontlines from which artists capture live conflict as bombs whizz past them.
What is not so well documented is the women who work on war's hinterland, both as artists and as subjects. Few would be able to name a female counterpart to Sargent – it is assumed that a creative response to such violent destruction can only be delivered from a male perspective, a Siegfried Sassoon or a Rupert Brooke crouching in a foreign field.
Yet women have, since the turn of the 20th century, been interpreting and illustrating war, casting a fascinating light on the forgotten social, industrial and personal histories born from conflict which, while not as graphic as the front line, are invaluable in fleshing out a fuller picture of the human cost of war.
From the early 1900s, when it was indecent for women to be witnessing war from the brutality of the front, female artists produced their own images, many creating unofficial portraits surreptitiously as they worked in weapons factories, in hospital wards and in the ambulance vans of the First and Second World Wars, others in Belsen and at the trials at Nuremberg, and more recently, at the mass graves in Kosovo and the bombed borders of Iraq.
In an effort to bring these extraordinary, yet forgotten, artists to public attention, the Imperial War Museum in London is to stage a comprehensive exhibition on the subject of women as eye-witnesses, participants, commentators and officially commissioned recorders of war, entitled Women War Artists. The exhibition, opening tomorrow, will bring the work of those from the early 1900s alongside a contemporary wave of artists, including the Turner Prize shortlisted artist Fiona Banner, and the Palestinian video-artist, Mona Hatoum.
Kathleen Palmer, the show's curator, hopes the museum's survey will redress the enduring myth of the war-artist as an intrepid man dodging bullets, gun in one hand and sketchpad in the other.
"It's often misunderstood what the role of the war artist is," she says. "A lot of people think it is frontline sketching. War art encompasses far more than battle scenes or life at the frontline – it is about artists' creative responses to all aspects of war as seen and experienced by ordinary people, civilians, as well as servicemen and women. We look at women who find themselves in the war zone but also at those producing images unofficially, without the permission of the government in the First and Second World Wars, and also at women entering male workplaces in order to draw them, which was a radical thing to do then."
The first official war-artists' scheme was set up by the British government in 1916, mainly for propaganda purposes and for memorialising the nation's war effort. A host of artists were commissioned for this purpose, though only four women compared to 47 men, and of these four, three had their work rejected, while one did not take up the commission, so there was effectively no "official" female representation. However, the more determined artists, working independently and without government aegis, found themselves close to the frontline through medical work in hospitals and ambulance units, and began recording what they saw.
Olive Mudie-Cooke, already a trained artist who was driving ambulances for the British Red Cross in France from 1916, was one such woman. The images she produced departed from "official" fare: they featured hospital and auxiliary staff – images of the forgotten army of wartime helpers that would later be dramatised and in the novels of Pat Barker, and Sarah Waters's The Night Watch.
"Olive Mudie-Cooke served in France and Italy as an ambulance driver," says Palmer, "and she created work that responded to the situations she found – other women, the brands of tanks, landscapes, dramatic watercolours of nurses and ambulance staff lighting a cigarette, or ambulances being loaded with equipment."
At the start of the Second World War, women artists were given more leeway after the government's War Artists Advisory Committee (Waac) was set up, though there were still grave imbalances. More than 400 artists were involved – 52 of whom were women, the latter receiving fewer and shorter commissions, lower pay and far less publicity. Two women were given overseas commissions but only one, Evelyn Dunbar, was entrusted with a salaried position, and both were allowed to travel abroad only after the fighting had ended.
It was not until 1982, when Linda Kitson was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to record the Falklands conflict, that a British female artist was sent overseas to accompany troops going into battle, although women were not permitted to stay overnight on naval vessels at the time so Kitson had to travel on the QE2.
In 1945, as victory in Europe looked likely, an artist called Mary Kessell was preparing to go to Germany. By the time she arrived, the war was over but she created memorably intense charcoal drawings of homeless women and children in Berlin, as well as the destruction of Hamburg. Kessell also produced images of the Belsen resettlement camp, home to refugees and displaced people including some ravaged survivors of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp a few miles away.
