Girls In Memory

My project explores girlhood in rural Uzbekistan through the lives of the sisters Sevara and Nozima & their younger cousins. Set in a village it looks at growing up between personal dreams and expectations surrounding femininity, family and marriage.

Youth is an uncertain phase of life – it contributes to how we see and understand the world. Above all, however, it is a time of upheavals and transitions that lays the foundations for the formation of identity. The extent to which this significant phase of life is successfully navigated depends on many factors; for example, on different living conditions and the social circumstances that come with them.

In Uzbekistan, social change has been noticeable for several years. Nevertheless, the lives of women, particularly in rural regions, continue to be shaped by patriarchal structures. These structures are already embedded in a girl’s everyday life from a young age and influence how adolescence is experienced and shaped.

In a village near Samarkand, the two sisters Sevara and Nozima live. Together with their cousins, who are somewhat younger, they form a kind of microcosm that unfolds between the fields and the blue walls of their families’ homes. The photographs accompany these sisters and cousins in their everyday playful forms. Birthdays, work, clothes, and emotional bonds are shared – and only rarely the privilege of being alone: when one’s own name is not being called and a precious moment of retreat can emerge.

This openness within their own world is simultaneously confronted with a future that is shaped from an early age by ideas about femininity, marriage, and family. Every day of youth seems to prepare them at the same time for its end – for the day of the wedding.

The photographs do not attempt to determine what this future means for the girls. Instead, they remain close to the ambivalence of youth – to a phase of life in which so much is still being explored, while certain expectations are already taking shape. Through portraiture and observation, the series asks what it means to be young when adulthood already appears so concrete. When the right to freely choose one’s own path in life is increasingly restricted.