Franki Raffles: Photography, Activism, Campaign Works

11 May 2024-16 Mar 2025

Overview

The first major retrospective exhibition of feminist, activist, social documentary photographer Franki Raffles (1955–1994). Raffles documented the lives of women in the UK, predominantly in Scotland, and during travels with her family in the 1980s across the Soviet Union (Russia, Georgia and Ukraine), China, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean, Israel and Palestine. 

Raffles documented the lives of women in the UK, predominantly in Scotland, and during travels with her family in the 1980s across the Soviet Union (Russia, Georgia and Ukraine), China, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean, Israel and Palestine. In Edinburgh she worked as a freelance photographer with schools and women’s groups. Her photography focused attention on women’s lives and their work, addressing issues such as inequality, gendered violence, disability, activism and sisterhood.

The exhibition, Franki Raffles: Photography, Activism, Campaign Works, concentrates on her astonishing creative output over a period of ten years from 1984–94 when she was most active. During this time, she produced around 40,000 images, the majority now residing in the Franki Raffles Photography Collection at the University of St. Andrews. The exhibition brings together photographs, many shown publicly for the first time, alongside archive material contextualising her work. 

Raffles was born in Salford and studied at University of St. Andrews. Following her graduation, she moved to Lewis, then to Edinburgh. She exhibited at Stills Gallery, Edinburgh; Mercury Gallery, London; The Corridor Gallery, Fife; Pearce Institute, Glasgow; and First of May Gallery, Edinburgh. Raffles’ life was tragically cut short when she died in childbirth at the age of only 39. 

Presented in the Northumbria University Gallery, Level 3 at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.

This exhibition and its production has been made possible with the generous cooperation of the Franki Raffles Estate, University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums (Photographic Collections), Edinburgh Napier University, and Spectrum Photographic.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication supported by a Publications Grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Edinburgh Napier University.