Asking for it

About ‘Asking for it’ Expanded this year with unseen new work exploring issues exacerbated by the Covid19 pandemic, this award winning art project of 20 images aims to change opinions. As a photographic journey through history, it highlights historical and current tendencies toward victim blaming, especially in cases of sexual and gender based violence. This project has been developed as part of MA Commercial Photography study being completed at Arts University Bournemouth (AUB). It was intensively researched with support from the charity STARS (www.starsdorset.org) and research from the 2021 opinion survey will be available to Bournemouth University (BU) as part of a wider research program by the Department of Psychology led by Dr Peter Hills. Each 'mug shot' image represents a different decade. Each has been shot accordingly, using heritage methods, from wet plate collodian, 5 x 4 film, to more modern photographic techniques. Each image contains a 'crime' such as 'wore red' or 'swiped right', which we invite viewers to question. An interactive survey is available at www.askingforit.net - to see more images & have your say! 'What you’ve created is incredible and can really get people thinking about how they view victims of sexual violence. It’s a very interesting topic to look at over the last century as ultimately that’s why victims are blamed, even partially, by society today. The history of victim blaming plays a large part I think on why this is still an issue. I know men are victims of sexual violence too but women have always been judged so harshly on the “choices” they made which lead to them ultimately having no choice.' Preview exhibition visitor