A compelling collection of photographs taken by women from the global south has offered a powerful window into diverse realities across the world in 2025. The images, ranging from intimate portraits to surreal collages, capture moments of everyday life, personal exploration, and potent social commentary.
Portraits of Resilience and Reclamation
In Bengaluru, India, artist Indu Antony initiated a project titled Cecilia'ed, named after her 78-year-old subject. The work involves reclaiming public spaces to powerfully highlight ongoing concerns about women's safety in India. Antony's striking portrait of Cecilia is part of this campaign, and the photographer has since become friends with her subject, supporting her advocacy for safer city streets.
From Cuba, a poignant image by Sandra Hernandez for the Vita Flumen project Surviving the Impossible shows a young mother feeding her baby outside the Havana shop where she works. This quiet moment belies a national demographic crisis. In 2023, Cuba recorded 90,300 births – the lowest number in six decades. The situation worsened dramatically in 2024, with a further 20% annual fall, as young adults flee the country's severe economic collapse and struggling healthcare system.
Exploring Identity and Connection
Moroccan photographer Fatimazohra Serri presents an image titled The Swing of Life. She describes her aim as illustrating the profound connection between a woman and a man, a relationship dynamically shaped by care and burden, intimacy and distance.
Colombian photographer Isabella Madrid turns the lens on herself in a physically demanding pose, bending over backwards. This self-portrait is part of her latest project, Lucky Girl Syndrome, which she characterises as a deep dive into the world of online self-help culture and its personal impacts.
Artistic Investigations into History and Memory
Ugandan artist Stacey Gillian Abe uses her Indigogo project to examine the historical use of indigo dye in the transatlantic slave trade. Her work visually interrogates how enslaved people were systematically stripped of their identities and, tragically, often their lives.
South African collage artist Tshepiso Moropa, winner of the prestigious 2025 V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography, creates surreal imagery. Her piece Ke Go Beile Leitlho (I've Got My Eyes On You) utilises archive photography to construct dream-like scenes that reflect on themes of memory and subconscious thought.
Together, these six images form a mosaic of contemporary female vision from the global south. They demonstrate how photography serves as a vital tool for storytelling, social critique, and the exploration of complex personal and collective identities.
