If you know Donna, she lives her art. She is angry. She is empathic. She is loving. She is committed. This book, Holy, is an encapsulation of her anger; a compendium of her empathy; a 176-page vessel of her love; a lifetime of her commitment. (HOLY: Hardcover; ISBN: 978-1-57687-910-8; 8 x 10-1/2 inches (20.32 x 25.4cm); 176 pages
Publisher: powerHouse Books January 26, 2021).

Holy is forged from one woman’s outrage against a woman-hating world. May it anger you. Ferrato’s radical photographs show what women are capable of surviving. More than survive, Holy depicts women who prevail. It is an invitation to understand how it feels being held down by the patriarchy–what women are fighting for, what they are up against, and how against all odds they manage to break free from the chains of oppression. Fighting for equality in the bedroom and the boardroom, Ferrato’s journey in this ground-breaking book follows the sexual revolution of the ’60s through the #metoo era of today.

A deeply personal book, Holy embodies Ferrrato’s fierce, unflinching devotion to uncovering the complicated truth about women’s lives. Her searing images, many never-before-published and spanning half a century, reveal women’s bodies in all their monstrous glory–even her own. From battered women and activists, to migrant workers and swingers, the stories told through these photographs will mobilize you, whether you are cis or trans, young or old, butch or femme. Human survival depends on women. Holy is Ferrato’s call to action to embrace your instincts, desires, brainpower, and strength. Embrace each other.

Holy includes work from Ferrato’s seminal book, Living with the Enemy (Aperture 1991), which sold over 40,000 copies. Here, Ferrato documents the effects of domestic violence on abused women and their children. Photographing in emergency rooms and shelters, courtrooms and activist rallies, batterers’ groups and women’s detention centers, Ferrato aims to expose “the dark side of family life.” Holy also includes photographs from Love and Lust (Aperture 2005) which explores human relationships and love, in its varied manifestations. Ferrato’s physical proximity to her subjects creates a genuine feeling of intimacy, which permeates her entire body of work and highlights love’s common experience across conflicting social mores.

In her essay in the book, feminist Kat Holden writes: “There used to be a time when [Donna’s] story of women was split, over there the ‘domestic violence’ work and over here the ‘sex work.’ The combination of the two is vital. It is only in that combination that we see the whole spectrum of truth of what it is to be a woman. The contradictions we are expected to embody, the virgin and the whore, the vulnerable and invincible, the mother and the daughter.”

In Holy, Ferrato breaks with the traditional documentary approach to embrace the Gonzo method, a non-objective journalism, where documentation, opinion and immersion come together to tell her story over five decades. The photographs are accompanied by texts in her own handwriting that contextualize each moment captured. This approach gives the book an intimate, diary like feel. Ferrato describes Holy as a “handmade book. Totally. 100% handmaid inspired,” referencing Margaret Atwood’s book Handmaiden’s Tale.

Donna Ferrato is an internationally acclaimed photojournalist known for her groundbreaking documentation of the hidden world of domestic violence. Her seminal book Living With the Enemy (Aperture, 1991) went into four printings and, alongside exhibitions and lectures across the globe, sparked a national discussion on sexual violence and women’s rights. In 2014, Ferrato launched the I Am Unbeatable campaign to expose, document, and prevent domestic violence against women and children through real stories of real people.

Ferrato has contributed to almost every major news publication in the country, and her photographs have appeared in nearly five hundred solo exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide. She has been a member of the Executive Board of Directors for the W. Eugene Smith Fund and was president and founder of the non-profit Domestic Abuse Awareness Project (501-c3). She has been a recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Grant, the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Plight of the Disadvantaged, the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, the Missouri Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Artist of the Year at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Look3 Insightful Artist of the Year. In 2008, the City of New York proclaimed October 30 “Donna Ferrato Appreciation Day,” and in 2009, she was honored by the judges of the New York State Supreme Court for her work advancing gender equality. In 2020, Ferrato was chosen as one of the Hundred Heroines by the British Arts foundation, Hundred Heroines.

Her new book, Holy, published in 2020 by powerHouse Books, is a call to action. It proclaims the sacredness of women’s rights and their power to be masters of their own destiny.