Ghosts_02

The series of GIFs, Ghosts (2012), explores areas that feel unsafe to women late at night: a park, an underpass, an empty parking lot, etc. Here the threat of sexual assault lurks in every corner. We are told over and over again that these spaces are not safe for us and that to use them is to make ourselves responsible for attacks. “What were you doing there, at that time of the night?” These spaces are not for us and, “for our own safety”, we are asked to not exist within them. When we do choose to use them, we walk quickly, avert direct eye contact and clutch our keys in one hand and phone in the other. We make ourselves as invisible as we can. To be unseen is then to be safe.