In 2015 I started volunteering at a women’s shelter in Sweden, which gave me knowledge of how common domestic violence is and that prejudices regarding typical victims and perpetrators are often false. Statistics show that 1 in 4 women in the UK will be affected, regardless of their background. It is time to talk openly about this issue.

For this series I used other volunteers at the shelter as models, and makeup artists recreated wounds we had seen on victims of domestic abuse. This is due to the safety risk of showing faces of real victims. However, it was important to me that the models had been in close contact with domestic violence to get as close to the reality as possible. I wanted to tell the stories of millions of women who are forced into silence, women who cannot tell their own story due to threats.

The first step to prevent domestic violence is by acknowledging it. My aim with this series is to open conversations, and thereby spreading awareness of this societal issue.

This is the women’s shelter that I collaborated with: https://www.malmokvinnojour.se/en/

Another great organisation to mention is Refuge in the UK: https://www.refuge.org.uk which has a helpline on their home page.