DAUGHTERS OF THE KING 
by Federica Valabrega

“Daughters of the King” is my long-time photography project on the women of G-d, the ones “who bare the children of the Torah,” the pillars of the Jewish traditions. “Daughters of the King” is a journey through the voices of orthodox Jewish women from Brooklyn to Jerusalem to Paris, to Morocco and Tunisia. “Daughters of the King” is an adventure that started three years ago as a photography workshop assignment and turned into a self-discovery tale to find my voice as a Jewish woman through the nashamas of these religious women. I do not choose the women I end up photographing. They choose me. It feels like a magnetic force attracts me to them and lets them open up to me as if they had been waiting for me all along. While it is mysteriously quite the opposite. Every encounter, every chat, every photo shoot, is a chance for me to challenge myself in the face of their belief and see where my soul ends and where theirs begins. This magnetism is my way inside the Torah. These women have not only lent me their stories, they have also opened my heart to my own spirituality showing me what it means to be a real “Daughters of the King” above and beyond the limits of religion.