“Here in Norway, the culture is to be outside and be in nature and it’s something that Somali aunties have adapted to”

She explains that, before WhatsApp, her community relied on cassettes and photographs to keep up with each other’s lives. “People back in Somalia used to film themselves in a cassette and then send them over to Norway, or England or America…and that’s how they would remember each other.” Abdi emphasises the value of putting effort into creating a memory. In Oslo, domestic settings became the backdrop for wearing one’s finest clothes – an inspiration for her early editorial work that blended the home with African studio portraiture. “When I do studio work, I take a lot of inspiration from the effort people used to take in taking photos of each other. How people used to get dressed and the whole ritual behind it,” she says. There was a shared consensus that smelling your best was as important as looking your best. Relatives across the diaspora and the motherland perfumed the envelopes before mailing them, turning each one into a sensorial vessel of memory. “People will smell you through the photo, people will smell the emotions”. 

Abdi approaches documentary with care, softly enough to capture intimacy while remaining cognisant of the sensitivities of her work. Being welcomed into communities is a part of her process, and people willingly permit her to share their narrative. Rarely are her photos taken, they are gifted. Working strictly with film is a patient process just like these interactions whether it’s a tender moment between a mother and child or between friends.

Abdi tells me that one portrait taken in Nairobi was where Family in Focus found its start. Serendipity took the photographer to an orphanage in Kangemi where she met Priscilla holding her neighbour’s daughter – while the neighbour had her hair braided by Priscilla’s daughter. In the portrait lies an enchanting parable of community and entangled lives, a defining metaphor for the Family in Focus canon which continues in her moving image work.

Abdi’s understanding of film as a universal medium for storytelling began in her adolescence watching Bollywood movies void of subtitles. Drawn to dramatic colour palettes and choreography, she realised that feeling was the only metric that mattered to her and why she intently uses minimal dialogue in her films. On Tip Toe is a performance film co-directed by Abdi and Dina Al-Makhrami and follows the ballet dancers of Na Ponta dos Pés, an art school built by their instructor and matriarch Tuany Nascimento. Set in a haven in the favelas hanging over the city where youth feels truly sacred, we see a dream-like sequence of girlhood. A dance between play and performance, before falling into Nascimento’s embrace.

This fascination of matriarchal communities begins at home for Abdi. In My Heroes, Abdi spotlights Somali women in Oslo, including her mother, whose instinct, like Priscilla, is to lean on her community. In this microcosm of Somali womanhood we see their capacity to show up for one another, to play and reclaim the outdoors.

“Here in Norway, the culture is to be outside and be in nature. It’s literally ingrained in Norwegian culture and it’s something that Somali aunties have adapted to.” With a process rooted in rapport and invitation, Abdi plans to keep translating personal stories of the diaspora through pop-up studios and an upcoming Family in Focus book.

@ayyanabdi

Our Hidden Room is available here 

Mostly taken on various trips over a two month period, these images depict Li’s mother, which explains their inherent tenderness. But beneath their surface is a complex web of dynamics and pressures – both internal and external – that complicate their relationship. The images become a record of a world that exists between mother and son. “I’m forever tethered to her and my hometown,” Li explains, “and she’s forever tethered to me and my queerness.”

Transit is a deeply entrenched feature of Li’s identity and his relationship with his mother. His family left their village home in China’s Fujian province in 2007, first moving to Singapore and then, five years later, to the east London suburb of Romford. He was seven years old. Many of his family photographs from around this time were taken on London’s transport system: a sprawling network that represented the beginnings of a new life. These images, taken years later, often imply that a brave new world might be around the corner. Sunlight reflected in windows and concentrated on the travelling figure momentarily bathes her in hope. 

Years after their arrival, as his family settled into the humdrum and often challenging rhythm of life as first-generation Chinese immigrants in London, the city’s now-familiar TfL network, remained a site of transition and the possibility of belonging for Li. Underground trains ferried him to and from the clubs where he explored his queer identity. He would wake up back in Romford, crashing emotionally and physically, among a family that struggled to accept his queerness. In these concurrent stories of diaspora and sexuality, journeys into the unknown are ambivalent experiences where excitement is tempered by the harshness of reality. As Li puts it, yesterday’s dream has a sour taste on monday. “For me the train symbolises an ongoing navigation of a precarious sense of belonging, as someone both queer and Chinese,” he says.