Another female artist to be given an overseas commission in the 1940s was Dame Laura Knight. At the time she was painting, women auxiliaries had become more common, although female involvement in combat was strictly prohibited. Corporal Daphne Pearson, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (Waaf), sat for a portrait by Knight and revealed in a letter to her mother that the artist originally painted her with a rifle. The final painting features her brandishing a respirator instead of the weapon. It is not clear whether Knight was instructed to modify the image to make it less shocking, or whether she decided to tone it down herself. Corporal Pearson wrote in 1940: "I am being painted in a tin helmet and holding a rifle – Air Min [Air Ministry] will be furious but Dame Laura says my helmet is rather like a bonnet on the back of my head and the rifle makes a good line – Waafs are 'not to carry arms' – controversy is still raging and this will upset the apple cart. Dame Laura is adamant and firm."Knight went on to become the first female artist since 1768 to become a full member of the Royal Academy. Her high standing enabled her to request an assignment to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945, which resulted in her painting The Nuremberg Trial. The tribunal tried 21 leading Nazis, headed by Hermann Goering. Knight was deeply disturbed by what she heard during the trial, and the realism of the courtroom in her painting is ruptured by the rubble of the city of Nuremberg shown as a ghostly backdrop.
"The trials just fired her imagination," says Palmer. "She drew many of the key Nazis in the dock. Unusually for her, it showed the back wall of the courtroom to have dissolved and the ruins of the city of Nuremberg lying there. She felt the destructive force of war needed to be in the painting."
The British Red Cross, meanwhile, commissioned Doris Zinkeisen to reflect their work in Europe in the 1940s, and she produced Human Laundry, a stark, searing image of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp's starving survivors. Of her time there, she later said: "The shock of Belsen was never to be forgotten... The stable was used to wash any living creature down before sending them into hospital to be treated. Each stall had a table on which to lay the patient – the German prisoners did the washing. The church was used as a hospital for those that were alive.'" Despite her personal horror, Human Laundry is in some ways, a seminal work in women's war-art as it proved that women could unflinchingly present the most discomforting aspects of war.Social realities on the home front were also being presented more robustly the 1940s. Women with some artistic training were sneaking sketchpads into factories, without permission, depicting the civilian population contributing to the war effort, while others drew street scenes that captured air raids, shelters; sometimes these were comical or bittersweet images, at other times, shocking and violent. This work would have been considered dangerous and illicit had the authorities known about it, as imagery around war was tightly controlled for fear that it could used as negative propaganda.
Palmer says: "Women's images of the Blitz were hard-hitting. They were working independently, so doing more their own thing. Priscilla Thornycroft was an artist who was quite closely associated with the Communist Party, making drawings of places in Camden Town, people in the streets with air raids going on. They were dark and quirky and they really captured what was happening to individuals. Officially, the Blitz was reflected in a more abstract way but her work was specific about the working-class experience of war on the home front. It was quite a nice counterpoint to the official commissions." A previously unseen work by Thornycroft in the exhibition features a scene that took place early on in the Second World War when an air-raid warning frightened a bolting horse that became impaled on railings. She painted it in the 1950s in a lustrous style to highlight both the beauty and tragic outcome of the horse.
Margaret Abbess had completed her foundation course at the Royal College of Art but was conscripted and sent to make Spitfire parts in a factory before she could take her art training further: "She documented the factory work when she shouldn't have done. She didn't have permission but was covertly making sketches in her rest breaks and going home to work on the images. She was thinking of throwing them all away in 2005 when a family member told her to bring them to us," says Palmer.
The question of how female war-artists chose to represent ordinary working women during these decades is an interesting one. Images of women on the home front were not always "feminist" in the modern sense; some adopted the style of their older male counterparts while others painted women in stereotypically glamorised incarnations, even in factory scenes which, in reality, would have been sweaty places of industry.
The most iconic example of this glamorisation is an image of Ruby Loftus, a 21-year-old "shop girl" who mastered the difficult skill of screwing the breech ring of the anti-aircraft Bofors gun, a technique that normally took men almost a decade of dedicated experience. Her story was picked up by the Ministry of Information, which was trying to encourage women into weapons production at that point. Her portrait was painted by Knight and promptly exhibited at the Royal Academy.
Yet the image must have borne little resemblance to the reality of her work: "Ruby Loftus was painted in the middle of the mechanical process but in a way that reinforced the female stereotype. She was made to look very glamorous, wearing lipstick and with machinery that gleamed. It made her job look easy," says Palmer.
