The Last Women with Bound Feet

It was while reading Wild Swans, in San Francisco in 1995, that photographer and social anthropologist Jo Farrell discovered the ancient Chinese tradition of foot binding. A practice first written about in 1130AD, it involved a woman's smaller toes being wrapped under her foot, using long cotton bindings stretched around the heel, with only the big toe left untouched. After being walked upon for a period of time, the small bones in the toes would break…