Jenny Matthews - Sewing Conflict: Photography, War and Embroidery

Jenny Matthews is a documentary photographer and filmmaker working on issues of dispossession and human rights, with a particular emphasis on the lives of women and girls. She has worked all over the world for NGOs and on editorial assignments, covering momentous historical events including the guerrilla war and Independence of Eritrea, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the genocide in Rwanda.

Since 2020 she has been making photo quilts/hangings with edits of her photos, which have been printed onto cotton linen, stitched together and embellished with embroidery on material most often sourced from the countries in which the images were made. Twenty of these will be included in the exhibition Sewing Conflict: Photography, War and Embroidery at Street Level Photoworks, alongside the series Facial De-recognition, which is compiled of thirty-five portraits of Afghan women with embroidery obliterating their features. This is to mark the effect of the Taliban retaking Afghanistan in August 2021, and the subsequent negative effect on women’s lives, with a loss of their freedom, rights and identity. There is also a series on Sudan and lives torn apart in the current crisis there.