Who were the Hackney Flashers? The history and importance of a British Feminist Collective, 1974-1980

The purpose of this project is to provide a resource for museum professionals who are working with materials related to the Hackney Flashers. The Hackney Flashers were a radical socialist-feminist collective that was active in northeast London in the 1970s. The goal is to provide a well-researched history of the collective, as well as address current issues surrounding exhibiting and archiving related materials. This has been done by balancing written sources with oral histories by surviving members of the collective. Imbedded in the Women’s Liberation Movement and the radical-feminist politics of 1970s Britain, the Hackney Flashers used photography to document women in their community in order to expose social inequality. Heavily influenced by the photomontages of John Heartfield, the collective collaged documentary photographs with cartoons, advertisements and text in order to provide a wider context than what documentary photography could provide on its own.