Though mother and son embarked on the same life-changing journey, their lives and worldviews remain very different, painfully so at times. How does one resolve a relationship like this, with its overlapping textures and unspoken tensions? Li’s photographs of his mother attempt to bridge the gap between them. “It’s about understanding each other without having to communicate with words,” he says, “I think we’re usually really bad with words, we can’t tell each other what we truly think.” Through photographs, and through the act of taking photographs, he facilitates a new kind of exchange.

To describe this body of work is to list locations, outfits, poses and objects. Its emotional content is more difficult to take stock of; it’s unmistakable but wordless. Indeed, there’s no concise way to describe a relationship that carries as much baggage as this one. Through this set of images underpinned by movement, Li shows us – and discovers for himself – “how we can meet in a transitional space.”

@nimiewil

“I am interested in mothers, because especially in this region, motherhood is an important concept”

On the book’s cover, which is designed by Carel Fransen and published by The Eriksay Connection, a photograph of Hebron is turned on its side, shot with a flash from behind a fence, so the blockade reads initially as a diamond-shaped pattern. Flicking through it, moreover, feels not dissimilar from looking through a family album – there’s a familiarity and a tenderness, a naïve sensibility about the photographs, while the size of the images mirrors the traditional 6×4 proportions of personal prints. It’s a wonderful quality, disrupted only by the texts which provide context for the area. 

“Hebron is like a microcosm of settler violence,” asserts Debeuckelaere, sitting with researcher Kaat Somers in an empty meeting room at FOMU in Antwerp, where a new exhibition of the work has just opened. “It’s a very intense place, every step you take is political. It’s not Ramallah or Jerusalem, certainly not Gaza. It has a very specific situation and history.” Located in H2, which falls under the complete authority of Israel, Hebron is the only city in the West Bank with an Israeli settlement at its centre. These circumstances massively underscore the project’s impact; as the book’s coverline affirms: “Hebron women documenting daily life as the ultimate act of resistance.”

“The idea of the project, for me, was beautiful. It brought back memories of past days, how we used to use the camera,” reflects ‘Om Muntasser, one of the project’s participants, via a three-channel video installation at FOMU. “In my childhood, I always had a camera with me, at every occasion.” The film, for which several women were interviewed in Arabic, adds an important further layer to the works on display, some of which are framed, hung alongside a roll of negatives; many more feature in a slideshow, projected floor to ceiling in a second room, which commands, deservedly, you spend real time with it. “When I held the camera, it brought back emotions I had felt long ago,” ‘Om Wisam, separately, adds. “I used to handle a camera to photograph my children, on every moment, capture every movement, throughout their lives.”

Debeuckelaere’s decision to focus solely on Tel Rumeida’s women, and mothers in particular, was a reaction against the male narratives that typically dominate news from the area, oftentimes with a reference to violence (as Broomberg writes, “The whole of H2 feels intensely macho and masculine.”). While both genders are privy to the non-stop harassment of their settler neighbours, this perspective is less readily shared. “I am interested in mothers, because especially in this region, motherhood is an important concept,” shares Debeuckelaere. “The children they carry are the future of this country that is threatened. It’s really a political position; as a mother, you have a job to carry this country further. And they’re aware of that, it’s in their subconscious. [When] they talk about a motherland it’s not coincidental, it is very deliberate.” 

That the apparatus used was analogue was similarly significant, and several women have subsequently described the way it reshaped how they engaged with the objects in their home and wider environment, moving away from the more trivial nature of camera phones. Some have even continued the practice, reclaiming old hobbies: Just before we begin speaking in Antwerp, Debeuckelaere receives a text from Amro – Om’ Muntasser has acquired a film camera so she can photograph her daughter’s wedding the following day. “For sure, photography is art,” her likeness announces on a screen downstairs, “but it’s also a message that conveys reality in a tangible way.”

‘Om (Mother) is at FOMU until 28 September. The book is available at The Eriksay Connection, with all proceeds going back to the women of Tel Rumedia

“There was no intentional choice of style; what emerged was simply an expression that came on its own,” she says. “Melancholy and instinct worked shoulder to shoulder in creating these images. I let go of my consciousness, often listening to music, and bits from Kabir singers, allowing the flow to lead. Each photograph became a hunt to confront grief and its many daunting, masked forms… While creating, I focus on feeling, form and function. Once you recognise the truth of the feeling you want to convey through a frame or a story and choose the right form to express it, the function becomes inherent. Grief is atmospheric; it arrives with baggage, carrying its own sounds, spaces, light, thuds and stings. This story reflects only the imprint of grief.”

