The Hackney Flashers, a women’s photography collective, was formed in 1974 and remained active until 1980. It was started by a small group of photographers and an illustrator with the purpose of making a photography exhibition about women at work. This was part of a trade union event celebrating 75 years of union activity in Hackney, East London. Over time members described their individual political positions as feminist or socialist feminist. Between 1974 and 1980 the Hackney Flashers produced two exhibitions of photographs and cartoons focusing on two key areas of women’s lives: paid work, and the lack of childcare for working mothers. These exhibitions, ‘Women and Work’ (1975) and ‘Who’s Holding the Baby?’(1978), were intended first and foremost as agitprop – to raise consciousness about the issues involved and support relevant action. They were shown in community settings like health and community centres and libraries and in political contexts such as women’s movement meetings and trade-union conferences. The Hackney Flashers collective developed within the context of the rapidly growing Women’s Liberation Movement which believed, along with the political Left, that collective action was a vital element in bringing about social and political change. 

Liz Heron was born in Glasgow and left Scotland after university there, to live in Spain, France and Italy, before settling in London. Having been involved in left politics, she joined the Hackney Flashers in September 1976. After joining the Camerawork editorial board, she wrote for Spare Rib and other collective magazines, then contributed arts and literary journalism to mainstream publications.  As well as anthologies and non-fiction, her books include a novel, The Hourglass (2018), and a short-story collection, A Red River (1996). She has published literary translations from French and Italian. She is working on a memoir of movie-watching.  

Sally Greenhill met Maggie Murray at the Regent St. Polytechnic, where they were both students in the same year along with Richard Greenhill. She notes “It was quite the cabal. When we left the Poly we all went our separate ways all though we were still in touch so The Hackney Flashers was a natural result of that connection. It was a wonderful time." 

Michael Ann Mullen moved from the US to London in the late 1960s, and became involved in the women’s movement and joined the group that became the Hackney Flashers. She worked as a freelance photographer from 1970s to 1990s, then taught photography in adult education and history of photography and art at Middlesex University. She also worked as photography officer for a London public arts funding body and, as Equality Officer for the National Union of Journalist Freelance Branch during the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike, she acted as liaison to the Yorkshire mining village the branch adopted.  Now she researches and writes about garden and landscape history. Her most recent research, ‘Detroit: Farming is re-defining an urban landscape’, is published online. 

Maggie Murray has worked as a photojournalist and documentary photographer with a particular interest in social issues. She trained as a photographer at Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) in the 1960s. In the 1970s she was a member of the Hackney Flashers agitprop collective, and in 1982 she co-founded Format Photographers, the women only photographic agency. She has travelled widely covering aspects of development for NGOs, charities, publishers and occasionally newspapers. Most of her commissions were to African countries, but she also worked in India, the Middle East, Hong Kong, Japan and European countries such as Denmark, Greece and Finland. Later on, she focused especially on the lives of women and other underrepresented groups, showing work of a medical/agricultural centre in rural India and on HIV/Aids education in Zambia in the 1990s. 

Christine Roche is French Canadian and after the heady 60s moved to London to work as a freelance cartoonist/illustrator where she got involved in left /feminist politics. The Hackney Flashers was one of the groups she was involved in - as a cartoonist not a photographer. She also ran animation & illustration workshops various Art colleges in the UK as well as India & co produced animated films for both Channel 4 & the BBC. She now paints. 

Images: courtesy of Hackney Flashers Archive at Bishopsgate Institute.