Across America folks are piling into the streets to protest yesterday’s Supreme Court decision overturning of Roe V Wade and a constitutional right to an abortion.
Yesterday evening protesters took over Park Avenue in Manhattan with shouts of “Whose Streets? Our Streets!’
This protest chant rings out through streets the world over in response to the myriad ways in which freedoms and equalities are denied; the streets, our gathering spaces, where we come together to connect with each other, to become the collective, to co-create the world.
I watch this onslaught of abuses and insanity in my home country and also feel its effects here with just everything feeling so out of control, the price of food and fuel, the terrible treatment of those seeking asylum, the politicians so out of touch, selfish and ineffectual.
And yet, along with all of this upheaval and darkness, in this radical moment in human history where everything is falling apart, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
And all of it, the war in Ukraine, the climate emergency - IT IS ALL CONNECTED.
EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.
The Streets are where the collective goes to connect. Everything is connected and everyone is intertwined through culture, through sharing of experience. The streets are where folks go to be together, to seek others in response to a need in them (to connect).
Walking the streets, meeting in the streets, gathering in times of trouble and also in times of celebration feels so good because in these moments we are not alone.
Promenading is to walk the streets, to see and be seen, in communication with the collective (everything is connected).
It is quite simply and essentially human.
The streets, having once been meeting places where shops and businesses thrived, are changed after decades of decline accelerated by Covid and online shopping.
There is opportunity and possibility here to reimagine how we use these spaces to gather, to build and serve community, to support each other.
Since 2013 I have been looking for clues about culture and world views, for embodied values that can be read through the language of fashion and self expression. I do this through being on the streets, with my camera.
This is Saturday Girl.
The project evolves with a curious listening and looking, a reading of culture and how we are changing and evolving through the ways in which young savvy folks use fashion as a worn language.
My work as a photographer happens in the streets and is directly linked to the shops and spaces where fashion is a playful instigator, communicator and connector. My portrait studio is set up in empty shops, shopping centres and spaces where folks pass while out and about.
SATURDAY GIRL BECOMES SATURDAY TOWN.
The spaces where folks meet, the town streets, slide into view as I step away from close crops and explore what lies beyond my studio backdrops.
Fashion and being together in the streets, the call of Saturday afternoon, of freedom and exploration (away from family and school responsibility) are shifted from playful rite of passage and into the essential possibility of this moment, into the necessity of our collective imaginations to come together to co-create a new world that serves us, serves our highest selves, together, enchanted and wild. This is the call of the street. This is Saturday Town.
WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS!
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