Fanny Beckman

I Just Slipped

In 2015 I started volunteering at a women’s shelter in Sweden, which gave me knowledge of how common domestic violence is and that prejudices regarding typical victims and perpetrators are often false. Statistics show that 1 in 4 women in the UK will be affected, regardless of their background. It is time to talk openly about this issue.

For this series I used other volunteers at the shelter as models, and makeup artists recreated wounds we had seen on victims of domestic abuse. This is due to the safety risk of showing faces of real victims. However, it was important to me that the models had been in close contact with domestic violence to get as close to the reality as possible. I wanted to tell the stories of millions of women who are forced into silence, women who cannot tell their own story due to threats.

 

The first step to prevent domestic violence is by acknowledging it. My aim with this series is to open conversations, and thereby spreading awareness of this societal issue.

 

This is the women’s shelter that I collaborated with: https://www.malmokvinnojour.se/en/

Another great organisation to mention is Refuge in the UK: https://www.refuge.org.uk which has a helpline on their home page.

About the Artist

Artist Website

Fanny Beckman is a photographer who uses art to raise awareness of social injustice. She was four years old when she got her first camera and ever since, photography has been an important part of her life. She studied Fine Art Photography at Gamleby School of Photography in Sweden. It was during this time she realised how she could combine art and feminism.

Since 2016, she has freelanced as a photographer, public speaker and writer and has collaborated with various feminist organisations. She has had numerous exhibitions highlighting subjects as domestic abuse and mental health. For example, she exhibited in the Swedish Parliament in November 2017, at Gallery Foto Nostrum in Barcelona in October 2019 as one of the winners of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award and at Deptford Does Art in May 2021.