All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go/Everywhere to Go [2023]

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go / Everywhere to Go is a photographic series by Shizza Majeed, inspired by Francesca Woodman’s evocative black-and-white self-portraits. The work serves as a therapeutic exploration of a chapter in her life shaped by agoraphobia — an anxiety disorder marked by a fear of spaces where escape might be difficult, often leading to isolation and retreat. For Majeed, this meant not being able to leave the house, despite the longing to do so.

During that time, she would dress up — choosing outfits, doing her hair, applying makeup — getting ready to go out into the world, though she never did. The ritual always stopped at the doorstep. In that stuck, uncertain space, she began to take self-portraits. There was no plan, no project at first — just a quiet need to document the fact that she had been there, that she had lived that day.

This series is a recreation of that time. Ten photographs, tinted to echo the softness of sepia-toned prints, trace her journey through the rooms of her home, dressed in 70s-style clothing, moving gently through familiar spaces that became both sanctuary and cage. It’s a way of seeing the home anew — and perhaps, seeing herself anew, too.

Each image carries a sense of stillness, an invitation to feel rather than simply look. Parts of her face are deliberately covered, a way of expressing the anxiety of being perceived — but also an acknowledgement of the camera itself, its gaze, its intrusion. The work leans towards the abstract, the surreal, leaving space for interpretation, asking the viewer to step into her world for a moment — a world shaped by fear, but also by creativity, resilience, and quiet hope.