Rising Among Ruins, Dancing Amid Bullets
This book is the Winner of the Lucie Photo Book Prize 2022 – Traditional Category.
From 2012 to 2018, social documentary photographer Maryam Ashrafi covered the struggle of Kurdish people for its freedom and independance, choosing to stay behind the front lines and observe the daily lives of combatants.
« Rising Among Ruins, Dancing amid Bullets is a photographic project I have been working on since 2012 in Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan, to bear witness to the consequences of war, namely to the lives of civilians returning to their homes after their cities are liberated, as well as to the daily life of the fighters behind the front lines while emphasizing the role of women in their ranks.”
— Maryam Ashrafi
Maryam Ashrafi is a Paris-based Iranian photographer. Born in Tehran in 1982 during the Iran and Iraq war, Maryam is passionate for sociology which led her to focus her interest in social and socio-political issues in countries around the world. Graduated with a BA in social documentary photography from the University of Wales, Newport in England, she began to explore these issues, focusing in particular on the situation of Kurds. For several years, she has been working on different subjects: refugees in Paris, mobilization of the Kurdish and Iranian diasporas, the Indignants Movement in Paris and riots in Paris following different social and political issues around the world. Above all, as a freelance independent photographer, she has covered the aftermath of wars from Kobane in Northern Syria to Sinjar in Iraqi Kurdistan, until 2018.
, 2021).
