$ 49.95
Order from the powerHouse Shop
If you know Donna, she lives her art. She is angry. She is empathic. She is loving. She is committed. This book, Holy, is an encapsulation of her anger; a compendium of her empathy; a 176-page vessel of her love; a lifetime of her commitment.
Holy is forged from one woman’s outrage against a woman-hating world. Donna Ferrato’s radical photographs showcase the remarkable ways women survive, endure, and change. Holy depicts women who prevail. Holy is an invitation to understand denigration, abuse, disregard, contempt—on a personal level, a governmental policy level, on a religious level, you name it—and the power of redemptive righteousness; of desire; of nurturing and raising; of loving.
Donna Ferrato is an internationally-renowned documentary photographer. Her gifts for exploration, illumination, and documentation, coupled with a commitment to revealing the darker sides of humanity, have made her a giant in the medium.
She has published four books, including Living with the Enemy (over 40,000 copies sold), and Love & Lust. She has participated in over 500 one-woman shows and has received numerous awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Humanistic Photography (1987), the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism (2003), and the Gender Fairness Award from the New York State Supreme Court Judges (2009).
Donna founded a non-profit called Domestic Abuse Awareness which she ran for over a decade, and in 2014 launched a campaign called I Am Unbeatable, which features women who have left their abusers. In 2016, TIME magazine announced her photograph of a woman being hit by her husband (1982) as one of the “100 Most Influential Photographs of All Time.”
This new book, Holy, showcases Ferrato’s fierce devotion to uncovering the complicated truth about women’s lives, breaking with the traditional documentary approach and embracing non-objective journalism, where documentation, opinion, and immersion come together to tell her story over five decades.
“Even with blackened eyes, the women in Donna Ferrato’s photographs look defiant, not defeated. A photojournalist and feminist activist who is best known for her documentation of domestic violence, Ferrato, 73, has also depicted women pursuing sexual pleasure, giving birth, raising children, enticing men and demonstrating in the streets. Her subject is women taking control of their bodies, and in her fiercely empathetic mission, sometimes she turns the camera on herself.”
– Arthur Lubow, The New York Times
“Ferrato’s photos have the ability to sear into the recesses of your mind.”
– Kenneth Dickerman, The Washington Post
“Ferrato recognizes photography as a tool to speak truth to power.”
– Miss Rosen, Feature Shoot
“Her haunting photographs display the harsh reality of women facing domestic violence, an often- underrepresented issue, and give an honest, vulnerable approach to the issue”
– Margarita Matta, MUSÉE
“The stirring photographs exhibited in Holy attest to Ferrato’s ongoing philosophy as an image-maker: “My moral imperative is to be there and help people suffering in silence… to respond as a human being, to earn trust, to listen.” As women’s rights feel particularly imperilled and progress has faltered in a way likely to devastate the lives of so many women in the US, Holy is both a restorative act of care and a stirring siren call.”
– Emily Dinsdale, DAZED
