Encounters at Euro 2025 Parade

As I joined the celebrations of England Women’s Euro 2025 victory on my lunch break this Tuesday, I was keenly aware of how diverse the supporters around me were. There is something genuinely admirable about this country, and about this football team in particular — of course, always relatively speaking.

Still, I don’t think I fully succeeded in capturing that diversity through my project’s lens, which felt like a real shame. Perhaps it is partly my own prejudice, or the residual fears from growing up under a specific kind of religious state and culture — but this project has shown me that some people are simply less open to being photographed in the way I try to work. And while that hesitation is personal and contextual, I can’t help but sense broader cultural patterns as well.

As someone who doesn’t even get the “right” ethnicity box to tick on official forms in this country, and who is still trying to navigate the uneven terrain of privilege and disadvantage, this series was never about focusing on white women. It is about the appreciation of women’s freedom — which, to me, feels like one of the clearest signs and most powerful engines of liberal progress and human flourishing — and something that can sit somewhat apart from narrower debates about diversity.

So when I come across a mother and her teenage daughters — open, trusting, and at ease with each other and with me behind the camera — it feels like a meaningful encounter. An exchange across cultures and personal histories, and one that feels genuinely worth photographing.

Since I posted this, national and global far-right and anti-European movements have worked hard to reshape the symbolism of British flags. But nationalism has always been a double-edged phenomenon. There were many British flags in this series, but I was not there because I feel British, nor because I admire British people more than others. I was there because I am drawn to — and want to photograph — moments of openness, trust, and a certain liberal attitude toward women’s freedom.