Making Female Labour Visible: Eileen “Dusty” Deste
Presentation Type
Event
Start Date
8-3-2026 12:52 PM
Description
This paper introduces the accomplished but underappreciated British photographer Eileen “Dusty” Deste and discusses how her work is reshaping the historical visual narrative of women's work in Sunderland, UK. Women have played an instrumental role in Sunderland’s industrial economy, yet their contribution lacks the visibility of men's labour in official histories and museum displays. James A Jobling & Co. was a major employer of women in the mid to late twentieth century producing Pyrex and industrial glassware. Yet only eight professional photographic prints of these women existed in the museum collection—until the discovery of 207 remarkable documentary photographs of the factory taken by Deste in 1961. Deste was a commercial female photographer from the 1920s-1970s with a personal interest in documenting disappearing industries. She travelled the country in a Land Rover, which doubled as a mobile darkroom, photographing tin mines in Cornwall, herring processing in Great Yarmouth, textile mills in Lancashire and the Pyrex Factory in Sunderland. Although her non-commercial work has been digitised and made available online by Historic England, it has remained unknown locally.
Sophie Piper is a photographer, curator and researcher currently undertaking a practice-based PhD in collaboration with Northern Centre of Photography and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens. She was recipient of the Royal Photographic Society Peter Hansell Scholarship in 2017, the North East Photography Network DEVELOP Award in 2016 and was selected as an Emerging British Photographer by the Canadian Publisher Magenta in 2011.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Piper, Sophie, "Making Female Labour Visible: Eileen “Dusty” Deste" (2026). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day. 29.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2026/schedule/29
Making Female Labour Visible: Eileen “Dusty” Deste
This paper introduces the accomplished but underappreciated British photographer Eileen “Dusty” Deste and discusses how her work is reshaping the historical visual narrative of women's work in Sunderland, UK. Women have played an instrumental role in Sunderland’s industrial economy, yet their contribution lacks the visibility of men's labour in official histories and museum displays. James A Jobling & Co. was a major employer of women in the mid to late twentieth century producing Pyrex and industrial glassware. Yet only eight professional photographic prints of these women existed in the museum collection—until the discovery of 207 remarkable documentary photographs of the factory taken by Deste in 1961. Deste was a commercial female photographer from the 1920s-1970s with a personal interest in documenting disappearing industries. She travelled the country in a Land Rover, which doubled as a mobile darkroom, photographing tin mines in Cornwall, herring processing in Great Yarmouth, textile mills in Lancashire and the Pyrex Factory in Sunderland. Although her non-commercial work has been digitised and made available online by Historic England, it has remained unknown locally.
Sophie Piper is a photographer, curator and researcher currently undertaking a practice-based PhD in collaboration with Northern Centre of Photography and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens. She was recipient of the Royal Photographic Society Peter Hansell Scholarship in 2017, the North East Photography Network DEVELOP Award in 2016 and was selected as an Emerging British Photographer by the Canadian Publisher Magenta in 2011.