A Return to the Belly of the Beast
Edward Boches | Massachusetts, United States
Photographer: Edward Boches
Exhibit Title: A Return to the Belly of the Beast
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Every year, the Men’s March, organized by the Catholic radio host Jim Havens, brings approximately 200 mostly white men to one of the country’s most liberal cities to spread their message that life begins at conception and that the Constitution must protect all “persons.” While the speakers’ words expressed how much they cared about life, the unborn, and the women who might bear them, there appears to be little to no empathy or compassion for women’s needs or the idea that abortion is health care and at times can even be life saving.
Photographer Bio
Edward Boches is a Boston and Cape Cod based documentary photographer and photojournalist.
Interested in how photography can connect us, help us understand each other, and inspire empathy, Boches has photographed such diverse communities as inner-city boxers, former gang members, Black Lives Matter activists, transgender men and women, pro-life and pro-choice advocates, women shellfishers, and homeless writers. He makes it a point to meet and photograph at least one stranger every day.
His work has shown in museums and galleries that include the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester; the Bronx Documentary Center in New York City; the Cambridge Association for the Arts; the Plymouth Center for the Arts; the PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont; The Worksspace Gallery in Eastham, Massachusetts, the Providence Center for the Photographic Arts; and in Boston at both the Bromfield Gallery (online) and Panopticon Gallery among others.
His feature writing and photojournalism appear frequently in the Provincetown Independent.
“We’re going into the belly of the beast,” claimed one pro-life marcher, knowing that Boston remains among the most pro-choice cities in the country.
That was in 2022, when the second annual Men’s March, organized by the Catholic radio host Jim Havens, brought 200 mostly white men to one of the country’s most liberal cities to spread their message that life begins at conception and that the Constitution must protect all “persons.”
In the first three years of the march, which began in 2021, few counter protestors, save a small cadre of kazoo blowing clowns, showed up to confront the pro-life men. But in November 2024, that changed. A combination of continued outrage over the denial of abortion rights and the re-election of Trump seems to have energized young pro-choice activists, who showed up en masse to disrupt the planned march from Planned Parenthood on the border of Boston and Brookline to the Boston Commons, three miles away.
As the confrontation grew a bit tense, a Boston Police motorcycle escort, which annually leads the men to their downtown destination, appeared caught off guard by the counter protestors and called out the SWAT teams from both the Boston Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police. While there was a lot of shouting, shoving, profanity and threats, and a number of arrests, no one was hurt and with a reinforced police escort the Men’s March did make it to the Commons for their speeches and rally.
These images, all from a one day march in November 2024, are part of an ongoing project on abortion rights.
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