In 1908, 15,000 women marched through the streets of NYC demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. Two years later, inspired by that march, a conference was held in Copenhagen that established March 8th as International Women’s Day.
The day was designated to celebrate women’s economic, social, political and cultural achievements. Today, we celebrate one woman in particular, the talented and acclaimed Malin Fezehai.
Malin is a documentary photographer who has spent much of her career documenting one of the most pertinent issues of our times, namely that of displacement. From her images of climate refugees to those of people relocated by war, her work is consistently sensitive, subtle and personal.
I spoke with Malin via Skype. It was 11pm her time and she’d just arrived for the last leg of an exhausting three country tour working on a portrait series of female entrepreneurs in Zambia, Jordan and Indonesia. She was generous with both her time and our conversation, which has been edited here for brevity and clarity.
Tell us a bit about yourself, your upbringing and how you got into photography.
So I grew up in Sweden in a very immigrant neighborhood of Stockholm. My mother is Swedish, my dad’s Eritrean and I have an Egyptian stepfather, so I have a mixed cultural background.
I got into photography in high school. I’m dyslexic so I was never that good in school and I took this one photography class in high school and I got an A, and I was like, oh, maybe I’m good at this.
I made my mom get me a small dSLR and I started photographing my friends, who thought it was fun because I started documenting our everyday lives. I have this whole archive of our teenage years.
So that’s kind of how I started.
The theme of displacement plays a big role in your work. What about that theme resonates with you? Why do you find that you keep going back to those types of stories?
I think I gravitate to this because of my background, because I’ve never been attached to or had a really strong sense of my own cultural background. I feel very connected to a strong sense of otherness. So whenever I come across a community that is a little bit outside the bigger society, or is a bit on the fringe – you know, when you’re living in a place that’s not necessarily your home or your country or your village and you feel a little bit displaced? For some reason, I relate to that very strongly.
Do you have a sense of what created that sense of displacement for you?
Well, for me it isn’t displacement but it’s this feeling that I’m a bit different. I was born to a Swedish mother and technically I’m Swedish but in Sweden- I would say, in Europe in general- if you don’t look Swedish (blond-haired and blue-eyed), there are certain elements in society that make you feel like you’re not Swedish; that you’re not from there. But I am from there, so that kind of makes you feel a bit different.
Well, documentary photography and photojournalism is often considered a male dominated profession, a place where a woman might not feel she belongs. What has your experience of that been like?
I don’t have the exact numbers on this but I actually think there are more women (than men) studying photojournalism. But when it comes to women working in the industry, I think the number drops significantly. I think the ratio is about 20 percent women to men in photojournalism, which is not that high.
Do you think being a woman grants you any more or less access to the types of subjects or stories you seek to tell?
It all depends on the situation. I had a teacher who once told me, “Use whatever you are.” I took that to heart and realized that sometimes it’s an advantage that you’re a woman, sometimes it’s a disadvantage that you’re a woman, sometimes it’s an advantage that you’re a brown person, sometimes it’s a disadvantage that you’re a brown person. You’ve just got to work with it. You are who you are and you can’t change that.
Your story on Holot in Israel featured only men, is that right?
In the detention center, yes. There are women (refugees) in Israel but then they don’t put women in the detention center.
Juxtapose that with Noori Tales: Stories from the Indus Delta; I don’t know if it was intentional or not but that seemed to be almost exclusively about women, even though it was a story about water.
Yeah, I think I have a tendency to gravitate towards women, but I don’t like it when people try to make female photographers do only female stories. That whole thing is a little strange to me.
With the project in Israel, it didn’t actually occur to me until after I did it that, oh wow this is a project that’s mostly about men. I just try to relate to my subject as a person and don’t reflect too much on the gender because basically it’s the same either way: you’re just trying to understand somebody’s story.
That’s a real mark of your work. You seem to have an ability to relate to whoever is in front of your camera, so I guess that’s my next question: how do you get to that level of comfort where they are obviously so trusting of you that you can create those intimate moments?
I can’t say that I have a particular technique. It depends on the group of people that you’re approaching. Like when you work with refugees, they have certain sensitivities.