Eventually Khan found acceptance, and a new understanding of mourning as a form of homecoming “because it crosses boundaries, extends geographies, and lingers with you wherever you go”. Her final image is a double exposure, symbolising this sense of duality, and she named the series Daa.era, in honour of her grandmother’s fierce acceptance of life and death. ‘Daa.era’ refers to embracing living while acknowledging circumstance, she explains, relating how her grandmother would bathe, change into a fresh dress, and prepare a sweet dish during Eid. “She would say, ‘Yes, the dead are gone, but I am large enough to hold death and life within me. I am still alive’.”

Daa.era is rooted in Khan’s particularly gruelling experience of grief, after losing both parents in such a short space of time. Even so, she says that her story, though drawn from her personal life, is not unique. Death touches every life, and mourning is a shared human experience, she points out – and as such, Daa.era has connected with others. Khan’s series has been exhibited at events such as Indian Photo Festival and Hyderabad Literary Festival, and published in the huge English-language Indian newspaper The Hindu, and she is working on a film version of it.

“This story transcends individuality,” she says. “The most powerful works of art emerge when the personal is shed, allowing the core to resonate beyond the self… In the image of the deer, the concept was how grief isolates you, making you feel as though you are special – but that’s the ego speaking. You are not special because life happened to you, you are special in how you respond to life. That is the spark in the eye of the deer. Its circle is complete. We are all animals of loss.”

abeerkhan.com

aperture.org

“This experience of finding my roots has been quite healing. Of course, it’s been painful. But I’m lucky to even have something photographic to hold on to”

Today, Tomorrow – which, as a title, is a poignant reminder of the passage of time: of how the present is always becoming the future, and vice versa – was somewhat accidental. As an undergraduate, Wan spent a year working with the archives department at the Art Institute of Chicago which introduced her to the archive and its preservation, but she never thought to bring archival work into her practice as a photographer. “I started thinking about how there were many missing gaps in what I understood in the family history, things I never asked and the silence that follows when you’re a family with a heavy migration history.” Photographs are complicated objects in these instances, where a single image can only reveal half a truth or a moment in history. By filling in the gaps in chronology and persisting to shoot her family for the album, Wan begins to mend the archive and address the complicated relationship between memory, loss and a photograph. 

Wan began shooting documentary images of her grandparents at home and engaging in daily activities, as well as the environment around them. When she printed these images, she would leave them on her grandparents’ table, intending to trim the white space around the images and place them into the family album alongside “a little caption about that day.” When Wan came back to retrieve the images, she found them coloured in with felt-tip pen, child-like drawings filling the white space around the images, and the captions on coloured Post-It notes in Cantonese. Something as complicated as migration suddenly becomes something light, and Wan’s grandparents become children again. “I didn’t ask my grandparents to draw. They did it all on their own, but I really loved it. Maybe it was a hidden therapy session for them in which they were reflecting on the day.”

The captions, too, were “quite poetic,” Wan tells me. “They’re not straightforward sentences. And they’re things that my grandparents would never say to me. I felt really touched and a bit saddened by these things, and that’s when I started pushing a bit more in a way to connect with them.

“It also doesn’t help when you have a language barrier,” Wan continues. “I’m a first generation Asian-American and thankfully I was able to retain some version of Cantonese but I still struggle to speak to them.”

In every family, there is a memory keeper, and Wan thinks she falls into that role just as so many first or second generation immigrants feel they do. “There’s a hesitancy and there are such painful memories that my family carries, which is why the photo album is precious. Because it’s a tangible object that you can hold and pass on to someone.” Today, Tomorrow features not only newly shot images for the contemporary photo album, but archival images from Wan’s family’s time in China, too. Many of these images have been damaged or torn; people have been cut out of history, other’s faces have been scratched. Wan asks us to consider the ways in which photographs can fail us in holding memory. 

“I began using these poems my grandparents wrote for me as memory keepers for our family. So now, the family album is really just a box of random things, too. It’s a bit like a time capsule. Sometimes things are removed without my knowledge, sometimes things are being put inside. So. it is a photographic project but now it’s become more sculptural, in a sense.”

For the photographer, the project is as much about documenting her family’s history as it is about exploring and building her own identity. “This experience of finding my roots has been quite healing. Of course, it’s been painful and there’s still so much more that I’m finding out about my own family. But I’d say I’m lucky to even have something photographic to hold on to.”

 vivianwan.studio

“I want you to really arrive right at the centre of the exhibition and understand that life is complicated”

Markosian, a contributor to Vanity Fair, Vogue and The New Yorker, first began Father years ago as she embarked on the journey to Armenia to find her dad. “I didn’t intend for this to be a project,” she explains. “I kept returning and I think photography gave me the courage to keep coming back. It just became this powerful weapon of courage that I was given.” Over a decade, from 2014 to 2024, she shot images that would eventually become Father. 

