Women Empowerment Photography Project
The Market Photo Workshop and DSRAC in the Eastern Cape Province conducted the Women Empowerment Photography Project with young women from the Eastern Cape province. The project focused on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls. This project provided a platform for the young women to building awareness of their own stories and lived experiences as women in the Eastern Cape communities. The Women Empowerment Photography Project used the medium of photography as a tool for storytelling that also encouraged knowledge on representation, and knowledge of gender equality.
The project worked with 8 women. The Market Photo Workshop offered basic photography training to participants and expanded their understanding of the role of photography, which can effect change in the participants’ understanding of their communities and how they can become active agents within their community. The project consist of capacity building training workshops and field work trips, which resulted in the production of images and text as a way of documenting, critically engaging with, challenging and sharing issues associated with the daily lived experiences of participants’ communities.
The project is a continuation of the Market Photo Workshop’s work, which seeks to empower and transform through photography training and at the same time play an integral role in the training and growth of South Africa and Africa’s photographers. In addition to ensure that visual literacy reaches those in neglected and marginalized parts of our society. Through such projects, the Market Photo Workshop extends its programming beyond the immediate and highly serviced urban areas of Johannesburg and expanded its impact on agency and activism to yet untapped audiences in the outlying and rural areas like Eastern Cape.
The group exhibition Women In Photography at the National Arts Festival 2023, Albany Museum in Makhanda is a selection of photographs by 8 female photographers. The exhibition reflects on a photographic interaction that has mediated community experiences of the women from across the various municipal districts in the Eastern Cape. This iteration gives audiences the opportunity to engage with different photo narratives on the photographers’ lived realities. The exhibition explores themes of culture, social change, openness and issues of democracy, identity, social inclusion and gender issues.
About the Eastern Cape Department of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture
The Department’s strategic goals are: effective service delivery through leadership, good governance, accountability and efficient resource utilisation; development, promotion and transformation of arts, culture, museums, heritage, and language services in order to contribute to sustainable economic growth and opportunities, nation-building, good governance, and social and human capital development; provision of a free, equitable and accessible library and information service, and proper management and preservation of public and non-public records; and improvement of quality of life through sport and recreation.
Source: https://provincialgovernment.co.za/units/view/13/eastern-cape/sport-recreation-arts-and-culture
Participating photographers:
