Join us for a conversation with artist Carmen Winant on occasion of her book The Last Safe Abortion, published by SPBH Editions.

Focusing on the near-fifty-year period in which abortion was legal in the United States (1973–2022), The Last Safe Abortion recognizes the care, advocacy, and community-building of abortion workers. Artist Carmen Winant draws from over a dozen personal, organizational, and institutional archives from across the Midwest, in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Kentucky, North Dakota, and Ohio. The photographs themselves are surprisingly regular: women answer the phone, sterilize medical equipment, throw staff birthday parties, offer workshops, and schedule appointments. In centering the tender, quotidian, and routine acts that inform this healthcare work, Winant works to counter the ways anti-choice activists have weaponized photography by proposing a visuality that attends to abortion care. The Last Safe Abortion presents a selection of this vast collection of photographs, accompanied by a text by Winant.

Signed copies of Carmen’s books available, to ship following the event:

The Last Safe Abortion, My Birth, Instructional Photography, and Arrangements

Carmen Winant (born 1983)is an artist and writer based in Columbus, OH, where she is the Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair of Studio Art at Ohio State University. Winant’s recent projects have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the SculptureCenter, New York; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; Wexner Center of the Arts, Columbus; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; and the CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto. Winant’s recent artist books, My Birth and Notes on Fundamental Joy, were published by SPBH Editions, ITI Press, and Printed Matter, Inc. Winant’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; and the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo. Winant was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2019 and a Pew Center for Arts & Heritage grant in 2020. She currently holds an FCA Artist Grant and is the winner of the Images Vevey Book Award 2021/2022. Winant is the mother of two sons, Carlo and Rafa, who she shares with her partner, Luke Stettner.