The image may have added to the conspiracy theories bubbling around that suggested Ruby Loftus was a fraudulent poster girl of the war, who could not, in fact, have been strong or clever enough to do the job.
More contemporary wars have led to different kinds of artwork: the rise of photo-journalism, and images delivered daily on our television screens from conflict regions, have progressively reduced the shock value of frontline artwork. War artists these days can be seen to be taking an "alternative" perspective, pioneered by female artists of earlier decades, that bring creative, personalised responses to war. Mona Hatoum, for example, renders hand-grenades as jewel-like coloured glass objects that encompass a terrible beauty in her piece, Nature morte aux grenades, while Rita Duffy transforms a weapon into confectionery in Dessert, which features a gun, cast from an AK-47 rifle that was decommissioned through the Northern Ireland peace process, but made out of chocolate.
The message in both these works appears to critique the fetishised status that the weaponry of war has assumed in contemporary culture.
"[Duffy's] piece embodies the attraction of violence, the temptation of the empowerment which comes from joining paramilitary organisations" and yet, "the gun is neutered: only made of chocolate, it cannot be used," comments Palmer.
The German artist Frauke Eigen, who photographed scenes from Kosovo in 2000 following its ethnic cleansing, has explained why she decided to photograph the personal effects from bodies exhumed from mass graves of genocide victims in Kosovo, rather than the bodies themselves.
"The sight of these bodies and the strong stench of formaldehyde made me leave the place, and on my way out I saw these clothes laying there in the sun for drying after they had been washed. For some reason, maybe because these clothes were much more human-like and recognisable than the bodies, I felt far more touched and disturbed and started to take pictures." Hatoum, similarly, has said she resists the demand for the literal horror of war.
"When I started making these works I was criticised for not showing the 'spectacle of horror' but expecting the viewer to imagine for themselves the impending disaster. I personally felt that this was precisely the strength of the work and a sign of maturity in the way the work conjures up certain images in the viewer's mind."
And in her sentiment, Hatoum sums up much of the spirit, imagination and force of a century of women war-artists.
Women War Artists, Imperial War Museum, London SE1 (020 7416 5320)9 April to 6 JanuaryThe art of war: women at the front
Dame Laura Knight RA (1877–1970)
Knight trained at the Nottingham School of Art and began by taking her subjects from the world of circus and ballet. These images were well received and established her as a leading artist of her generation. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Knight was the most important woman artist in Britain and the first to be elected a Royal Academician since 1768. Knight worked various commissions for the War Artists Advisory Committee and, at the end of the war, she was granted permission to paint the trial of major war criminals at Nuremberg. She spent the first months of 1946 in Germany, making her one of only three women war-artists commissioned to travel abroad to record the war.
Anna Airy (1882–1964)
Having trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, she was one of the first women to be officially commissioned. Invited by the Munitions Committee of the Imperial War Museum in 1918 to produce four pictures representing typical scenes in munitions factories – the shell forge at the National Projectile Factory in Hackney Marshes (London), a gun forge near Manchester, the aircraft assembly shop at Armstrong-Whitworth, Hendon, and the Singer factory in Glasgow. The conditions under which Airy worked were stringent and included penalties for any delay in her work. One painting, showing munitions girls leaving work, was produced at the request of the Ministry of Information's British War Memorials Committee in 1919. It was rejected by the Committee and later destroyed by the artist.
Margaret Abbess (1922–2008)
Abbess was offered a place at the Royal College of Art (RCA) but was conscripted into war work in 1942. Security was extremely tight in factories engaged in war production. Drawing sensitive subjects or places required a permit – which Abbess did not have. Nonetheless, while working in an aircraft components factory she produced several drawings of factory scenes. This work was produced in secret, often during breaks, and provides an unofficial insight into factory life. Most of Abbess's drawings began as small sketches which she later completed at home from memory. After the war, Abbess finished her studies at the RCA and worked for many years in art education. She kept her war drawings but felt they were of limited artistic value. In 2005 she considered destroying them, but was encouraged by her family to offer them to the Imperial War Museum.
Mona Hatoum (b. 1952)
Mona Hatoum was born in Lebanon to a Palestinian family. She studied in Beirut, moving to Britain in the 1970s. When civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975 she found it impossible to return home, and settled in Britain, training at the Slade School of Art. Hatoum's early work often includes performance and video ("Measures of Distance", above). She uses domestic objects such as kitchen implements and cots, or medical objects, such as trolleys and wheelchairs, to imply a sense of threat or violence. Her artworks have incorporated blades and pulsing electric currents. She now lives and works in London and Berlin. Her work is exhibited internationally and held in museum collections around the world.
