Every week since the #metoo movement has gained traction, it seems as though another man in power is revealed to have abused or harassed women. Last week, for example, it was Eric Schneiderman, the 65th Attorney General of New York, who was accused by at least four women of behavior including slapping them so hard they needed to seek medical attention. Schneiderman is a well-known champion of the #metoo movement, and a strong political voice against sexual harassment in the workplace.
When such things are revealed, the future can seem hopeless. If even the men who act publically like allies to women are mistreating us behind closed doors, will there ever be an end to the behavior? And is there something in the personalities of men who seek power and prestige that also causes them to oppress women through words and violence?
We can’t lose hope, says Belinda Mason, whose exhibition, Silent Tears, closes at New York’s Union Theological Seminary tomorrow, on May 16. It tells the stories of 42 women and girls with disabilities, all who have been subjected to violence and abuse by men. Created in collaboration with the documentary photographer Denise Beckwith, the video artist Dieter Knierim, and the visual artist Margherita Coppolino, all of whom themselves have disabilities, the exhibition consists of photography, film, and wall texts that outline the horrors endured by women in 20 countries including the United States, Canada, Korea, Australia, South Africa, Germany, Ecuador and the Netherlands.
Mason, whose documentary photography has won many awards, began the project after attending a United Nations seminar in which it was revealed that Australia, her native country, was letting down women with disabilities. “I found was that the stories of violence against women with disabilities were not part of any conversation,” she told me. She decided to photograph two groups of women — women who were abused as a result of disabilities, and women who had acquired disabilities because of abuse. These included women with intellectual disabilities who were abused by staff at hospitals; women who were beaten so badly that they suffered permanent brain damage; and women whose partners had murdered their children.
Such women, after the abuse has ended, are left with permanent mental trauma, as well as costly and painful physical afflictions. No one helps them; they are lost in society.
“I suppose that women have trusted me to take these very precious stories, and translate them very carefully,” Mason said. “It’s part of their healing journey—to know that they’ve been heard. I travel thousands of kilometers, and sit in their living room, and listen to them. They’re not getting help from the people next door to them.”
The exhibition is specifically designed as to not normalize the violence suffered by the featured subjects. It opens with photographs by Mason, which capture the women, whose faces are partially obscured as if to protect their visual identities. The photographs are hung from the ceiling, forcing visitors to walk around them. Text panels tell their stories as first person narratives.
Another gallery shows videos of the women telling their stories, as well a documentary photography by Beckwith and Coppolino. As a viewer moves through the space, “the possibility to normalize is very difficult,” says Mason.
Since 2016, Silent Tears has been shown all around the world, including at the University of Sydney in Australia, the United Nations in New York, and the 2016 Berlin Foto Biennale. Mason says that it has made a difference. At the United Nations, seven of the women photographed were able to tell their stories to the Australian Human Rights Commission. Jane Rosengrave, a woman with intellectual disabilities who was abused in institutions starting at six-months-old, has won a human rights award for her advocacy work on behalf of victims like herself. And anonymous women who have attended the show have been so moved that they have become advocates for abuse victims.
Mason thinks that the world has changed since she first began photographing the women in her portraits decades ago. Despite an onslaught of revelations revealing ongoing violence against women, she believes that the future is bright. “We can’t lose hope because they’ll win,” she said. “It’s a path we’re on, you just keep it going. Sustainable change is a realization that change has to be slow to be permanent. If we don’t follow up, it’s a problem.”
For more photographs from the exhibition, see below.
