Being a woman in Yemen is a hard thing, so how about a photographer woman?
Somaya is a photographer from Yemen.
People around the world, when you say to them what is Yemen? They say hunger, they say war,
they say people starving. But I see a different thing. Here, I see a raw land full of stories...
we have culture, we have a different people. I see details, beautiful details nobody noticed before.
So I think it's my duty to share these beautiful details with people.
Somaya became a photographer in 2011, during the Arab Spring.
I have a lot of memories from 2011, I was one of the people, and me and my family. The first time I went to protest square,
I saw many crowded people in the street shouting loudly... women and men saying no to the police,
get out, their anger. It was a strange feeling, with happiness at the same time. I saw the
photographers who were covering the protests and I was interested in what they could do,
so I said to myself why can I not be one of them? So I carried my family camera in secrecy
and carried it with me to the protest square and started to take photos of the people there.
It was amazing to freeze the moment and take it and keep it forever, that was the beginning of me.
But for Somaya, becoming a photgrapher was not easy.
They said to me no you can't because this job is only for men. I said to them it's
not a job it's a hobby, they said you're not allowed to carry a camera and start to take
photos in the street, they will arrest you perhaps they will take you to the
jail - so you're you're not allowed to take a camera with you anywhere.
Every photo that I'm trying to do is take these photos in secrecy
because I felt like this is a good photo... I should show the people what we have. I'm not
like the other photographers unfortunately, I have a lot of rules, I have a lot of lines
but I believe that I can cross these line to give this word the beautiful side of Yemen.
I see the photographer and their art as a weapon, a weapon of the truth.
The art can actually show you different angles that you didn't notice before,
you didn't see it before. The art exists to explain the feelings, the place the humanity.
All the details that we see every day, but we didn't see it before. So...
what is it that art can do? It can tell stories, it can explain the feeling, it can say the truth.
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