PHOTOGRAPH 51 by Anna Ziegler

(Studied in comparison with My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin)

Photograph 51 rewrites the story of DNA, highlighting Rosalind Franklin’s role in a discovery conventionally attributed to James Watson and Francis Crick. In My Brilliant Career we meet Sybylla Melvyn, a woman whose dreams are unable to flourish at least in part because of gender.  

The workshop explores the differences between Franklin and Melvyn as archetypes and the frighteningly common threads of sexism that only become obvious when we examine how and where women’s HER-stories are often missed in HIStory.