I have seen only three photographs of my father’s mother. In each she is neatly dressed and proud of her son, who is the reason the picture was taken. There are perhaps 10 images of my granny on my mother’s side; half are studio photos, a few more casually posed. These are images of people making a picture of themselves for future eyes, including mine, and their hopefulness makes me nostalgic. My granny is also accidentally included in a portrait of my mother’s dog, taken out in the garden. There she is in the background, scrubbing away at something in a zinc tub. Her sleeve is rolled up and the bare arm is shocking, though not indecent. Very thin and working hard, its whiteness shows how rarely her skin was in the sunshine. It looks so real.
If you want to imagine the privacy of the past, the shame it protected, or the way it was used to control women, just look to the many parts of the world where it still exists. Last month, the Iraqi social media influencer with the handle Om Fahad was shot dead, after her release from prison, for dancing on TikTok and talking about makeup and clothes.
