Help women to tell their stories

Dear Friends and Supporters, 

Happy New Year! Let’s make 2021 a year of more important visual stories by women who are not held back by anything!

As we said good bye to 2020 we also published the fourth issue of our documentary photography magazine "We See". You can download it for free on our website or buy a hard copy of the magazine on Blurb.com.

The magazine brings together the best of the photo stories made by femLENS workshop participants, and features articles by our volunteers on issues related to women's rights, photography and the effects of the pandemic on different spheres of our lives.

femLENS has been publishing "We See" magazine for three years now and we believe that it is a vital resource for women's visual storytelling. It allows us to present these stories to audiences around the world, and just as importantly, the magazine allows us to preserve these stories in a format that lends care and respect to the content that fills it. We love the democratisation of photography, publishing, global communication that technology has given us and feel that it is our responsibility to use this technology thoughtfully and purposefully. The magazines, together with our street exhibitions (our latest one happened in Narva, Estonia in November 2020), are our way of providing the connection between women finding their voices and stories, and audiences who more and more experience media in a very limited way due to algorithms, corporate and political interests. 

Your support allows us to print a few copies of this magazine that we will later share with organisations that will preserve them. Buying issues of the magazine also makes the magazine stay on Blurb.com so that others can purchase it as Blurb requires that at least one copy is bought within 14 days of publishing on their platform. 

We welcome your feedback about the magazine! And please feel free to share it with your community!

We will be publishing an impact report for an overview of 2021 in the next months, but you are invited to read our volunteer impact report for 2020.

Best wishes,
femLENS

Links:

• Fourth Issue of "We See" Documentary Photography Magazine

Dear GlobalGiving Supporters,

We hope that you and your families are safe in these uncertain times.

Since our last report, we have organised and finished another series of workshops with women from across Russia. We are very proud of the breadth of stories that they came up with.

August 2020 marked five years since femLENS ran its first series of documentary photography workshops with women in Dublin, Ireland. Since then we've worked with 12 other groups of women in 6 countries, organised seven photo exhibitions, published three issues of We See magazine, and to celebrate our achievements, published a book "Unlearning the Ordinary: through a lens for the commons*". The book can be purchased through Blurb.com. You can see the pdf of the book on our website.

We couldn't have done this without the support of people like you, the partners, and the trust of the women who took part in our workshops and shared their stories and lived experiences.

Thank you for being with us, and we hope that you will continue to support us, spread the word and follow our work.

Also, around the start of October, we will be launching a print sale to raise money for our workshop participants Halima Al Haj Ali and Faten Anbar who live in Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. Lebanon was already experiencing a serious economic crisis, the explosion made the situation worse. We would like to support Halima and Faten, and offer you the opportunity to own a beautiful fine art print of their photos. 

If you would like to be informed about the print sale, please follow us on our social media or subscribe to our newsletter.

Thanks for being with us! Here's to another five years.

With gratitude,

femLENS Team