‘I railed against the stereotype of the humourless lesbian’: the cheeky, feminist photography of Jill Posener

Her witty photos served as a rebuttal to 80s misogyny and Thatcherite conservatism. Now 50 years on, the photographer is receiving an overdue retrospective. ‘I loved that we could respond with humour,’ she says. If it were a lady it would get its bottom pinched. If this lady was

Her witty photos served as a rebuttal to 80s misogyny and Thatcherite conservatism. Now 50 years on, the photographer is receiving an overdue retrospective. ‘I loved that we could respond with humour,’ she says.

If it were a lady it would get its bottom pinched. If this lady was a car she’d run you down.” These are the words that Jill Posener immortalised in November 1979, when she picked her way through traffic on London’s Farringdon Road to photograph something most would have overlooked: a graffitied billboard. The first sentence was there by design – a sexist attempt at wit intended to promote a new Fiat.

The second she has since been repeatedly accused of adding herself. In reality, the image-maker, playwright and nonprofit founder explains from her home in California, the now infamous phrase had been daubed by two women working at the nearby offices of the socialist newspaper Morning Star. “They had seen the billboard go up and were so incensed that they came up with this solution,” Posener recalls.

“They didn’t think anything of it until they saw the postcard. I sent them a whole bunch and we all had a good laugh.” Continue reading...