Hannah Starkey at The Hepworth Wakefield

A young woman sits at a London café table, extending a delicate hand to the wide mirror on the wall beside her. Her fingers meet the glass and they appear to leave a slight smudge of wetness, or perhaps heat, on the surface. On the table in front of her stands a half-drunk glass of orange juice and a tea cup. We see the reflection of her dreamy expression as well as that of a middle-aged woman who sits at a table behind, staring at her, eyes heavy with make-up and coarse hair pinned into rollers. We are positioned on the third tier in this series of watchers. Positioned, that is, by the hidden fourth watcher: the photographer Hannah Starkey, whose presence in the scene might be hinted at by the second drink on the young woman’s table.

This image, Untitled, May 1997, opens the first major survey of Starkey’s work, showing at the Hepworth Wakefield until 30 April 2023. It is also the oldest in the exhibition, created whilst she was at the Royal College of Art 25 years ago. Yet its composition and themes – intergenerational female relationships, an everyday setting sparsely populated by women, the use of mirrors to extend ownership of space beyond the frame – have fascinated Starkey throughout her career. Places and faces change across four large rooms, touching compassionately on themes spanning from heroic motherhood to childhood boredom, but the unassuming tone and introspective expressions reoccur. At their core, each image appears to be addressing the same two questions: how are women depicted in photographs? And is there a way of reappropriating the photographic tools used against them to create more truthful, empathetic imagery?

This question isn’t only addressed by the devices visible within the pictures – reflections, cameras, an emphasis on hair or make up – but also by how the photo is made. Starkey openly acknowledges the careful orchestration of her work (‘like producing a mini film, but it’s a single frame’), with one wall text explaining how she approaches women in cities, building a rapport over time before staging the image in collaboration with them. Digital modifications are later made to manipulate the composition, often in understated ways which could pass as natural moments of serendipity. In Untitled, August 1999, a middle-aged woman, flanked by three friends, stands outside a Belfast community centre at night. She is lit from above by a fluorescent circular light, her heeled foot extending forward from her leopard print dress as if about to take a step or as if, haloed by the light, she has just touched down from heaven. Rarely in our society is the spotlight turned, literally or otherwise, on the figure of a middle-aged woman, but it is here enhanced to momentarily elevate the subject to a state of grace.

Starkey’s inclusive intentions as a photographer are, however, challenged by the capricious landscape of contemporary imagery. Her latest work wrestles with this by engaging with topics including the pressures of social media and recent political protesting. The mood becomes livelier, more pressing, her camera deployed to the streets of London to capture women at anti-Trump marches. Dark shadows heavily obscure protestors’ figures as they puncture the blue city sky with placards bearing witty slogans. The pictures are compelling but, within today’s context, new questions seem to confront the relevancy of Starkey’s practice: if aiming to dismantle the trappings of imagery of women, wouldn’t the work carry greater impact if displayed in the very forums – fashion magazines, social media platforms – it attempts to expose? And as the definition of gender is increasingly expanded, are the subjects Starkey has historically gravitated towards too representative of outdated binaries?

These questions momentarily leave the exhibition on unsteady ground until we realise that they are subtly raised by it, within it, acknowledged by Starkey in an interview screened within the show, and implicitly by her readiness to find new subjects by which to broaden the boundaries of her imagery. Just as she has always been alert to photography’s potential as a tool of oppression against women (‘the medium has a way of betraying you’), so too is she agile enough to foresee fresh difficulties.

There have been countless cultural and technological changes since the show’s opening image but questions of appearance, identity and human relationships continue to engage us. Framed by the realisation of this continuity, the apparent naturalness of each photo’s composition – often conveyed by the implication that there is something happening beyond its borders – gives rise to the sense that any subject could, at any moment, walk into the scene of a neighbouring image. The photographs depict disparate stages, paths and versions of women’s lives and yet they are connected, quietly so, like women keeping an eye out for one another on a night bus home.

At Arm’s Length: Janet Sobel and Abstract Expressionism

https://courtauld.ac.uk/alumni/the-courtauld-news/

The Maker of Ghosts

Review of Kudzanai-Violet Hwami’s 2023 exhibition at Victoria Miro: ‘The Making of Ghosts’.

Read the full piece here: https://therp.co.uk/the-rp-writing-prize-anna-godfrey/

Author of three articles for the Mall Galleries exploring the portrait commissioning process. The series considers the past, present and possible future of portraiture.

Each article was informed by an interview with a different artist from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

Piece 1