Permanent wound

PHOTOGRAPHY

Apr 17

Female genital mutilation (FGM) was officially criminalised in Egypt back in 2008 – nonetheless it is still considered one of the most important religious rituals to this day. With Permanent Wound’, photographer Somaya Abdelrahman documents her own personal journey and the violence and pain thousands of women experience every year.

Photography Somaya Abdelrahman

When I fled Egypt, I was actually running away from pain. In a patriarchal society like Egypt, different forms of violence against women are normalised. There is the violence of genital mutilation, the violence of political prosecution, and the violence of a hostile public space. Throughout my escape journey, women's bodies were recurrent site for the same patriarchal violence.

Permanent Wound is a personal documentary project about female genital mutilation in Egypt.

Although in 2008 a law was enacted criminalising FGM, Egyptians still consider it as one of the most important religious and traditional rituals. The community and specifically the family force their own concepts of rules on girls, believing that it protects the female’s dignity and honour.

Women and girls who have undergone the process of genital mutilation in Egypt. Thus it attempts to explore myths and misconceptions that justify the continuation of this practice .

“I’m a survivor of female genital mutilation. I grew up in a country that is infamous for the highest rate of female genital mutilation in the region.”

Assault often is about controlling female sexuality, a tradition to prepare women for marriage, allegedly to purify them for their husbands. Sometimes it's done to girls because it was done previously to their mothers as a rite of passage or a coming of age ritual or even without much of an explanation. FGM is not religious exercise because it happens in christians , muslim and jewish communities, but there is nothing in any of their holy books that teaches it.

About Somaya

Somaya Abdelrahman (b. 1996 Egypt), studied GIS at Helwan University in Cairo and currently lives in Turkey. She started as a photojournalist working for couple of Egyptian newspapers.

In 2019, she was selected as one of the 9 grantees of the Magnum Foundation and AFAC grant. Somaya’s work largely focuses on documenting social issues and human rights. In 2020she won TYTW's Emerging Photographers Fellowship Program with Too young to wed and Canon US. Somaya is currently studying photography and journalism at Hanover University in Germany.

To see more of her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram

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Permanent wound

Permanent Wound is a personal documentary project about female genital mutilation in Egypt.

“I’m a survivor of female genital mutilation. I grew up in a country that is infamous for the highest rate of female genital mutilation in the region.”

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