For the last six years, Middle East Archive has documented visual culture across the Middle East, North Africa, and the diaspora. Founded by curator Romaisa Baddar, the archive previously focused on living rooms across the MENA region. Now, MEA returns with its eighth publication, which shifts its focus to women and the ever-evolving definitions of femininity.

The book features contributions from the likes of Myriam Boulos, Farah Al Qasimi, Rania Matar, Tanya Habjouqa, Isabelle Eshraghi, Ed Kashi, Farah Nosh, Nariman El-Mofty, Newsha Tavakolian, Nadia Bseiso, Haneen Hadiy and many more. The publication also features commissioned pieces from photographer Yumna Al Arashi, Maya Moumne and Haya Hamdallah.

When working on the book, Baddar’s starting point began with the realisation of how often women are discussed and represented in culture. “I wanted to create a book that feels like a celebration, but also reflects the diversity and complexity of their lives,” she explains. With over 100 pictures from across the region, including Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Palestine, Iran and more, the book depicts women of all ages in their elements. “The images resist the idea that there is one way to be a woman. And what made curating it so fun and interesting for me is working with over 70 different photographers who captured Women in different places, for different reasons, so I was able to accomplish this diversity through the access of so many different perspectives,” explains Baddar. “At its core, the book is about recognition. About seeing women as central to our everyday lives, and acknowledging that without them, none of it holds.”

The varying depictions of womanhood also helped shape how the physical book was put together, with MEA introducing foldouts to allow images, and the women in them, to take up more space. “The approach in design was rooted in giving the women within it the space they deserve – physically, visually, and conceptually,” explains Lana Soufeh, the book’s designer. “The larger format was a deliberate decision to allow the images to feel dominant and fully present, resisting any sense of reduction or containment.”

To celebrate the launch of the book, below we asked five photographers, Juliette Cassidy, Farah Al Qasimi, Tanya Habjouqa, Haneen Hadly, and Raina Matar, to break down the story behind the image they contributed to the book. 

JULIETTE CASSIDY

“For me, this image represents dignity in its purest form. I arrived in Afghanistan during a time of extreme instability, especially for women, children, and anyone entering the territory, due to the ongoing peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government. 

I grew up in a region where terrorism and violence were commonplace, and I knew the media wasn’t portraying the full reality. There was a story missing: the extraordinary capacity of Afghans to endure the unbearable. Through the eyes of these Skateistan girls, this image captures the remarkable resilience, adaptability, and courage of a people living through chaos and uncertainty.”

FARAH AL QASIMI

“[This picture] was taken at the Wathba salt lake in Abu Dhabi in 2021, when people were still social distancing, so hanging out mostly happened outdoors. These three women were there taking photographs for their Instagram, and they looked like beautiful mermaids to me, so I asked if I could photograph them too.”

TANYA HABJOUQA

“This image is from We Never Left the Mountain, a testimony-driven project focused on a brief moment when all eyes were on Beita – when, for a moment, it felt like their resistance of music and playful laser lights was pushing back the expanding settler outpost. There hadn't been anything that felt beautiful or hopeful in a long time.

“Yes, the resistance was around land – olive groves, access, livelihood. That alone is everything. But there was another motivation behind the resistance. The memory of Douma, not so far away, where settlers had burned alive an entire family – an infant, a mother, a father. Only a toddler survived. That memory was present. So for many, this wasn't abstract. It was about survival. As one father explained to me, in a town of 15,000 residents, every household had gone through a misfortune – loss, injury, imprisonment. That scale of experience shaped everything on that mountain. And then there are the families themselves.

“By all accounts, Imad Ali Dweikat was an extraordinary father, deeply devoted to his girls. He had dreams for them: one to become a doctor, another an engineer. He believed in their futures. He was killed while protesting on that mountain, in part to protect that future. One of his daughters still cannot speak about him. She won’t visit his grave. For me, the image holds that tension – between what looked like light, sound, and resistance, and what was actually being carried underneath it. Not only protest, but grief, fear, and the insistence on a future.”

HANEEN HADLY 

“This portrait defines Iraq. The land that has endured continuous suffering yet remains holding the weight of warmth, generosity and strength.”

RANIA MATAR

“L’Enfant-Femme is a series of portraits of young teens and pre-teen girls and how they interact with the camera. It is this fleeting time before puberty where a girl is between two worlds: the child she still is and the woman she is becoming. The only instruction I give the girls is not to smile, and I allow them to fall into their own poses. My aim is to portray the girl, when allowed to pose herself as she wishes in front of the camera. I try to capture alternatively the angst, the self-confidence or lack thereof, the body language, the sense of selfhood and the developing sense of becoming.

“I came to photograph Clara's sisters. Clara was a bit younger than the girls I had been photographing. She was pouting in the background, so I told her mum that I would be happy to photograph her as well. It was more because I didn’t want her to be upset, but then she came, and she stole the show. She even became the cover of my book! Her attitude, her pose, her presence, the one blue fingernail, the hair bun to one side. She was just perfect, like a mini Odalisque.

“I photographed Maryam on the very first day she began wearing the hijab, which gave me the rare opportunity to capture her both with and without it. I chose this particular image because something in her had visibly shifted – she carried herself with a striking maturity, as though the hijab marked her own conscious passage into young womanhood. This photograph captures the duality at the heart of this project: her body still that of a young girl, soft and unguarded, yet her gaze reaching far beyond her years.”

Head to the gallery above to check out more images from the book.