Past Exhibition
FISHERWOMEN by Craig Easton
12 -18 November 2020
FISHERWOMEN is the culmination of a seven-year long project that examines and celebrates the historical and contemporary importance of women to the fishing industry.
Following the route of the tradition herring fleet from Shetland to Great Yarmouth, the project combines large format portraits and landscapes with extraordinary anecdotes to weave a narrative of a unique history of British working women.
The work also connects to the very origins of photography: It is widely acknowledged that the first social documentary photographs ever made were those by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson when they took their bulky camera into the streets of Newhaven to make calotype portraits of working fisherwomen in 1843. They were followed by artists and photographers such as Winslow Homer, John McGhie and Frank Meadow Sutcliffe in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Since then the attention appears to have shifted to the fisher ‘men’ and when women were seen it was in more editorial pictures seen in wide expansive views rather than the earlier specific focus on the individual or group.
This work attempts to shine the spotlight back on the women themselves, still performing much the same role as they did in the early 1800s, but now almost entirely unseen, working behind closed doors in fish processing factories, smokehouses and small family firms right up and down the east coast.
Twenty-four page 11”x15” large format portfolio available in two editions, each one individually numbered and signed.
Portfolio Edition: £23 (inc. UK postage); £32.95 (international postage) - edition of 500
Artists Edition, in bespoke hardback cover with an original 12”x16” exhibition print of ’The Hands that gut the herring’ : £175 (plus p&p) - edition of 50 with certificate of authenticity.
Litho printed on Mohawk Superfine 118gsm paper
Available from www.tenoclockbooks.com
More info at www.craigeaston.com
Read our interview with Craig here and find more about his imagery.
View more work from Craig in Find a Photographer
Image © Craig Easton