Hackney Flashers

The Hackney Flashers were a women's art collective active in Britain from 1974 to 1980. Most of its members were photographers who identified as socialists and feminists and sought to combine documentary photography with political analysis. The collective worked in the London borough of Hackney, examining the position of women in paid work, the household and childcare. Their best-known projects were the exhibitions Women and Work (1975) and Who's Holding the Baby? (1978), in which photography was combined with texts, statistics, montage and satirical collage to expose invisible and unpaid women's labour and the shortage of affordable childcare. The members deliberately rejected individual authorship in favour of a collective, critical practice. The Hackney Flashers became a notable example of feminist documentary and agitational art of the 1970s that used photography as a tool of social consciousness and activism, and their legacy continues to inform discussions of gender, labour and representation in photography.