Table of contents for Issue 67 - Doc Photo Special in Huck

There’s a well-known poster by the anonymous art group Guerrilla Girls that reads, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?” Beneath these words lies a reclining woman – an homage to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ Odalisque, only her face is hidden by one of the group’s signature gorilla masks – alongside some smaller text that rams the point home. “Less than five per cent of the artists in the modern art sections are women, but 85 per cent of the nudes are female.” That poster dates back to 1989, but the figures haven’t changed. Work by women still only constitutes three to five per cent of major permanent collections across the US and Europe. And photography, the most modern of representative art forms, has done little to…

Invisible Cities I’ve been thinking a lot about what home means. Growing up, home was a small space in Manila, my side of a shared bed. Home was constant chatter and shared prayers with family. But home was also a place of trauma. I developed my project Invisible Cities carrying this understanding with me. When President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war hit, the Philippines was represented by images of death, blood and violence – important images which helped move the needle in local discussions on human rights. But I knew that there was a gap in the conversation: an understanding of how it affected everyday life. I also knew from personal experience that with trauma comes a natural inclination to form narratives – a framework that will make sense of the…

Where The Heart Is Growing up in Nebraska, I wanted to be a mail(wo)man. I thought it would be fun to walk around all day – rain or shine – delivering mail and chatting with people. Instead I became a photojournalist, which is like the next best thing: I still get to walk around and meet new people every day, but I carry around a camera instead of a letter from your grandma. My dad is a freelance architectural photographer and our home always had an abundance of cameras around. I remember one evening, about the age of four, when my dad lent me one of his film cameras to shoot a car show with him. I liked the way it felt hanging from my neck, complete with the Mickey…

The Big O I was brought up in the South Wales countryside, surrounded by images. My dad worked at BBC Wales making documentaries; mum was an art and photography teacher. When I was around 13, my parents had an old enlarger in the garage. They showed me how to develop my own films, gave me an old camera – and as soon as that was in my hand, the passion was there. I didn’t really know you could be a photographer as a job until I was much older. Even though my parents had both been to art college, I’d grown up watching a lot of legal dramas on the telly and wanted to be a lawyer. I went off to university to study law, but I never fell in…

The Endless Road My family follows a unique set of principles. I grew up in a transient state, travelling around the country with parents who believe in self-directed education. They have somehow ignored and bypassed the trajectory that governs most people’s lives. Whether through hippie magic or blind luck, they’ve managed to end up living where they want to live, doing things they love to do, surrounded by people they care about. Most importantly, they’re happy. My sister and I have been incredibly blessed to grow up with these role models who cherish connection, community and shared experience above money or material possessions – two things my parents have never been able to hold on to. My dad, a psychotherapist, transitioned from a conventional nine-to-five by moving his clients from…

Un/Settled Being a white South African is a perplexing identity to occupy. I was born in 1987 and grew up just as apartheid came to an end. Ever since starting primary school, I have been told that I am a child of the “rainbow nation”, that the advent of democracy means that racial differences would cease to exist. Yet it’s clear that our relationships in this country remain largely mediated – affected, limited, constrained, corroded, delineated – by race. And there’s certainly no ignoring that the history of imperialism, colonialism and white supremacy on this soil is one of violence and economic exploitation. Un/Settled began from conversations with fellow South African writer Olivia Walton, while we were living together and studying for a Masters in African Studies at Oxford University…

Private Parts I’ll admit it: I’m nosy. I’ve always been fascinated by what people’s habits and personal spaces reveal about them. I think growing up with a mother who was legally blind made me more aware and empathetic, not just of how she interacted with the world, but of how the world interacted with her in comparison to me. Growing up in Milwaukee, I often assumed that I had been adopted. I was the creative outlier of the family, safely tucked away in my fantastical make-believe world. My dad would watch TV while my mom tended to the household chores, my older brother busying himself with his collection of baseball cards. But as different as I seemed, my parents willingly indulged that creative side: pushing me to take extra classes…

The Best is Yet to Come My ex-boyfriend Louis was 10 years older than me and led a wild, improvised life. He grew up as an orphan, squatted as a punk in London and had a son from a previous relationship. I was 21 when we met and was immediately drawn to this treasure trove of pictures he’d accumulated. Being an inexperienced person just starting out as a photographer myself, I was probably in awe of that. A few years ago, I kept seeing updates from Louis popping up on Facebook. He was living in Asia, constantly posting photos of what he was doing while taking the piss out of himself. It cracked me up so much that it gave me an idea. I thought back to the pictures of…

As It May Be I grew up in quite a small, conservative town in Belgium where I had no real familiarity with art. I don’t think I even visited a museum before the age of 18. That world seemed like it was meant for other people. But the summer after school, I decided to take an entrance exam to study photography in Ghent – only telling my mother and sister. I felt like I had to give it a try, otherwise I’d end up doing something I didn’t want. But from the moment I stepped into the school, I knew it was for me. The idea of photography being my day-to-day life, surrounded by likeminded people, just felt right. My first big project Ou Menya, formed out of an idea…