Written on the back of this work is: “Intimate photographs take us into worlds and spaces that we would not normally be able to see. They take us into an emotional space that is private to show us something personal about the people in them.

In Saudi Arabia, it is very unusual for outsiders to be allowed into Saudi homes at all, so I was very lucky to be able to see these private worlds. Photographing them was very sensitive: they do not want people to see their personal spaces, and the women, particularly, are very private. Yet the women I met wanted the outside world to see how they live, to know that their reality is often not as different from the rest of the world as we may think.

A paradoxical challenge for me was to find ways to show these scenes whilst also protecting the identity and privacy of the women, to be intimate and yet not to fully reveal their faces.” — Olivia Arthur