Rising Among Ruins, Dancing Amid Bullets (Hardcover)

Photographs taken in Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan explore war for civilians, fighters, and the women in their ranks.

Maryam Ashrafi is a social documentary photographer who believes in long term projects, she chooses to stay behind the front lines and observe the daily lives of combatants, which includes a lot of waiting around. She is above all involved in documenting the everyday life on the Kurdish front. Her work puts a face on a widely commented war which remains, from afar, perceived mainly by the West in terms of the number of refugees.

Maryam documents the war in her own way, stressing its complexities and the actual building of a new social model based on equality where women occupy the same roles as men, which is remarkable in this area of the world. This is why, over the years, she has returned to the same places, from Kobane to Tabqa, to show the unique power of the resilience of the population and the will to live and change.
«The struggle of the Kurdish people and their fight for freedom and fundamental rights have not come to an end, and therefore this book cannot portray all of their journeys, nor shall I stop documenting what is still to come. Yet I believe, as a witness, I owe it to history and to those I have met for sharing some of these images in this book to show part of their journey to freedom and equality», Maryam believes.
The book is built on the chronology of the events as documented by Maryam Ashrafi, to understand the evolution of the conflict and its consequences on the populations and their living environment. Photographer James Nachtwey once made a point about such war photographs shown in museums, or in a book; it is "a space for reflection on the universality of the dramas that humanity is going through in its entirety".
During her travels, Maryam Ashrafi has created a body of images which highlight very important topics as they are an immediate consequence of war, from the sheer destruction to the refugee camps, as they evoke the foundations of the culture and the identity of the Kurdish people - the ceremonies in honour of martyrs, dances around fires, New Year celebrations etc.
Finally, Maryam Ashrafi’s work is also about empathy and about invisible wounds; it is obvious that one could not witness a conflict without being caught up in the daily suffering, especially children and women. Maryam finds emotions and feelings, in simple gestures, smiles and dances, these moments of intimacy. The presence of the photographer is forgotten, there remains only the reality of their fight and the resilience of a people. In these moments, she captures expressions that speak so much more than long speeches.
Let’s listen to them in the midst of ruins, dancing amid bullets.

EXPOSITIONS + FILM
Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie des correspondants de guerre, 28e
édition, du 4 au 10 octobre 2021
The Eternal Sentinel, produit par ILHA Productions, en cours de
production pour une diffusion fin 2021

MARYAM ASHRAFI (photographies)
Née à Téhéran en 1982, pendant la guerre Iran-Irak, Maryam Ashrafi est diplômée en photographie de documentaire social de l'Université du Pays de Galles à Newpor (Angleterre). Passionnée de sociologie, c'est en France qu'elle a commencé à explorer les questions sociales et politiques, en travaillant sur la situation des Kurdes. En tant que photographe indépendante, adepte des projets de long terme, elle couvre depuis 2012 les conséquences de la guerre en Syrie au Kurdistan syrien et irakien.

Born in Tehran in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq war, Maryam’s passion for sociology led her to focus her interest on social and political issues. After graduating with a BA in Social Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport, UK, she began to explore these issues in different regions, with a particular focus on the situation of Kurds in Kurdistan. For several years, she has been working on various subjects including refugees in Paris and the mobilisation of the Kurdish and Iranian diaspora. Above all, as an independent freelance photographer, she covered the aftermath of the war in Northern Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan, notably in Kobane and Sinjar during numerous visits until 2018. Her work on Kurdistan has been the subject of several collective and solo exhibitions and publications including the Guardian. Her long-term work on Kurdish issues has also led her to work as a camerawoman for documentaries such as I Am The Revolution (2018) and to direct and shoot her upcoming documentary in Iraq and Syria (To be released in 2021).

Allan Kaval is a journalist for the famous French newspaper Le Monde; he was their correspondent at Erbil. He will introduce each part of the book with a comment about the context and interviewed Maryam Ashrafi for an introduction to the book. He received the Albert Londres prize at the end of 2020 for an article on Daesh prisoners held in Syria.

Mylène Sauloy has documented the conflict in four different parts of Kurdistan, notably since 1998 in Rojava, with films, articles, exhibitions and a soon to be published graphic novel in France on Kurdish women in war

Carol Mann is a Ph.D Sociologist and specialist in gender issues and armed conflicts, associate researcher at the University of Paris 8 in France and director of the Women in War association. She has extensively worked on the Middle East, including Rojava, and has been following Maryam Ashrafi’s work for many years.

Kamran Matin is Associate professor of International Relations at Sussex University