ZEKE Fall 2019

HOLY
By Donna Ferrato
powerHouse Books, 2019
172 pages | $45.00
International photojournalist Donna
Ferrato has spent her career documenting
domestic terror. Her book
and series, Living With the Enemy
is seminal. Her image, Bengt Hits
Elisabeth,1982, taken while on assignment
for Playboy Japan, was recognized
by TIME magazine as one of the
100 Most Influential Pictures of All Time.
Taken in their New Jersey suburban
home it captures the brutal beating of a
wife by her husband in response to what
he reports was her disobedience. This
experience changed Ferrato’s life and
began her crusade to reveal the truth
of domestic violence for what it is —a
war of terror waged against women,
worldwide.
Holy, Ferrato’s fourth book, is a retrospective
of her photographic documentation
of violence against women. Startling
black and white images span decades and
continents. The raw impact of Ferrato’s
witness sears. Her images’ sheer ferocity
brands the viewer while validating the
reality of the victim. The invisible shields of
denial and secrecy are stripped from the
perpetrator. Ferrato uncovers and chronicles
myriad forms of male abuse, from the
familial to the societal.
Complied as a family photo album,
Holy, chronicles moments of viciousness
and abuses of power. Each image is cloyingly
framed by white scalloped edges and
fabric bric-a-brac, a nostalgic nod to the
innocence of scrapbooks, holders of wishes,
dreams and cherished moments. Rough
hewn black marker outlines each photo with
handwritten text scrawled below.
Under a portrait taken of Ferrato’s
56 / ZEKE FALL 2019
parents in Virginia in 1994, she writes
in bold script; Road Trip. Lies Kill Love.
Mom Always Gave Him Her Best. Gutwrenching,
it freezes the cumulative emotions
carved into her mother’s distressed
face and the crisp, in-control authority
of her map-holding father barely able
to contain his disdain. She speaks in an
interview of the years of manipulation and
psychological abuse her father perpetuated
on her mother. He was bi-polar, unfaithful,
and wore the family down emotionally.
A self-portrait taken in an Ohio bathroom
when she was freshly divorced at 28
was a recent discovery by Ferrato. Shot
on film, she stands with bare shoulders
and dyed hair swept back in her attempt
to look older and taken more seriously.
Decades later she finds one frame with
black streaks seemingly exploding out of
her head, a graphic signifying an expulsion
of all she has seen and excavated.
Scribbled across this image she writes:
”Bolts of rage altered by age — postmenopausal
power.” In the book, this image is
surrounded by furious script listing the vernacular
of hate directed at women: Crone,
Dyke, Slut, Twat, Cunt, Pussy, Bitch, Tramp,
Man Hater, Ghost, Babykiller, Ho, Whore,
Mother of God, Punta, Virgin, Prude,
Feminist, 2nd Sex, Old Maid, Butch, Hag
In the time it takes to read this review,
over 60 women will have made a call into
a domestic violence hotline in the United
States. Femicide is the killing of women
by men because they are female, a term
published by author Diana E. H. Russell
at the International Tribunal on Crimes
Against Women in 1976. A majority
of these deaths are by gunshot and not
coincidentally are within states with the
least restrictive gun laws. Pregnancy is a
leading contributing risk factor to violence
against women in the US. Intentional sexbased
hate crime kills 50,000 woman a
year, globally.
Women’s reproductive rights are currently
under sustained attack in the United
States. The ability to receive pregnancy
prevention services and/or to terminate
a pregnancy is being curtailed on a state
level. A goal of conservative legislators
is to repeal the landmark Supreme Court
decision, Roe vs. Wade, which presently
provides a wide-range of health care
services for the 23 million women of
reproductive age in the US. Consistently,
women have had to defend their choices