Recently I photographed Angela Rayner for The Royal Photographic Society to mark 40% of MPs at the last general election being women. .
The portrait was made at her home, in a quiet domestic space. Nothing elaborate — just a an hour of shared time, a conversation, and the slow process of settling into a photograph. I’m always interested in the moment when someone stops performing their public role and simply occupies the space they’re in.
Those are the moments a portrait is really made from.
Afterwards, when the photographs were shared online, I found myself watching the responses with interest. Roughly a third of the comments were about the portrait itself — the light, the expression, the way she appeared in the frame. Another third were about politics. Questions about tax, policy, decisions she has made in public life. That felt unsurprising. She is a senior politician, and public scrutiny comes with the role.
But the remaining third of the comments were something else entirely.
They were overwhelmingly from men, and they were vile. Repeatedly calling her a c**t, over and over again, with a kind of relentless hostility that felt both familiar and unsettling. What struck me was that many of the comments didn’t seem to be about Angela Rayner at all. They carried a broader anger — something directed at women in public life more generally.
It’s a pattern we’ve seen many times now.
A woman becomes visible, occupies space, speaks with authority — and a certain kind of reaction follows. The language used is often strikingly similar, whoever the woman happens to be.
As a photographer, I’m used to thinking about representation: how someone appears in an image, what a portrait allows us to see. But watching those responses unfold was a reminder that visibility still carries a particular weight for women.
A portrait can show presence. What it cannot control is what that presence provokes. And sometimes the reaction tells us more about the culture looking back than it does about the person in the frame.
You can see more portraits for the RPS 40% here
