Hackney Flashers

The Hackney Flashers were a collective of broadly socialist-feminist women who produced notable agitprop exhibitions in the 1970s and early 1980s. Working in the United Kingdom during second wave feminism (1960s–1980s), the Hackney Flashers are an example of collectives prevalent in the latter half of the 20th century that worked to raise consciousness of social or political issues relevant to the times. This group's original aim was to make visible the invisible and document women's work in the home and outside of it, helping to make the case for childcare and show the complex social and economic issues of women and childcare.

Beginnings

The group's origins go back to 1974 when photographers Jo Spence and Neil Martinson were searching for women photographers to produce an exhibition on Women and Work for Hackney Trades Council – part of a trade union event celebrating 75 years of union activity in Hackney, East London. A woman designer and an illustrator, a writer and an editor also joined the group. Members were engaged in a variety of occupations at a professional level: university teaching, community photography, freelance photojournalism and publishing; some were active trade unionists. In 1975 the collective was consolidated when it adopted the name Hackney Flashers.

Members

From the start the Flashers’ output was distributed as the work of a collective; the group credited their works to the ‘Hackney Flashers Collective’ rather than to individual photographers. It was a political decision that individual names were never listed, specific images or writing never credited. This may have led to later confusion about who was in the Hackney Flashers and who worked on the different projects.