Eliza Hatch is a London-based photojournalist. Since 2017 she has been at work on Cheer Up Luv, an extensive international photojournalism project which documents women who have experienced sexual harassment on any scale in a public setting.
A photograph and interview series that twins portraits with the subject's own accounts of facing everyday sexual harassment, Cheer Up Luv combines photography with journalism, activism and social media in order to record what has gone ignored. The project has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, New York, as part of its Projected series. It can be accessed via Instagram and the website, designed as spaces where women can collectively share their stories and in doing so raise awareness: @cheerupluv, www.cheerupluv.com.
Artist Statement
"Cheer Up Luv is a platform for women's voices to be heard, and to take ownership of experiences that were once out of their control. I have found that the amount of women that experience sexual harassment in public is vast, and the stories unfortunately cover a wide range of things. They range from women being flashed at, to being verbally assaulted and even physically abused, all taking place in a public setting. By photographing these women and publishing these stories, my aims are to help women reclaim that space for themselves, and to shed some light on an issue that is rarely spoken about.