Search this site

Portraits of Beautiful, Topless and Highly Controversial Femen Activists (NSFW)

By Sophie Butcher on July 23, 2013

Sacha Shevchenko, 23 years old. Photo: Guillaume Herbaut/INSTITUTE

Guillaume Herbaut’s series, The New Amazons, brought him to the Brejnev district in Kiev, Ukraine, where he took portraits of the controversial feminist group Femen. Femen activists strive to fight sexual tourism and to educate women to be more assertive and powerful. They use their bodies as weapons and protest nude, or topless, in the streets in order to achieve their goals.

Sacha Chevtchenko, the founding member, explained: “One day, we don’t know why, one of us, Kseniya Chatchko, undressed, and we saw that the people, the press, started to see us and to listen to us.”

Since then, activists come together and protest topless weekly. Each time, they gain more attention, which suits their agenda as they want to affect women’s rights not only in Ukraine, but globally, and become an international feminist group. They currently have over 300 members and are based in France.

The young women, armed simply with colorful wreaths, ribbons, and for the most part, thin, fragile-looking bodies, are boldly standing up to the male dominated politics of their country, and are regularly arrested. Don’t let appearances get in the way: these girls are fierce.

Xsenjia Shachko, 24 years old. Photo: Guillaume Herbaut/INSTITUTE