Olivia Arthur

Born :

1980

Photography is about being patient. I'm quiet, I watch the situation. I let things happen and photograph them when they happen; that's my approach, although trying to anticipate events at a party with lots of people is hard.

party photography people

Photojournalism is photography with more story telling. A single image can be amazing and dramatic. I started out shooting individual images, but I found I wanted to have more of a voice: to actually say something. I wanted to do something more personal over a long period of time, with more authorship.

dramatic photography long

Saudi Arabia is so conservative. At first there were photographs of women I took that I couldn't publish - of women without their abayas. So I started writing out little anecdotes about things I couldn't photograph and wove it in with a more obscure picture and called it "moments that got away". I realised these worked as well as the photographs by themselves. There are a lot of photographers who feel the story is all in the photographs but I really believe in weaving in complementary words with the pictures.

conservative writing believe

When I first asked to take pictures of women at their homes, I was using my formal camera and I struggled to get the shots because I was still very much in the role of the photographer. Then the next time I had this little digital camera and their response to me would be completely different - I was a friend and I got new kinds of pictures. I was always treading a line between photographer and friend.

different photographer home

You have to decide where the line is in such a complicated place like Saudi Arabia. I was so confused by the place - there's no simple story. It's a place that is really sensitive to how it is judged, particularly by people from the West. So in the end I thought: I'm just going to take the reader on my journey to try and understand this odd place.

confused simple journey

At the beginning of my career, a more senior photographer told me to shoot stories on women and I didn't want to. But I spent two and a half years in India and chose to do stories about women because I was shocked by their treatment. My stories in the Middle East and on the border of Europe and Asia were a response to my time in India. They weren't driven by a feminist idea but when you're moved by women's issues in these countries you can't help becoming a feminist somehow.

senior feminist country