Alison Baskerville: On negotiating your own identity
In this episode, we talk with Alison Baskerville about the importance of understanding one’s own identity before addressing issues of ethics and safety as a photojournalist. She describes how her experience in the military has shaped the way she approaches her work, and what she has learned from her career as a photojournalist. Finally, she talks about the safety movement she founded which is designed specifically to address the concerns of women and non-binary people.
What you’ll find inside:
“About nine years into my military career, photography appeared again but it was in a very different way from perhaps what I had done at art school, which was using it as a means of surveillance.” (3:55)
“I feel like I’m a good example of someone who has tried to do the work to become more aware of these things, rather than someone who is quite virtuous and has always been aware and tends to make people like me, who have come from a working class background through the military, somehow as being unable to be aware.” (11:13)
An experience of her photograph being taken out of context (16:45)
On the need for intersectional safety training for women and non-binary people (20:15)
“People will start a session talking about what their safety concerns are and where they feel safe and unsafe, but also about their identity. … I think when you’re self-aware, you can start then to look at your personal safety from a slightly more nuanced point of view.” (25:50)
“If were talking about identity as a safety concern, then we absolutely have to look at ethics as well because the choices we make within our identity is an ethical decision.” (27:40)
How Alison learned about protecting the safety of others through her military experience (31:12)
On moral injury and ethics (37:35)
What does photo ethics mean to Alison?
“I think to be an ethical photographer, you almost have to try and be an intersectional photographer, which is hard, but it’s a journey worth taking. Because you really have to question your ethics. What are they? What are your values? What are your personal values, and how will they translate into your work? And also: what part of you are you willing to compromise to make the work?” (36:35)
“I think an ethical photographer is someone who considers all the aspects of what they’re photographing beyond the aesthetics and that it’s just a great photo. A great photo it may be, but what was the journey to getting that photograph? What was the relationship to the person in that photograph?” (38:10)
Links:
Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Learn more about moral injury from The Moral Injury Project
Alison Baskerville is a documentary photographer. As a former-soldier-turned-artist, Alison has a rare insight into gender and conflict. She has the desire and capacity to make work that reflects on important contemporary issues such as gender equality, military occupation, female identity in the forces, and the long-term consequences of armed conflict.
She is the founder of the safety training movement ROAAAR, and she is the recent recipient of a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England. She is currently working to explore photographic-based research and to create a safe place for researching personal memories and archives which will require reflection on her military past to enable her journey as a more critically engaged artist.
You can see her work at https://alisonbaskerville.co.uk