Galeria de Santa Maria Maior
Rua da Madalena 147, 1100-006 Lisboa
Monday to Sanday: 15:00-20:00
06/10 - 05/11/2022
Opening: 6 October, 18:00 - 20:00
Donna Ferrato
“Holy”
©Donna Ferrato
Donna Ferrato
Synopsis
Holy
Holy is a collection of my photographs about the wisdom & courage of women, female identifying and non gender conforming persons.
The incredible people who’ve inspired me for half a century. I have been there watching them go through the steps of becoming survivors of male violence always amazed at how they manage to do the impossible and reclaim their dignity. Without help from society, women are still the righteous winners because they stand for love over hate.
We live in a world that fears women’s autonomy. I have been watching the way it works –the grand scheme to undermine the rights of women. Now I am putting my research and my heart on the line to demystify how people see women.
The way I see it, every woman comes from the Mother of God. Every woman is that Mary, the virgin, who brought a life into the world while performing a miracle against the odds. Nobody has the right to interfere with a woman’s right to choose. The body of a woman embodies the hope of civilization. The body of a woman is the HOLY Grail.
My photographs are a call to action. Women. Children. Good loving men. We must Unite with uniform purpose: to protect women. Holy is the accumulation of all the rage, the hope, the fight, the rights that all women have gathered through history. We are ready. We are watching. We are the Mother. We are the Daughter. We are the Other.
Bio
Donna Ferrato is an internationally acclaimed photojournalist known for her groundbreaking documentation of the hidden world of domestic violence.
Her seminal book Living With the Enemy (Aperture, 1991) went into four printings and, alongside exhibitions and lectures across the globe, sparked a national discussion on sexual violence and women’s rights. In 2014, Ferrato launched the I Am Unbeatable campaign to expose, document, and prevent domestic violence against women and children through real stories of real people.
Ferrato has contributed to almost every major news publication in the country, and her photographs have appeared in nearly five hundred solo exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide. She has been a member of the Executive Board of Directors for the W. Eugene Smith Fund and was president and founder of the non-profit Domestic Abuse Awareness Project (501-c3). She has been a recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Grant, the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Plight of the Disadvantaged, the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, the Missouri Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Artist of the Year at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Look3 Insightful Artist of the Year.
In 2008, the City of New York proclaimed October 30 “Donna Ferrato Appreciation Day,” and in 2009, she was honored by the judges of the New York State Supreme Court for her work advancing gender equality. In 2020, Ferrato was chosen as one of the Hundred Heroines by the British Arts foundation, Hundred Heroines.
Her new book, Holy, published in 2020 by powerHouse Books, is a call to action. It proclaims the sacredness of women’s rights and their power to be masters of their own destiny.
English 
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