WRAF Technician Servicing a Helicopter at Shawbury by Boyd & Evans, crayon on paper

Fionnuala Boyd and Les Evans work inter-dependently as an artistic partnership, at times drawing on the same leaves of paper to realise a shared vision. Photography is central to their practice. In the studio, when away from the subject, they based their drawings on photographs, and today photography is their main medium.

Boyd & Evans travelled to RAF stations at Lyneham and Shawbury for their Imperial War Museum and Ministry of Defence commission to represent the work of women in the RAF. They saw loadmasters overseeing Hercules cargoes, air traffic controllers, and technicians servicing aircraft. However, they were disappointed not to see women ‘on exercises and jumping out of planes’, assuming MOD censorship was the reason. Today, after considerable advancement of women's recruitment and promotion, we engage with a broader, more varied understanding of female personnel and their work. Several have written autobiographies and recounted their service stories, including for RAF Museum interviews. 'When we got to various RAF stations, I don’t know what messages had been sent there but we had been trying to do women working. So, for instance, the payload masters, who were women, on the Hercules – they [the RAF] would turn out their prettiest person in almost full-dress uniform … We tried very hard to get somebody in a working jumpsuit there … Somebody is sent out in dress uniform and high heels, for the back of an aeroplane - it wasn’t the commission we thought we were doing, but that’s what we did … We wanted to see people on exercises and jumping out of planes or being in the control centre where it is really happening. I really thought we were going to see what women really did in the RAF' - Fionnuala Boyd, 2022, recounting her experiences in 1985-6. Purchased in 1986. Copyright: Boyd & Evans / RAF Museum.