In Israel, there had been a lot of bad press when it came to the refugees so they were very weary, and that was a lot of me explaining what I was there for and what I was trying to do. I was really trying to listen to their stories and understand what they were going through.
I would say almost 60 percent of that project was just having conversations with people: them understanding me and me understanding them. While on other projects, things might move forward more quickly.
How long did you spend in Israel for the Holot project?
I went there twice: two months each, I think, so like four months in total.
I think what you do requires a great deal of self-confidence, to hear your own voice and answer that call. Did you have any strong female role models in your life or was that something that just inherently came to you?
My mom’s a very strong headed woman and I think there’s something about Swedish society that fosters very strong opinionated women. But I will say that for most of my 20s, I suffered from what I see some other female photographers suffer from when it comes to not completely owning your own space. I grew out of that as I came into my 30s- just owning myself more and owning the work that I do and the work I want to do.
What about photography do you find to be important?
I think that photography today has a more important role than ever since we’re constantly consuming images. I wouldn’t call myself an idealist but I do believe in the long-term effect of photography in creating awareness.
And that’s hard to say sometimes. Sometimes you work really hard on a project and at the end of it you ask yourself, is this doing any good? Is this going to change something? And you have to face the fact that maybe this won’t impact anything or anybody at all, but you go into it hoping that it will.
And you kind of have to believe that it will because otherwise you’ll probably burn out.
Do you feel that there is any particular work of yours that has had an effect on either the community or the issue you were highlighting?
That’s hard to say because you don’t exactly know all the correlations. For example, with the Israel story (Holot), I just wanted to publish that in a mainstream outlet in the U.S. because I hadn’t really seen it being covered. I’ve definitely seen things in Israel change but I can’t say, “Oh, it’s because of this thing that I did,” but sometimes that little thing plays a small part in a bigger thing, you know?
Speaking of Holot, refugees and immigration are hot topics here in the States now but you’ve been viewing it through your lens for a long time. What do you think is going on?
Well, there are many wonderful things about growing up in Sweden but when I was a teenager, I went to the US and I spent some time with some of my dad’s family and I realized that they were much better integrated in American society than my family was back home in Sweden.
I mean, America is a very big place and the history of it is very different and it definitely has its own dark past, but there has been a longer history of immigration and multiculturalism. No matter where you from, you’re still an American, and there’s a very strong attachment to being an American amongst immigrants. At least that has been my observation.
I feel like the political climate that’s happening now is very similar to what’s been happening in Europe, where people are trying to define what a true American is, or the so called “Real America”. And this whole narrative is making certain groups feel like they don’t belong. That is something that Europe has been dealing with for a very long time and now I see that coming over to the U.S. I think that’s very unfortunate.
Given International Women’s Day is on March 8th, what do you think the importance of having women in photography is?
Well, I mean, this conversation is always like a little funny to me because people are like, “We need more minorities; we need more women.” And I think that’s true but it’s not necessarily because women are better photographers or minorities are better photographers. I just think that should be the case because it’s 2017 and it should just be more diverse than it is. There are amazing female photographers and non-white photographers out there and they should be hired because they are good photographers, period. Not to try and fill some quota.
Do you feel in your assignments that there are greater opportunities for women now? Or do you feel like there is still a ways to go?
I definitely think there’s still ways to go. For example, I’ll sometimes get invited to be on a women’s panel and they want to talk about women’s issues. OK that’s great but what about when you do your normal panel? Are you going to turn around invite three guys? I just feel like things should be more organic by now. But I think that’s going to come with time because there are a lot of women doing really great work and they’re growing in numbers. I think the dynamics are going to change eventually.
What you shoot with? What is in your kit?
I shoot with a (Canon 5D) Mark III and I usually have three lenses: a 50mm, 100 mm, and a 24-70mm. And my iPhone.
I try to not carry too much equipment.
And finally, what would you say to other aspiring female photographers? What advice would you give?
I would say own yourself. Own the work that you do and own the work that you want to do. Figure out what inspires you and stick to it. And most of all, don’t be afraid to take up space.
