Whitney Bradshaw, courtesy of CPAC
Audio By Carbonatix
In 2018, a motley group of five women gathered in artist and activist Whitney Bradshaw’s Chicago living room. Three were her neighbors: a Black elementary school teacher, a Latinx high school dean and a white journalist. Another was her partner’s hairstylist, who brought a friend. But the diverse group of mostly strangers quickly familiarized themselves with one another. They spilled secrets and shared deep-rooted feelings of anger, shame and devastation, channeling their emotions into unflinching, powerful screams. It was Bradshaw’s first scream session for OUTCRY, her photo series documenting the power behind the emotions of women and non-binary people. The exhibit is currently at Colorado’s Photographic Arts Center but will close soon, with a reception on Friday, October 6.
“Everybody brought their own stuff to the session. And I don’t mean actual things, but their own stories, their own emotional state, whatever was going on,” Bradshaw remembers. “One of the women just had a family member die in a car crash. One of the women was really irate about the whole political climate. Another woman was going through a divorce. Everybody had their own reasons for wanting to be there.”
Bradshaw has been an avid women’s-rights activist and photographer for most of her life. Her uncle was a photojournalist for a small newspaper in Ohio and would take his niece into the publication’s darkroom, sparking her interest in photography. She asked for her first camera when she was in the sixth grade, and “became obsessed with documenting things at that point. I never took an actual photography class, [but] kind of just did it on my own,” she says.
In the late ’80s, Bradshaw went to Eastern Illinois University for sociology and started the college’s women’s studies department; she was the first student to graduate with a degree from the program. After graduating, she worked as a social worker for eight years before returning to school in 1997, earning a master’s in photography from Columbia College Chicago.
“When I did social work in Chicago, one of the jobs that I had was being an advocate for rape survivors,” Bradshaw says. “I was on call for fourteen inner-city hospitals here in Chicago, and each time someone went to the emergency room who had been sexually assaulted – I had a pager at the time – I would go to the emergency room and be their support person. I would support them through the rape kits and do whatever else they needed, like if they needed to get the locks changed on their house. … I would make sure they had a safe place to go. I would go with them to lineups at the police department…and one of the reasons I did that is I’m also a sexual-assault survivor.”
The idea for OUTCRY percolated for many years; her position as a sexual-assault survivor advocate allowed her to share her story in a space where she felt validated, heard and believed, and she wanted to create that same space for others. In 2018, Bradshaw’s frustration with the political climate reached a breaking point, and OUTCRY became her chosen form of resistance.
“I wanted the project to help propel the #MeToo movement forward. I wanted the project to create space for women of all different walks of life to connect to each other and really make an intersectional space,” she says. “I wanted it to be something that is individually cathartic, potentially healing and transformative. But also something that is a collective, monumental act of resistance against the patriarchy and all of the people who wield power from that and continue to propel their careers despite the fact that they’re overtly predators.”
For each two-hour scream session, Bradshaw gathers a group of five to fifteen people. She purposefully makes the space as intersectional as possible, emphasizing that the project is not just for cis women, but for anyone who has lived in a femme body under the patriarchy. Participants practice screaming, and then Bradshaw invites them into her makeshift studio area while the rest of the group stands in a semi-circle around them. The subject can choose to scream alone for the camera or with the support of the group. Wherever the exhibit goes, Bradshaw holds scream sessions, and the ever-expanding series now has over 450 photos. Denver’s scream session will take place on Saturday, October 7, the final day of the show, and will be filmed as part of a documentary about the project.
“Oftentimes in front of the camera is when people tell stories about why they’re there and what they’re hoping to get out of it,” Bradshaw says. “Some of those stories are very personal and about their own experiences with sexual assault or sexual harassment. Some of them are about dealing with microaggressions.”
“I want the pictures to be about the power of the emotion,” she adds. “I want them to feel like a chorus, like a community of femme bodies. I want the images to be powerful and beautiful, but in a very different way than we ever see pictures of women.”
OUTCRY closing reception, 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, October 6, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, 1200 Lincoln Street, free. The exhibit will be open for viewing through 4 p.m. Saturday, October 7.
