Editorial: Feminist Counter-narratives in Visual Culture

Abstract

Feminist visual counter-narratives are courageous acts of agency toward empowerment from lived experiences of discrimination within dominant systems of power. To counter is an act of resistance to dominant ideologies and practices. Visual culture counter-narratives are active engagement with the dematerialized, materiality, and context in which events and interactions occur. Feminist visual counter-narratives reclaim self-worth worn hollow by societal forces (see Figure 1). During a walk along the Pacific coast in Seal Rock, Oregon in 2018, I came upon an Ana Mendieta-like silhouette formed into the rocky shore by the ocean’s ebbs and flows; and took a photograph. To me, how I composed the photograph suggests a woman’s body, her breasts, and growing womb; and raises questions about who is present, or absent, or belongs, or is erased. The enduring absence is a haunt of what existed as the seawater rests in the immediacy of the moment within the trace of a woman’s body. The image of composure is fleeting and lasting.