But Markosian was also “getting to know him in a certain light,” a version of her father that she needed to exist in order to make not only the return journey and reconnection bearable, but make the images possible. Now, both Markosian and her father are hoping to get to know each other beyond the images. “Loving is growth, making another trip without making images is growth. Photography has been just supporting that growth, it hasn’t been leading it. Now, without photography,” continues Markosian, “I feel like we have another language to speak.” 

The exhibition at Foam in Amsterdam is the first time the exhibition is shown in its entirety, displaying staged and vernacular images, family archives, and film. The exhibition’s tour began at the National Portrait Gallery in London with six almost life-size prints and after Foam the show will head to Arles before Fotografiska in Berlin. At each venue, visitors will have the opportunity to write a letter to someone they are estranged from, someone they have lost, or someone they simply miss and post the letter into a post box at the end of the show. It offers a way for visitors to engage and immerse themselves in Markosian’s story, transforming a personal narrative into a universal one and providing space for collective healing to ensue. It echoes the section at the back of the book which also provides an envelope and paper for a letter.

“The most beautiful part of the Foam show has been the letters,” Markosian tells me, showing me a video of the gallery team opening the post box with dozens of letters overflowing from it. “Just knowing that so many people feel they even want to sit and write.

“Every year I go back to Armenia and spend time with my father as a way of making up for that time that we didn’t have together,” she tells me. “There’s not enough years left, and that’s why I feel like I have to go back twice or three times because I just want more time with him.”

The exhibition brings the work to life in a way that feels “very raw,” continues the artist, “and I think the book is very intimate and contained and has its own story to it.” Upon reaching the end of the exhibition, we hear the voice of Markosian’s father through the film, which we aren’t able to hear – at least in a manifest way – through a book.

“I remember my dad even saying, ‘It took you so long to find me and you’re coming with so much blame. Don’t you want to hear my story?’ And I think this is the space that I wanted to create through this exhibit. I’ve presented my mother’s side and I’ve presented my father’s side. And I want you to believe my father and my mother. And I want you to really arrive right at the center of it and understand that life is complicated. And having empathy for both parents is my hope, as a daughter”.

Today, Markosian is wondering if her relationship with her father can evolve into something joyful, but that’s a brave step to take. “The art was made through the lens of a person I didn’t know and I was getting to know. And now that I know him, my father is asking me to start seeing him from a different point of view today”. It’s clear Markosian is curious about feelings surrounding shame, what is hidden, and the idea of vulnerability and emotional bravery. The artist is currently collaborating with an architect and priest to create a confession booth as a way of exploring themes of grief and trauma, , whilst looking ahead to another opening of Father at Recontres D’Arles this year in an excitingly expansive space and immersive format.

Father is on at Foam until 28 May. Father opens at Recontres D’Arles on 7 July.

“This also relates to a lot of cultural heritage that was destroyed in Ukraine, generation by generation, because the Russian language was imposed”

It is an extraordinary story of determination and pure grit, but Vinnichenko’s series is even more unusual. Titled Postponed Disbelief, it is a mix of her own images and family photographs. Some of these images are scanned into multiples and transformed into uncanny collages. A meditation on photography as a medium, her series also reflects the psychological impact of war.

“I first started working with family photographs in 2022,” she explains. “I became interested in working with archive materials from my family, who were still in Ukraine. I have been back twice, both of which were approximately OK because there weren’t many bombings – or not as many as there could have been – and I brought back photographs.”

“The repetition is about routine,” she continues. “I focused on routine because it was completely lost in the beginning [of the war], especially after the full-scale invasion. Routine is something that gives us normality. But seeing so many people dying – even children dying – the abnormality reached such a high level. It was almost like two separate worlds. For example, when we fled Ukraine, I went to change some money, and the woman in the bank was wearing make-up and laughing. And I felt like, how could she live? For me, life had stopped. I couldn’t understand how people were still going on living.”

Like the images in Vinnichenko’s series, her story has deeper layers. Along with many Ukrainians, she grew up speaking Russian, a legacy of its imposition as the official language for years. Ukrainian was her second language (English her third, and German her fourth), but she has now rejected her mother tongue. She refuses to use it, even with her family or in her diary, which only she reads. She is aware that this rejection distances her from part of her past, but by using archive images, she hopes to reclaim those early years.

