Magnum photographer, Olivia Arthur was born in London and grew up in the UK. She studied mathematics at Oxford University, where she decided to become a photographer and she went on to study photojournalism at the London College of Printing before then moving to India with her family, where she was based for two and a half years and where she learnt to take pictures.
In 2006 she left for Italy to take up a one-year residency with Fabrica, the organisation funded by Benetton, during which time she began working on a series about women and the East-West cultural divide: The Middle Distance. This work has taken her to Turkey, the border between Europe and Asia, Iran and then Saudi Arabia, where she went to teach a workshop for women and where she made the pictures for her first book Jeddah Diaries - about the lives of some of the young women s ...