'Women's Work' Exhibition Feels the Female Gaze of Women Photographers

Saatchi & Saatchi has created a campaign and full brand identity to support ‘Women’s Work’, a unique exhibition celebrating the work of 21 women photographers from the Advertising and Illustrative Photographers’ Association (AIPA) running over four days from 6th March at the Ellen Melville Centre in Auckland.

Coinciding with International Women’s Day, Women’s Work is an opportunity to explore the female gaze as an alternative to the ubiquitous male perspectives that tend to dominate commercial and advertising photography. While women make up the majority of photography students in NZ universities (up to 70-80% in some courses), the number of women commercial photographers represented by photo agents is much lower, closer to 20%.

The campaign is running across outdoor, social and in interactive screens throughout the Ellen Melville Centre. The images were shot by photographer, exhibition initiator and AIPA vice president Victoria Baldwin. Motion for the campaign was directed by Vicki Leopold, with Fergus Cahill as DOP. Saatchi & Saatchi creative technologist Celine Giovanni, has also created an interactive installation for the exhibition that utilizes heat mapping motion detection to trigger the photographers’ moving portrait, breaking her stare and raising her camera at unsuspecting passers-by.

“This concept also twists the convention of featuring the work in exhibition collateral, instead turning the camera back on the women behind the work. As viewers, we become the subject matter these photographers are looking at, and we get a taste first-hand of how it feels to be viewed through female eyes. We wanted to create strong, empowering images that celebrate the human beings behind the work, and the women who are an important part of the industry.”

“It has been such an amazing experience working with all the incredible Women behind the exhibition and the lens, and reminded me as a creative director of the responsibility we have to ensure that all perspectives are being represented in the work we create.”