Like at least one in three women around the world, photographer Lina Geoushy is a survivor of sexual violence. According to a 2013 United Nations study, “virtually all Egyptian women [99.3% ] have been victims of sexual harassment”. And even when the #MeToo movement eventually took off in Egypt in June 2020, its effects were, for the most part, short-lived and confined to the social media echo chambers that needed them the least.

So in December 2020, Geoushy, who splits her time between London and Cairo, started work on her Shame Less series of images. “In protest and solidarity with other women against sexual violence, my initial intention was to fight the stigma that surrounds reporting sexual assault,” she says. “The fact that more women are sharing their stories resulted in many of us realising the magnitude of our ongoing, deep-rooted personal and collective traumas. This is especially the case when speaking up is punished by victim-blaming, gaslighting, shaming and, eventually, silence.”

The rise of women speaking out in Egypt chimed with Geoushy’s own experiences of growing up in a “very patriarchal culture”, she says. “I was personally exposed to a lot of harassment, verbal and sexual, on the streets and even in my own home…. The #MeToo moment was a catalyst. But I’ve always found it unfair that women cannot talk about such issues and that, actually, they’re being shamed and blamed whenever they talk about it. That’s not to say this only happens in Egypt – unfortunately, it is the same everywhere.”