Daily Photo – Australian women killed through violence since Jan 1, 2024

Tucked within Melbourne’s iconic, graffiti-covered Hosier Lane, I came across a mural wall of silence amid the urban hustle. Scores of red-framed portrait posters created a memorial grid, bearing the names and faces of Australian women killed through violence, punctuated by a stark banner line beneath them. Like many passersby, I paused along the alley, drawn in by the powerful simplicity that turned a famous tourist thoroughfare into a raw, haunting space for collective memory and the ‘She Matters’ campaign. If like me, you have only no idea what the ‘She Matters’ movement is, well after some research, I can tell you that it is an Australian public activism campaign founded by activist Sherele Moody to honor women lost to violence. Featuring red-bordered portrait paste-ups across public spaces like the one I came across in Hosier Lane, the evolving memorial continuously adds new posters to make the stark reality and ongoing scale of femicide visible to the community. Further to the post campaign, there’s also a podcast series to go along with it. Although rather than framing stories through the traditional true-crime model, it centers on the human lives lost to femicide, domestic abuse, and intimate partner violence across Australia.

To find out what the podcast was all about, I listened to the episodes telling the story of Amy Bowden, and I have to say, they’re very good. Although that feels like something of an understatement.

If you’re interested search:
Amy Bowden: Coercive Control, Death and a Mother’s Fight for Answers – Part 1
Amy Bowden: Coercive Control, Domestic Violence and a Death Police Failed to Examine Properly – Part 2
Please be aware that these episodes discuss coercive control, drug use and death – not suitable for children.