Fidan Nazimqizi is a photographer that was born and raised in the city of Baku, the capital and largest city in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is part of the South Caucasus region, which spans the southern portion of the Caucasus Mountains and their lowlands straddling the border between the Asian and European continents. The country borders Russia, Armenia, and Iran, while the Caspian Sea sweeps its eastern shores. Fidan embraces her culture and makes valuable connections to her community through her visual storytelling through photography. She makes an emotional investment with each click of the shutter allowing her senses to dictate her focus.

“The main thing that I want to achieve with the help of photography, is to collect indelible memories. I believe the most important thing in our lives is to capture what we see and experience in our pleasant moments. These are the feelings that I want to pass on to my audience. Every photographer has within themselves a definite idea. I translate these sincere feelings of the past in their photos. Sometimes it seems to me that I do not belong to this time in history. I am studying even more old methods of alternative photography, giving me more ways of visualizing my stories, using old methods to inspire new more meaningful translations.”

Fidan is aware of distinct challenges the women in her community are confronted with on a daily basis. Their struggles have become a focus for her photography that she shares with us today.

“Women in these districts marry at a young age. Their spouses struggle locally to find work and go to other countries to earn money for long periods of time, leaving women to live alone and care for the family for years without their help. Years later, the spouses start another life, and they forget their wives. There are so many mothers that they raise their children with great difficulty. They are very hardworking; they care for both the house and family while going to work long hours during the day. Women work in the fields from early morning to late evening. This work is very laborious, often under the hot sun, while sometimes enduring strong winds, these hard working women work all day. Women living in Azerbaijan are very hardworking, no matter how difficult their life is. The hard work of our women like Shaira and Anakhanim, that I share in my visual stories, are very great, because they take care of their children and work long unforgiving hours, leaving most of them terribly lonely. Despite this hard life, they are very kind and good mothers.”

According to UN Women, a UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, in Azerbaijan, 11% of women aged 20–24 years old who were married or in a union before age 18. The adolescent birth rate is 48.1 per 1,000 women aged 15–19 as of 2019, up from 43.5 per 1,000 in 2018. Fidan relates that most of these women are united with their spouses after their university studies, but with the responsibilities left to them, and the gender inequality in the workplace, give these women little or no hope of utilizing their education in a rewarding way.