Eliza Hatch | CHEER UP LUV

Cheer Up Luv is a photojournalism series which documents women who have experienced sexual harassment in public. The project focuses on interviewing women about their everyday experiences, ranging from minor to serious offences and giving women a platform to speak out against normalised harassment. After interviewing the women I photograph them in a location related to their experience, i.e. A train carriage, bus stop. After the shoot, I publish all of the women’s stories and photos on my social channel @cheerupluv and website www.cheerupluv.com, which takes the form of an online gallery, and gives women from all over the world a platform to contact me. Since the project’s humble beginnings, it has grown and gained international recognition and enthusiasm from women wanting to share their stories. The project was born in my hometown London, and is the product of a lifetime of personal experiences with street harassment, alongside the realisation of the lack of awareness surrounding the issue. Since the project has begun, I have split my time between London and New York, interviewing women from both cities to compare the issue, and unsurprisingly the experiences from the women have been mirrored in both countries. My year culminated with a show at the ICP in New York, comparing and contrasting the experiences of both women. Since then, the outburst of voices from the #MeToo movement has seen the project surge with momentum and increased interest from women all over the world. Over the course of a year I have heard hundreds and hundreds of experiences from women, all reaching out with a story they want to tell. My aims have been to represent the women who don’t have a public voice or media platform to stand on, and to combat the normalisation of street harassment.

About author