Details

About the Book:

"Be careful, you are a girl!".... These demeaning words summarize my life and my relationship with my body. Ever since I was a young girl, I was constantly reminded by my mother that being a girl is a liability and burden. I need to be extra careful of my actions. I cannot stay out late - what people would say about me. Even when I got divorced I was reminded by my family: "Be careful, you are a girl." We live all our lives guarding our body. You have to get married before you become too old to bear children. You have to preserve your figure to stay desirable. You have to, you have to... Entrapped in this body I resented i t. I wished to lose it, to live without it. This project started as a private group on Facebook, together, a group of women shared their feelings and personal stories. Then we met in person. We discussed what it means to be living with all these pressures, simply because we own this body. We talked about how each of us discovered what it means to be a woman. Faces turned red, tears started rolling and at that moment of openness, a magical bond between us was born. From their words I took some time and started visualizing how the image of their stories might look. After I photographed the women, I noticed a change. Two women decided to show their faces in the images, something they previously resisted. They didn't care about the consequences; they felt liberated.

Homemade is part of a project called Photobook Egypt. Photobook Egypt is a powerful series of photography books; each dedicated to a theme or a project photographed and narrated by remarkable Egyptian and regional photographers (whether emerging or established) and illustrated and published by Photopia Cairo. It is a series of wonderful picture books that reflect the power of the region's photographers and their ability to recount facts and hopes through their lens. It is an ongoing project of enjoyable and visually rich photography that proudly represents Egypt's and the region's prominent photographers. Collecting them would be like owning a small part of Egypt on your bookshelf.

About the Photographer:

Heba Khalifa is a photojournalist at El Shorouk newspaper. Born and based in Cairo, Egypt, in 1977, Heba Khalifa is a painter who works with different media, combining mainly photography, prints and painting. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo in 2000 with a diploma in interior design. After that, she studied art criticism for 2 years at the Arts Academy of Cairo. She has held two solo exhibitions in Cairo: "One Step" in 2001, "Temporary Absence" in 2006 and several group exhibitions. Heba has worked with children in difficult circumstances such as street children and working children before becoming a photojournalist and has used art to educate them and help them since 2001. In 2007, she has obtained a scholarship to study graphic art in Salzburg Summer Academy.

Book Specifications:

Name: Homemade (Hardcover)

Publisher: Photobook Egypt

Author: Heba Khalifa

Price: AED 65

Cover: Hardcover