Love and Solidarity in Nina Berman's An Autobiography of Miss Wish

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Event

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8-3-2026 5:54 PM

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This paper examines photography as a catalyst for feminist allyship in American documentary photographer Nina Berman’s collaborative photobook An Autobiography of Miss Wish (2018). The book recounts Kimberly Stevens’ life story, one marked by notable resilience amid sexual violence, addiction, and illness. Berman initially met Stevens when she was photographing “street kids” in London in 1990, and eventually became her “de facto next of kin,” supporting her through years in penal, psychiatric, residential, and medical institutions, all the while taking care of Stevens’ documents, diaries, and drawings that became material for the book. Borrowing Aruna d’Souza’s notion of an “imperfect solidarity…defined by its respect for opacity” (Imperfect Solidarities, 2024, 81) and bell hooks’ ideas about love as redemptive (All About Love: New Visions, 2001), I investigate how love is expressed through the act of photographing in Berman’s work and what that might mean for our understanding of female allyship. Documentary photography typically promises legibility and knowledge about the other. However, Berman’s sometimes blurry and out of focus photographs articulate the impossibility of knowing another’s experience. Rather than attempt to elicit empathy, which is problematic, as D’Souza and others have argued, for its colonialist roots in demanding knowledge of the other, Berman’s photographs of Stevens, I argue, allow for opacity. Love and solidarity develop both through the collaborative acts of photography and book making, and through the act of negation. In choosing to not make certain photographs, Berman denies legibility of some of the most traumatic moments in Stevens’ life. If all photographs are collaborative (Azoulay et al., 2023), how might we read this interplay between a Black woman’s life story and a white woman’s photographic telling of it? How does An Autobiography of Miss Wish convey feminist allyship?

Dr. Linda Steer is an Associate Professor of the History of Art & Visual Culture in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University in St. Catharines, Niagara Region, Canada. She is the former Director of the PhD Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Brock University. A specialist in photography studies, Steer is the author of Appropriated Photographs in French Surrealist Periodicals, 1924-1939 (Routledge, 2016), and has published articles in journals such as History of Photography and Photography and Culture. Steer’s current research examines drug photography from the 1970s to the present through the lens of affect and empathy. She is also the creator of Unboxing the Canon, an open-source podcast for first-year art history courses that takes a thematic approach to simultaneously introduce and critique of the canon of Western art.

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Mar 8th, 5:54 PM

Love and Solidarity in Nina Berman's An Autobiography of Miss Wish

This paper examines photography as a catalyst for feminist allyship in American documentary photographer Nina Berman’s collaborative photobook An Autobiography of Miss Wish (2018). The book recounts Kimberly Stevens’ life story, one marked by notable resilience amid sexual violence, addiction, and illness. Berman initially met Stevens when she was photographing “street kids” in London in 1990, and eventually became her “de facto next of kin,” supporting her through years in penal, psychiatric, residential, and medical institutions, all the while taking care of Stevens’ documents, diaries, and drawings that became material for the book. Borrowing Aruna d’Souza’s notion of an “imperfect solidarity…defined by its respect for opacity” (Imperfect Solidarities, 2024, 81) and bell hooks’ ideas about love as redemptive (All About Love: New Visions, 2001), I investigate how love is expressed through the act of photographing in Berman’s work and what that might mean for our understanding of female allyship. Documentary photography typically promises legibility and knowledge about the other. However, Berman’s sometimes blurry and out of focus photographs articulate the impossibility of knowing another’s experience. Rather than attempt to elicit empathy, which is problematic, as D’Souza and others have argued, for its colonialist roots in demanding knowledge of the other, Berman’s photographs of Stevens, I argue, allow for opacity. Love and solidarity develop both through the collaborative acts of photography and book making, and through the act of negation. In choosing to not make certain photographs, Berman denies legibility of some of the most traumatic moments in Stevens’ life. If all photographs are collaborative (Azoulay et al., 2023), how might we read this interplay between a Black woman’s life story and a white woman’s photographic telling of it? How does An Autobiography of Miss Wish convey feminist allyship?

Dr. Linda Steer is an Associate Professor of the History of Art & Visual Culture in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University in St. Catharines, Niagara Region, Canada. She is the former Director of the PhD Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Brock University. A specialist in photography studies, Steer is the author of Appropriated Photographs in French Surrealist Periodicals, 1924-1939 (Routledge, 2016), and has published articles in journals such as History of Photography and Photography and Culture. Steer’s current research examines drug photography from the 1970s to the present through the lens of affect and empathy. She is also the creator of Unboxing the Canon, an open-source podcast for first-year art history courses that takes a thematic approach to simultaneously introduce and critique of the canon of Western art.