Women behind the lens: ‘My grandma dressed like a celebrity, even matching the colour of her cigarettes to her outfits’

Egyptian photographer and curator Farida Mahdy was inspired to document her grandmother’s style after finding a collection of her photos This image is a portrait of me and my grandmother, Ehsan Ouf, in her flat in Cairo. It is part of a project Grandma and the Fur Coat that I started in 2024. I lived with her for four years, while I was studying photography, and we spent a lot of time chatting and watching TV on that couch. The dress I’m wearing is her engagement dress from 1971 – one of the ...

By Farida Mahdy