“The family photographs I am working with belong to a past that was in Russian,” she explains. “By using them, I can translate a visual proof of the past, the way I’ve learned to translate my memories, which are stuck in the language I don’t use anymore. But this also relates to a lot of cultural heritage that was destroyed in Ukraine, generation by generation, because the Russian language was imposed.”

Having studied linguistics, Vinnichenko is well aware of the idiosyncrasies of photography as a language – for example, its inability to generalize from the particular, as it documents scenes from life. Using repetition pits her against the medium’s boundaries, but it also helps her understand photography as a system for describing the world. For her, this exploration is not purely formal or academic; it is deeply personal. The attempt to find meaning has become crucial as her familiar life fell away and her country slid into incomprehensible violence.

“It’s difficult to describe in words,” she says. “It feels like freefall. Like we live a long life, but at the same time, since the universe is so big, it’s always just one moment that has already passed. I have this feeling of eating yourself and giving birth to yourself at the same time – of reaching toward something real, but not being able to reach it. But humans learn through repetition, and repetitions can become rituals and even religions. So I am trying to find something that will stand for belief, for something solid in this massively huge, infinite world.”

@vnnchenko

“What I love about film is that it encourages experimentation while grounding you in the physicality of the process”

With tenderness, warmth, and the keen observation of an emerging eye, El Gendy’s work reflects the resilience and strength of the people who carry her hometown’s legacy forward. The series was on display at Egyptian clothing store Kotn in New York, 15 till 17 November. 

Here, El Gendy discusses her family’s deep connection to Hagaiza, the characters who shape this intimate story, and how her photographic practice continues to evolve in its exploration of roots and belonging.

Dalia Al-Dujaili: Tell me about the motivation for this project, A pigeon sang backwards, and it smelled like home.

Mariam El Gendy: Growing up, my father always emphasised the importance of starting your journey from your roots. When it came to planning my first exhibition, I knew Hagaiza was the perfect place to begin. Egypt has always been my greatest source of inspiration, but it  instead felt essential to start with this story before exploring others. 

DA: You tell a story of home, memory and family. Tell me more about your family history in Hagaiza and why you focused on this for the series. 

MG: The other day, my father got upset when I referred to Hagaiza as my “grandfather’s village.” Though I never had the chance to meet my grandfather, I’ve spent much of my life imagining him – what kind of person he was, what he loved, even what he might have smelled like. These questions have lingered in my mind for as long as I can remember, and I’ve welcomed every opportunity to feel closer to him. This project became my way of stepping into his world – to see, feel, and experience the village he once called home. 

Through this journey, I met people who deeply changed my understanding of Hagaiza and its significance in my life. After my grandfather passed, my father took it upon himself to stay deeply involved in the village, ensuring our family remained connected  to its roots. Spending time there, whether it’s meeting new people or reconnecting with family who still live in the village, has helped me realise the importance of holding on to where you come from. 

DA: Who are some of the characters we meet in these images? 

MG: Let me introduce my favourite character, Maissa El Gendy – my father’s cousin. She  became my greatest comfort during my time in Hagaiza. Shy at first, she gradually let me into her world, allowing me to break down her walls and welcoming our conversations with open arms. 

Maissa is the backbone of the family, always taking on the role of caretaker, solving  everyone’s problems and constantly meeting everyone’s needs. In a family surrounded by men, this matriarch stood out, providing for everyone in ways that felt uniquely her own. Throughout my stay, she quickly became my closest friend there. 

DA: Tell me about your personal photographic style and how you think it’s evolved over your  career. 

MG: As a film photographer, I’ve developed a deep appreciation for the entire process, from start to finish. A couple of years ago, I started experimenting with the concept of handprints, which completely shifted my perspective on my work. Working alongside an incredible printer, I’ve spent countless hours in the lab learning from him and discovering new techniques. These techniques have helped me connect more deeply with my work, allowing it to better reflect who I am. What I love about film is that it encourages experimentation while grounding you in the physicality of the process. It’s a hands-on experience that brings me closer to the work itself. 

DA: After your exhibition with the brand Kotn, what are you now working towards?

MG: The physical aspect of the exhibition was the most transformative part for me. Right now, I’m excited to continue that journey with the creation of a photo book. I want to move beyond just photography and explore storytelling in a new way by creating a book that offers more than just images – something that tells a deeper, more immersive narrative. 

Honestly, this exhibition has left me inspired to keep creating – taking more images, exploring new subjects, experimenting with different mediums through the lens of photography, and allowing my practice to continue redefining my roots.

 mariamelgendy.com