These women have just run twenty-six miles is a series of photographs taken by Ponch Hawkes at the finishing line of the 1982 Big M Marathon in Melbourne. The subjects of these portraits have just been sponged down after completing a 42.2 kilometre run. This series was originally published in the feminist art magazine LIP and included in the exhibition Eight women photographers, curated by Jenepher Duncan at Monash University in 1982. It reflects Hawkes’s long-standing interest in critiquing sexism in sport and celebrating women’s physicality. In an artist’s statement from 1982, Hawkes explains that ‘until the early 1970s women had not been allowed to participate in long-distance running. Now women of all ages are running in the previously male-dominated marathon and catching up to men’s times.’
(2016)
Gelatin silver prints are black-and-white photographic prints that have been created using papers coated with an emulsion of gelatin and light-sensitive silver salts. After the papers are briefly exposed to light (usually through a negative), a chemical developer renders the latent image as reduced silver, which is then fixed and washed. This technique was first introduced in the 1870s and is still used today. Most twentieth-century black-and-white photographs are gelatin silver prints. They are known for being highly detailed and sharply defined prints with a distinguishable smooth, even image surface.
