Rising Among Ruins, Dancing Amid Bullets - