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Embodying trauma and troubling appearances within photography for the ‘Your Body Belongs to You’ exhibition

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  'Flow' - Copyright Dee Lister I currently have the self-portraits shared in this blog (proudly) showing in an exhibition called ‘Your Body Belongs to You’, which was co-curated by Karen Harvey and Marisol Mendez .   I want to contextualise why contributing to this art exhibition is so meaningful for me before explaining my intentions with the images. This is in addition to the great privilege of standing alongside nearly one hundred talented women and non-binary photographers whose two hundred images collectively feature. If you’re itching to see the exhibition click here to view this online via the Shutter Hub’s website .   I remember years ago someone I vaguely trusted said to me in a judgmental tone, “Dee, you need to stop getting so stressed”. They rattled on about how I should live my life, which was of course in line with their ways of being. I struggled (and still struggle) to find my voice and so forgive my transgression in not calling them out. I was carrying...
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My Journey to Wholeness with Hair Loss

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I’ve gone on quite a journey with my hair. From having afro hair down to my back in my university days, to several straightening perms, reverting to my natural hair, losing most of it to alopecia after various traumatic events, and eventually shaving off what was left of it.   Each phase of my hair journey has been closely accompanied by a state of mind of its own. From feeling invincible about my hair, as I could chop it all off and in a few weeks have a full head of hair again, to hopelessly peering in the mirror every morning to see if any hair follicles had resurrected overnight or if any new strand of hair had come up for air! Hair is a great part of a woman’s identity. As I continue on my hair journey, I seek to understand why women (in general, as I am sure there are a few exceptions) feel incomplete if their hair is not the way they would love it to be. The confidence a woman exudes (especially for the African woman) when she has just had her hair done, is not the same as w...
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“You might not notice it … but I do”: Shame and Cosmetic Surgery

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Augmenting the Body: Disability, Care and the Posthuman is an interdisciplinary research project that explores practices of bodily augmentation, from caring robots to prosthetic limbs, across the fields of English, Engineering, Healthcare, Philosophy, and Robotics. The project, led by Professor Stuart Murray and funded by a Wellcome Trust Seed Award, involves collaborators from the University of Leeds, the University of Exeter, and Sheffield Robotics. In this post, one of the collaborators working on the project—Dr Luna Dolezal (University of Exeter)—offers a snapshot of her work on the relationship between bodily augmentation through cosmetic surgery and beauty demands. It is only very recently that elective cosmetic surgery has entered the mainstream as a routine and socially acceptable way to alter appearance. In the 1950s, for example, aesthetic plastic surgery was a largely marginal and unknown medical practice. Just a few decades later, it is a recognized medical spe...
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