Almaas Masood
Almaas Masood is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Hyderabad, India. Her news stories explore the relationships between economic and environmental change, human survival, and geopolitics, with a particular focus on the maritime domain.
Her reporting combines photography, long-form writing, and ground-based journalism. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Journalism, along with a Post-Graduate Diploma in Multimedia Journalism. Her work appears in publications such as Reuters, Rest of World, and Mongabay. She speaks five languages and multiple dialects, and enjoys studying the flow of ancient trade through cultures and music.
About Work
Almaas has been photographing women in various settings, capturing them at leisure in their homes, working in male-dominated industries like fishing, and navigating coastal environments. In the fifth photograph presented in this publication, she depicts the scale of male dominance at sea, illustrating shared spaces and where women fit within them.
Gaining access was proving to be a challenge, as young women were considered ‘inauspicious’ or ‘bad luck’ at harbors and on fishing boats. As evident in the images, only older women or widows were appearing in public shared spaces, such as markets and coastal areas of trade and business.
A group of tribals await their turn for a land claims verification under Forest Rights Act 2006 by the district administration at Sirpur forest in Kumurambheem Asifabad district in the southern Indian state of Telangana / 25 May 2023
A group of women fish-traders look at boats land with season’s last catch as the annual 61-day fishing ban commences at the under-construction Ameenabad harbour at Kakinada district in India’s east coastal state of Andhra Pradesh / 14 April 2023
Two seaweed divers, Radha (left) and Usha (right), venture into the Indian ocean to collect seaweed equipped with a makedo mask and a plastic sack tied around their waist off Pamban island’s coast in Tamil Nadu / 12 August 2023
A group of women, mostly domestic workers, gather in the late afternoon to finish their daily chores in the open space outside their house at an informal settlement in Hyderabad, India / 29 March 2024
A small fishing boat passes by the Indian Navy’s destroyer, INS Ranvir, in Bay of Bengal during a multilateral military exercise in Vizag, Andhra Pradesh, India / 26 February 2022
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