Donna Ferrato, activist, photojournalist and campaigner for women’s rights, is unexpectedly – and only briefly – conciliatory. “The good thing with Trump was that everything was becoming more transparent – we were seeing how the world worked more clearly than under any other president we ever had.” The moment passes and she adds: “But it was also the reason why we had to fight much harder and change things and take back our rights.”

1.
'We need to be pushy': women's rights and
photography
Main image: Janice, Boulder, Colorado, 1984 (LIFE magazine, MS magazine)
Wed 25 Nov 2020 06.00 GMT
Donna Ferrato, activist, photojournalist and campaigner for women’s rights, is unexpectedly – and only
briefly – conciliatory. “The good thing with Trump was that everything was becoming more transparent –
we were seeing how the world worked more clearly than under any other president we ever had.” The
moment passes and she adds: “But it was also the reason why we had to fight much harder and change
things and take back our rights.”
Ferrato is an internationally-known documentary photographer – most famous for her often shocking work
focusing on domestic violence – who has participated in more than 500 exhibitions worldwide and won
numerous awards – including the Robert F Kennedy Award for Humanistic Photography, the IWMF Courage
in Journalism award, and the Missouri Honor Medal. She founded and ran the Domestic Abuse Awareness
project for over a decade and in 2014 Ferrato launched I Am Unbeatable, a campaign to raise awareness,
educate and prevent domestic violence against women and children.
Ferrato and I are talking by phone about a new experimental video collaboration with the Italian musician
Gabriele Ciampi launched on the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, in
which his composition Infinito accompanies a sequence of some of her hardest-hitting images.
“Gabriele had this idea to work with female photographers and he really wanted to show challenging work.
When he sent me some music I was really moved by Infinito, and I felt that was the piece that had the most
emotional range to it. I recognised he really is a believer in the rights of women. This was quite an
Infinito. Piano by Gabriele Ciampi; cello by Livia de Romanis. “I needed music for the photographs; since Nina Simone wasn’t around I got Gabriele
Ciampi instead. His music is about understanding the heart of a woman, sorrow, pain and the liberating power of orgasms,” says Ferrato.
Homeless shelter, Chicago, IL, 2006
Photojournalist Donna Ferrato talks about women and the Trump presidency, the fight for change and the
power of photography
by Guy Lane

2. extraordinary experience, to work with a composer who was very sensitive and give him the toughest
pictures that I have and see how he could make more points using my photographs with his score.”
Ferrato’s evident satisfaction with the film is offset by an increased concern about the increase in domestic
violence during the pandemic. “In the States … the problem is that the shelters are unable to bring in as
many families as they could before,” she says. “Right now they are having a hard time just keeping their
doors open at the end of the Trump presidency because the funding from state to state has been very
sketchy.”
Moreover, if a woman or child is able to alert the authorities, further difficulties can ensue. “It’s very scary,
when the police go in you never know how they are going to behave. Most women don’t want their
husbands or their boyfriends to be killed; they just want them to stop hurting them. But the police go in and
that’s when the real violence often happens. It’s really hard for people in this country to trust the police.
Bad things happen. We need to be training the police, so they know how to get the men out of these
situations.”
Boyfriend, policeman, Karen and her daughter, Minneapolis, MN, 1987
Karen’s boyfriend is taken away by police. Her daughter, who called the cops when she found her mother on the bathroom floor, looks on. Karen did
not press charges, and he was released the next day.
Victoria Gill, NYC, 2017
The only tattoo on Victoria’s body is the amniote vertebrae of a snake.

3. I ask Ferrato about the worry and anger she mentions in her latest book, Holy, a retrospective of five
decades’ work, an indictment of the violence that is meted out to women, and an affirmation of their
strength, endurance and will. Her worry was focused, she says, on women’s right to choose.
“We’ve been under assault on abortion rights for 20 to 25 years, and I’d been fighting. Everybody seemed to
think, especially in [the US], that we had nothing to worry about, that this was the law. But the Democrats
and the liberals were not putting enough attention into it. What we saw over the last four years is that there
are now at least eight states that have no more legal abortion.”
And her anger is still keenly felt. “The Republican administration was attacking immigrants and women
who were coming into this country trying to escape horrific violence. And suddenly it didn’t matter any
more what was being done against women. It was all about these ridiculous laws that were accomplishing
nothing, just hurting people. I was really furious at the numbers of children that were being taken away, put
into cages and not given any support. There was no record being kept so that the powers-that-be would be
able to reunite parents with their children. This was just inhuman.”
Sarah Augusta Jones with sons Jayden and Tyler and her parents Geoff and Susan, Nashville, TN, 2012. Sarah and her family at “Meet Us at the
Bridge”, an annual event sponsored by the Nashville Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Raped and pregnant at 13, Sarah was coerced into living
with her rapist. She finally escaped with her children. This image was included in “I Am Unbeatable: Celebrating and Documenting Stories of
Empowerment,” Ferrato’s 2012 exhibition at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Shelter advocate with Pam, Boulder, CO, 1986
Pam (right) arrived after her husband had slammed spiked shoes in her head, stabbed her in the hand and burned her arm with cigarettes in front of
the children. Pam’s husband was released by a judge who was concerned the man might lose his job if he was held. Pam moved to another city via an
underground shelter system.

4. News is under threat …
… just when we need it the most. Millions of readers around the world are flocking to the Guardian
in search of honest, authoritative, fact-based reporting that can help them understand the biggest
challenge we have faced in our lifetime. But at this crucial moment, news organisations are facing a
“I don’t understand the hypocrisy of people in this country, not just white men, but white women too. I
don’t understand the hypocrisy of it all. People who claim to really care about every life, the unborn life,
and yet they will do nothing to help these children after they are born.”
The election result has been a relief. “It was so moving and so powerful to see the way the voice of the
people was heard. And that is thanks to the women of colour, brown and black women. That’s not because
of white women; I see half of the population of white women in America as the enemy of women
everywhere because they are protecting the predators.
“Thanks to Biden and this extraordinary woman, Kamala Harris,” she adds, “things are going to change.”
Her commitment and focus are undiminished: “I want to provide more than entertainment. As a
photographer there are many great photojournalists out there and we have realised over this last decade
that we need to put more into our pictures. We need to be more pushy, we need to be a lot more gritty, we
need to provoke people more.
“That’s the power of photography: to provoke people and show what’s going on.”
Fanny Ferrato, Cleveland, OH, 1986
Anna with mother Mary, St. Paul, MN, 1987
Holy is published by powerhouse Books

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Topics
Women
Domestic violence
Trump administration