Donna Ferrato’s “Documentation is Sacred”

Destiny is having her day, finally.

From an act of confluence between man and Mother Nature, I was asked to give The VII Foundation Keynote at Arles. Since I haven’t been for 44 years, I am grateful for this chance to engage with an ardent visual community, to speak my truth without fear of reprisal.

I am a woman with a camera. I choose where I walk. I pick whom I walk with. I am the maker of my photographs. This is my credo. 

I don’t just document extremes. I live inside them. My work began in the nineteen eighties as an attempt to understand love and show couples trying to make marriage last. When I saw a man attack his wife, seeming to believe it was his right to discipline her I went in another direction. At that moment my territory expanded from photographing real love stories to becoming a conflict photographer in the civil war where women strive for democracy and freedom while men fight to preserve the status quo.

Philip Jones Griffiths, the anti-war photographer and my soul partner, once said if my photographs make editors uncomfortable, I’ve done my job. 

I believe in the power of a single photograph to turn things upside down as they did with me that day in 1982. I look forward to sharing my personal journey with like minded photographers who have been on similar missions.

And, as a special treat, I will share a sizzle reel with you about ma vie de folle.

Warning: This lecture is X-rated.

Donna Ferrato, 2026