Meg Griffiths
Drawing upon photographic archives, written accounts of suffragists from the 1920’s and my own personal history, these still life images are constructed as a means to process and connect myself to the past from this present moment.
Some images pair small anecdotes from my own experience coming of age along with historical artifacts in order to subtly fuse time on a table and create a correlation between past action and present choice in reference to reproductive rights.
Other images mark or etch objects with words. ‘Stone message’ is a simulated reproduction of real protest artifacts dating to the 1920’s, objects which were often used during strategic bouts of activism and directed at government institutions and retail shops. Another image stamps the word ‘Just’ into a handmade brick, referencing the bricks used in demonstrations by women during the suffrage movement 100 years ago and the bricks wielded in more recent history. These particular objects were literal and figurative tools of expression used in action against oppression, then and now— a means to amplifying the voice beyond the body.
‘Ethel Byrne, 185 hours, 1917’ is a euphemistic still life image referencing an experience had by a political prisoner during the movement. Byrne was a suffragist, Irish-American, nurse, sister to Margaret Sanger and one of the three Mother’s of what is now known as Planned Parenthood. She was arrested in 1917 for distributing pamphlets on birth control and sentenced to jail for 30 days at Blackwell Island workhouse in New York. Advocating for the legalization of birth control Byrne went on a hunger strike for 185 hours. Authorities quickly put a stop to it and Ethel Byrne became the first woman force fed in the United States. Raw eggs were commonly used as a food to push protein into the body, usually through a tube down the throat or the nose. Often flowers and pins were given to women, who earned their time in prison for the cause, and they were bestowed upon them by other suffragists once released for their courage.
Meg Griffiths (b. 1980) in Indiana and raised in Texas. She received Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Texas in Cultural Anthropology and English Literature and earned her Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design. She currently lives in Denton, Texas where she is an Assistant Professor of Photography in the Department of Visual Art at Texas Woman's University.
Meg’s photographic research currently deals with domestic, economic, historical and cultural relationships across the Southern United States and Cuba. Her work has travelled nationally as well as internationally, and is placed in collections such as Center for Creative Photography, Capitol One Collection, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Center for Fine Art Photography.
Her book projects, both monographs as well as collaborative projects have been acquired by various institutions around the country such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Duke University Libraries, Museum of Modern Art, University of Virginia, University of Iowa, Clemson, Maryland Institute College of Art, Ringling College of Art, and Washington and Lee University, to name a few.
She was honored as one of PDN 30’s : New and Emerging Photographers in 2012, named one of eight Emerging Photographers at Blue Spiral Gallery in 2015, Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s Ones to Watch in 2016, was awarded the Julia Margaret Cameron for Best Fine Art Series in 2017 and awarded the 2nd Place Prize at PhotoNola in 2019.
She is represented by Photographs Do Not Bend in Dallas, TX and Candela Books + Gallery in Richmond, VA
instagram: @megsheagriffiths
