Abebe came from Africa. 12 months before I took this image, she was at home in Ethiopia living in a remote mountain village where she tended goats and worked the land on her mothers modest farm. She moved to the Middle East where she worked in an electronics shop and surprisingly had a very good knowledge of camera equipment, which is where I first met her, when I was shopping for a new camera (she sold me a Canon 70D). She had never modelled, was quite shy, and did not consider herself as pretty. I disagreed and promised I would take some nice photos of her !
Bizarrely, although she was comfortable to pose topless, she insisted on wearing a mask to give her some anonymity as she did not ever want to be recognised by her mother, which I could understand, except for the fact that her mother lived in a mountain village in Ethiopia without electricity, or a computer and definitely no internet ??? However who was I to argue and it did make me smile.
Photographer: Glyn Davies.
