Playlist: Frances Harlow's Portfolio
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Capes & Corsets
From Frances Harlow | 06:16
Comic books and women's fandom.
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“Capes & Corsets” profiles two young women with remarkably similar yet seemingly incompatible reactions to the male dominance that defines virtually every aspect of the comic book industry. Bevin Lucas is a student printmaker at the Maine College of Art and outspoken feminist adorned with tattoos of Batman and the Green Lantern. Nicole Jean is a cosplayer; she sews her own meticulously accurate, and thus revealing, costumes and models them at events like Maine Comic-Con. Despite their differences, both Bevin and Nicole respond to comics creatively, engaging with the familiar iconography while using their bodies — the physical manifestation of their alienation — to convey their devotion. The juxtaposition of their distinctly feminine modes of fandom reflects broader debates about sexism, women’s agency, and what it means to be empowered.
“Capes & Corsets” was produced during the fall 2011 semester at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies with instructor Michael May’s editorial direction.
Governing the Occupation
From Frances Harlow | 07:12
Dispatches from Occupy Maine's consensus process.
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Through the observations of 24-year-old University of Southern Maine student and activist Jake Lowry, “Governing the Occupation” focuses on the radical nature of consensus governance set against the backdrop of emerging class tension in Occupy Maine’s encampment. As with many such encampments, there has been a schism between the more intellectually engaged supporters, for whom the tent city is a metaphor representing the importance of consensus, and the full-time occupiers — often homeless or unemployed — who are less invested in consensus as an ideological apparatus and consider the General Assembly to be just another bureaucracy. Spanning several weeks of Jake’s tireless involvement with Occupy Maine, “Governing the Occupation” demonstrates how the social movement’s success is ultimately contingent upon the factions’ capacity to address and reconcile their differences.
“Governing the Occupation” was produced during the fall 2011 semester at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies with instructor Michael May’s editorial direction.