Linda Kitson (b. 1945)
Kitson studied at St Martins School of Art and the Royal College of Art, where she specialised in illustration. She then taught at Camberwell, Chelsea and the City and Guilds Art Schools. Her drawings that appeared in "The Times" won her the Falklands commission from the Artistic Records Committee of the Imperial War Museum. Kitson became the first official female war-artist to accompany troops into action during the Falklands conflict in 1982. She travelled on civilian ships requisitioned by the Navy, as women were not permitted on naval vessels at the time. The original intention was for Kitson to disembark at Ascension Island, but instead she stayed with the forces throughout the conflict. She eventually produced more than 400 drawings showing all aspects of the conflict, except the actual fighting, most of which occurred at night. Her drawings were often completed at speed in hostile conditions.
Frauke Eigen (b. 1969)
The German-born artist studied photography at the Royal College of Art in London, and it was while working as a photo-journalist that she made her first trip to Kosovo, in 2000. While there, she was told that a mass grave containing the bodies of genocide victims had just been uncovered nearby. Witnessing the recovery operation, Eigen decided to photograph the clothes and personal items of the dead, rather than the bodies themselves ("Fundstücke Kosovo", left). Eigen recently completed a photographic project in Afghanistan.
The Truth about Will and Kate
POLITICS - I am in a cafe near Trafalgar Square. I don't have much time either. I have to run over to Buckingham Palace and try to see Kate Middleton and Prince William come out on the balcony.
My girlfriend and I attended the Royal Wedding today. We were locked out of Trafalgar Square because the crowds inside there have reached a point where they are worried about being able to get emergency vehicles in there in the event of trouble.
So far the wedding has gone on without a hitch. Will and Kate are now officially married, they've taken the red carriage back to Buckingham Palace, with the Queen and Prince Philip following in a covered carriage (I'll upload photos later, I promise!).
Its been an interesting day to have dual citizenship. As a Briton I am very proud to see the Royal Wedding. As a Canadian I've been bumping into fellow Canadians all day, often decorated with maple leaves.
I also met Ben Mulroney today, who is here working as a reporter for CTV. He was taller than I expected. I gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek. Not sure if that will end up on TV.
He and I briefly chatted about the election going on back in Canada. He refused to comment on Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, but I got the impression that he doesn't care the new Conservative Party and that both he and his father (Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister of Canada from 1984-1993) miss the ol' Progressive Conservative Party.
Back to Will and Kate there is a lot of chatter about how much these two actually love each other, and whether they are just getting married for royal appearances. Bets are being traded on how long the marriage will last.
The truth is nobody knows. Not with absolute certainty.
Gotta run, going to see the balcony kiss!
EXTRA NOTES: A lot of fuss has been made about Kate's wedding dress.
My girlfriend and I attended the Royal Wedding today. We were locked out of Trafalgar Square because the crowds inside there have reached a point where they are worried about being able to get emergency vehicles in there in the event of trouble.
So far the wedding has gone on without a hitch. Will and Kate are now officially married, they've taken the red carriage back to Buckingham Palace, with the Queen and Prince Philip following in a covered carriage (I'll upload photos later, I promise!).
Its been an interesting day to have dual citizenship. As a Briton I am very proud to see the Royal Wedding. As a Canadian I've been bumping into fellow Canadians all day, often decorated with maple leaves.
I also met Ben Mulroney today, who is here working as a reporter for CTV. He was taller than I expected. I gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek. Not sure if that will end up on TV.
He and I briefly chatted about the election going on back in Canada. He refused to comment on Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, but I got the impression that he doesn't care the new Conservative Party and that both he and his father (Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister of Canada from 1984-1993) miss the ol' Progressive Conservative Party.
Back to Will and Kate there is a lot of chatter about how much these two actually love each other, and whether they are just getting married for royal appearances. Bets are being traded on how long the marriage will last.
The truth is nobody knows. Not with absolute certainty.
Gotta run, going to see the balcony kiss!
EXTRA NOTES: A lot of fuss has been made about Kate's wedding dress.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)