Exclusive:'A major socialist feminist photographer': The exhibition inside working women's lives on tour in Scotland

Pictures by Franki Raffles, whose archive is held at the University of St Andrews, where she was a student in the 1970s, are to be showcased in a travelling galley exhibition that will stop in Edinburgh, Fife and Glasgow.

Ms Raffles’ photographs will appear alongside images by Sylvia Grace Borda, Sandra George, Carolyn Scott and Niu Weiyu. The collection of photographs illuminate how gender is produced and reproduced through workplaces, housing, healthcare, and particularly schools, playgrounds and nurseries, across urban and rural landscapes.

In examining the relationships and power structures between women, this exhibition takes inspiration from two projects by Ms Raffles, who campaigned throughout her life for women’s rights, including involvement in the women’s liberation movement while a student in St Andrews in the 1970s. The first project is inspired by a trip she made in 1984 to 1985 to the Soviet Union and Asia, including an extended period in China, during which her concern with women at work crystallised.

The second, Picturing Women, was part of a 1988 to 1989 educational initiative organised by Edinburgh’s Stills Gallery aimed at helping young people analyse photographs, for which Ms Raffles studied the working relationships between women at a school.

She worked alongside Edinburgh district council's women's committee in the 1980s and 1990s, where she was involved in the pioneering ‘Zero Tolerance’ campaign against gender-based violence.

Between Women is curated by Vivian K Sheng, who is based at the University of Hong Kong, and University of St Andrews academic Dr Catherine Spencer, with support from the University’s Impact and Innovation Fund. Ms Sheng became interested in Ms Raffles’ work when she held a Global Visiting Fellowship at the University of St Andrews in 2022.

Dr Spencer said of Ms Raffles: “She was a major socialist feminist photographer. She had this amazing photographic practice, which was really embedded in the lives and work of women in Edinburgh and in Scotland. But she also travelled extensively throughout her career, particularly to the Soviet Union, but also to Asia and some of those images are featured in this exhibition.

"Her body of work encompasses this really committed grassroots organising in Scotland, but also this transnational interest in connections between women across different socio-political contexts.

"That's one of the really important things about her work and her archive, that it shows these connections during the 1980s and 1990s, this really vibrant and exciting time of feminist organising both here in Scotland and transnationally.”

Dr Spencer pointed to Ms Raffles’ first trip to the Soviet Union in 1984, when the photographer developed an interest in women's working conditions and women's lives.

“It was during that trip, when she was very early in her career, that she started to develop her interest in women's working conditions and women's lives,” she said. “There are a lot of images of women at work, women undertaking childcare, that emerged through that trip and then sustained her practice and is something she returns to time and again.”

Ms Raffles died in 1994 while giving birth to twins, aged 39.

Dr Spencer said: "Her career was really cut off mid-flow and was relatively short, with the majority of images over a ten-year period. But during that time she did an incredible amount of work."

Louise Briggs, curator of the Travelling Gallery said: “We’re delighted to be working with Vivian, Catherine and the University of St Andrews to present this exhibition. We’re looking forward to discussing the work of each artist with our visitors, who we believe will have their own stories and experiences to share that chime with many of the references - and local sites - found in the work on display.”

The exhibition will tour to Edinburgh, Dundee, Cupar and St Andrews.