This Is Not The Red Carpet

This Is Not The Red Carpet series are from a photographic essay I shot while at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993. It has sat in my top drawer waiting. Waiting for interest in a different perspective, for a decades old tradition, of men photographing women. Waiting for feminism to stop being a dirty word. Waiting for my children to grow up and for me to find my own visibility as a documentary photographer. While the famous were gracing the red carpet, I turned my gaze on to the photographers on La Croisette below. I was the only female photographer amidst a sea of men photographing the mostly obliging, often half naked, sunbathing women who were prepared to do anything for attention and hope they may find fame. In the wake of the #MeToo campaign and through the lens of a new wave of feminism, the images and the words I wrote to accompany them 27 years ago are as relevant now as ever.