WHEN Bradford photographer Nudrat Afza spotted a young woman browsing in a city centre Oxfam shop, she had an idea.
“I was just using up some film and thought I’d like to take her photo,” says Nudrat. “I plucked up courage to ask her, and she said yes. When I asked what her name was she said ‘Malala’. I’d only heard of one other Malala before and she said ‘She’s from my village, and we’re the same age’. The hair stood out on the back of my neck.
“She was such a sharp, witty, approachable young woman. I took a fun picture of her.”
Malala - from the same Pakistan village as Malala Yousafzai, shot by a Taliban gunman on her way home from school, who became an activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate - is one of several women photographed by Nudrat for a striking exhibition.
The 13 images are plastered on billboards around the University of Bradford campus in a public art installation, called You Heard Us, which creates a platform for women to “take up space and be listened to”. It’s the brainchild of writer, theatre maker and artist Luca Rutherford, who invited Bradford women to work with Nudrat.
The installation complements You Heard Me, a powerful one-woman play by Luca celebrating “a single moment of noise” that allowed her to escape an attack. The play was performed at Bradford’s Theatre in the Mill this year.
You Heard Us is about women defiantly taking up public spaces. It’s is a collaborative process between Luca and women in Bradford, Stockton, Deptford and Cambridge. Taking the intimacy of a photograph and displaying it large-scale shows how “small wordless moments can be powerful”.
Says Luca: “With portraits in public spaces you can make a lot of noise in a very quiet way. I often find that we listen to the people who shout the loudest, but all voices are valid. I want this project to make space for anyone who feels quiet as well as loud. With photography, you can say so much in an intimate, quiet way.”
Working with Theatre in the Mill, Luca did a call-out for participants, to engage local women in the process, and contacted Nudrat, whose photography has been exhibited across the UK. “Nudrat’s process is social documentary; she takes really powerful images but she’s so gentle and kind in the way she works. It was very exciting to work with her,” says Luca. “She took photographs of social workers, nurses, a poet, someone who runs an LGBTQ+ football team - and she brought Malala on board too.”
The project, says Luca, is about “listening to women”, and that includes anyone who identifies as being a women, by giving them their own canvas as a medium for expression and empowerment.
Two of Nudrat’s images are of nurses at Bradford Royal Infirmary. Nudrat was given permission to photograph medical staff at work there when her daughter, Khadijah, who has a life-threatening liver condition and has been in and out of hospital all her life, was having treatment.
“It was very challenging to photograph them at work; they were all so busy and everything was so fast moving around us, and I wanted to capture them in action,” says Nudrat. “They were very accommodating though, and after a while they forgot the cameras were there.
“Luca contacted me about 18 months ago, at a time when Khadijah was in hospital. She had seen my work online and said she’d like to work with me. I told her I wanted to include NHS nurses in the project - and the University of Bradford teaches nurses, so there’s a nice link to the installation.”
Nudrat works with film, using three cameras, a Leica M2, Canon EOS and XPan, to document aspects of Bradford life. Her previous exhibitions include City Girls; striking images of female football fans at Valley Parade.
For You Heard Us, Nudrat’s photographs were expanded in a computerised format and hand plastered onto billboards.
Her images include a woman visiting Chellow Dene in Allerton. “She wasn’t well and it has been a healing process for her to walk there. We took a walk around one of the reservoirs together,” says Nudrat. “I also photographed Rachael in Northcliffe Park in Shipley; she spends a lot of time there with her children”
Adds Nudrat: “It has been a great privilege to meet the women for this project, who allowed me into their lives, their homes and places that meant a lot to them. These women have their own stories and this installation is a great expression of them and of how beautiful Bradford is.”
Luca has kept in touch with the women who participated and would like to create more installations in other areas of Bradford: “We have gone on a journey with them. Some of them were unsure at first about having their images on display in public spaces but there is a sense of hope and joy, and being part of a community.”
* You Heard us is at the University of Bradford campus until October. Visit luca-rutherford.co.uk
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