Donna Ferrato-Anger

Donna Ferrato was a famous photographer in the 1970's which was the time when women took on the issue of domestic violence. Between 1976-1996 30% of women who were being effected by domestic violence were murdered. Donna had such an impact on her pictures, people were shocked to see the real-life shots she had taken. It started when she was staying with a couple (Gary and Lisa) when she herd them arguing. As she looked around the door she saw Gary in a rage and he hits Lisa. Donna captured there every move which brings a sense of reality and fear into her images. Ferrato then became part of the emergency services taking images of all the calls that the police,ambulance and fire services had recived which were related to domestic violence.It then became known that her images were brutally intamite.


The image (top left) is one of Gary and Lisa at the point were Gary hits her. You can capture his hand going across her face which for me is very shocking and overwhelming. The way Donna uses black and white in her images for me,shows the sense of colorless emotion in the photographs which makes the suituation seem dull and lifeless. But the emotions on the peoples faces and what is actually going on in the picture
makes the reader look deeper into the image.
Donna quoted " Everybody thought it was obseen that i was getting pictures of women being beaten up,they were shocked" Her quote shows how people were reacting to her pictures because of how brutal and shocking they were.
The image on the right is a bit different to the Gary and Lisa image. (Right) "i hate you! Never come back to my house" Screamed and 8 year old boy at his dad as police arrested the man for attacking his wife- 1988.


Looking at this image, you can see alot of emotions from every person in the image. The little boy is clearly upset, angry,frustrated, traumatised as he is pointing at this dad and shouting. This then reflects on the emotions within his fathers face, as he is turning away it shows the embaressed, ashamed , and disgraced within him as it seems he cannot look at his son.
When taking examples of Ferratos work i had to be very sensitive within my images as the ones she captured were real life so i couldnt be stereotypical. I decided to reinact a scence such as Gary and Lisa, some what developing a photo story which showed a sequence of images showing the emotions within each scene and person.


Here is one image that i started with :
I think the location for this image is the best effect as its old and decrepid showing the not so nice life-style within the image. In this picture i wanted to show that this person had been pushed down the stairs as you can see my make up is smudged showing an emotional scared image.
On Flickr i chose a few images that come together as a photo story like the Gary and Lisa examples. Also in my book i have shown black and white images of my images to show the effect that the colour has on the picture.

Here is an image that i wanted to interpret the Gary & Lisa images . I changed the colour of this image to black and white to show the emotionless situation within this photo.

I had to make an expression that i was scared and intimidated by the man, either being my husband or father. I told my dad to make an angry expression, instead he created a stern evil look which i think works well with the Donna Ferrato's examples. Even as Donna captured real life moments, this is a good example of this as my head is facing away showing we have had an argument or he has something to shout at me for.