For many young feminists around the world, the Internet is a space for connection, alliance and collective revolt. In a world where women are often undermined, judged, objectified, silenced and pitted against each other, social media can offer a safe space for young women to be seen and heard on their own terms.
Bad Gals Club is a secret Facebook group that connects 1,000 women around the world, providing a digital platform to get weird and get real. One member of the group is Sarah Stockman, a Melbourne-based art student and emerging photographer. Bad gals, she says, are "free to define themselves [as such] as long as it doesn't cut down or oppress another bad gal," the photographer explained to The Huffington Post.
"Bad Gals has been a place for support, for learning and growing with 1,000 other girls all at different stages of their journey into intersectional feminism," Stockman continued. "It has been an incredibly supportive and intelligent community to be a part of. I believe the group has made me a more politically and socially aware person, as well as giving me the comfort of knowing I have an army of a 1,000 Bad Gals behind me if I ever need them."
Recognizing the significant impact Bad Gals Club had on her life, Stockman decided to create portraits of some of the women in the group, at once her muses and her peers.
"I don't think there are enough women photographing women in the way that they would like to be depicted," Stockman said. With this intention at the core of the project, Stockman reached out to the group inviting interested participants to pose as subjects. The responses flew in.
Stockman began photographing the volunteers who expressed the most enthusiasm and conviction in their messages, believing they'd get the most out of the experience. However, she intends to continue the project until every interested woman has the opportunity to participate. "I have every intention to continue to photograph everyone that wanted to be a part of the series. I suppose it's something that will forever be growing and won't ever really be 'finished.'"
The photographer considers each portrait a unique collaboration between herself and her subject. As Stockman put it: "I watched a documentary on Richard Avedon years ago in which he described a 'good' photograph as a 'gift' from his subjects and I've felt an affinity with that ever since."
Stockman starts off the photography process by asking each model how she would like to be depicted. Then, the two together select an outfit that makes the sitter feel, as Stockman puts it, like a "bad gal." She starts off giving direction to help facilitate a feeling of comfort in her models, but eventually, the subject is meant to dictate the direction of the shoot. "It's my job to bring it out of them and hit the shutter at the right time."
As far as her artistic style goes, Stockman prefers to follow her own lead. "I’ve always been a little afraid of admiring a photographer too much and ending up emulating them, so I’ve tried to find people to admire elsewhere." She cites pro skateboarder Rodney Mullen as an inspiration, due to his extraordinary creativity and drive. "He skated alone for many years of his life and well into his professional career, due to living in an isolated location. He always said that if not for his isolation he would have been just like everyone else."
The bad gals in Stockman's photographs are fierce, vulnerable, and incredibly cool, each captured in her own home doing her own thing. Yet as intriguing as they are to a stranger's eye, the personal images are truly meant to reflect the sitter, and not much else. "I've always gone into shooting my friends or strangers/models with an outlook more like, 'I want to photograph them how they want to be photographed and perceived,' whether the images ‘go somewhere’ or not."
"I want the people I photograph to have something they can look back on and be proud of or happy with forever," she concluded. "Hopefully with more sentimentality and pride than just happy snaps from an event or the hundreds of selfies they've taken on their phones throughout their lives."
Spoken like a true bad gal.
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