Join us on 18th February 2026 at 12.00 noon for Ffotogallery’s St David’s Day Feminist Library special, featuring artist Kaylee Francis in conversation with Zoe Murphy as they discuss how photography and activism can challenge misrepresentation and support working-class agency.
The Feminist Library is a space to listen, discuss and share ideas.
This event is open to the public, free to attend and is part of an ongoing programme hosted by Ffotogallery.
Francis and Murphy will discuss how working-class lives are represented in photography and who actually gets access to the tools, spaces, and opportunities to make work in the first place. While the arts are often presented as inclusive, structural barriers like class, cost, geography, and cultural gatekeeping continue to shape who gets seen and whose stories are told. Photography has long documented working-class communities, often through images made by outsiders, raising questions about authorship, power, and visibility. By looking at representation and access together, this talk explores what it means for working-class photographers to tell their own stories and how photography might move toward more meaningful equity and accountability.
About the artists:
Zoe Murphy is a Swansea-based creative, writer, performance poet, and dance teacher whose work champions working-class representation and accessibility in the arts. She is the founder and Director of Out Loud Arts Collective CIC, a community-focused organisation dedicated to inclusive creative opportunities, and the host of the Out Loud podcast, where she elevates underrepresented voices and stories from artists and changemakers. Zoe’s writing and poetry explore community, identity, and cultural expression, and she continues to perform, publish, and mentor through creative workshops, dance teaching, and spoken word practice.
Kaylee Francis is a photographer from Swansea, South Wales, whose work challenges the stereotyping of working-class communities. She explores how photography and activism can resist misrepresentation and promote agency. Her practice aims to critique the media’s use of clichéd imagery and narratives, highlighting their impact not just on public perception, but on how communities understand themselves.
About Francis' project Rough Edges
Rough Edges explores themes of class, identity and representation through a deeply personal lens. Born and raised on a council estate in Swansea, Kaylee Francis draws on her lived experience and ongoing connection to the community to offer a counter-narrative to the negative and often clichéd portrayals of working-class life seen in mainstream media.
As a child, she longed to leave the estate, internalising the societal judgement attached to coming from areas like hers. But now, as a parent herself, she reflects differently, recognising the strength, warmth, and resilience of the community that helped raise her. Rough Edges captures this shift in perspective, offering an honest and compassionate portrayal of people and places too often reduced to stereotypes.
Francis's work challenges the way working-class communities are seen, not just by others, but by themselves. Through photography, she documents the everyday realities and quiet dignity of her subjects, celebrating their value while resisting sensationalism. While acknowledging the disadvantages that exist, she is equally committed to highlighting the joy, humour, and solidarity that define community life.
Rough Edges is both a personal act of reclamation and a political statement. It seeks to reshape the narrative through lived experience, presenting an authentic view of working-class life from within.
This talk will be held at Elysium Gallery, Swansea and begins at 12 noon. BOOK HERE
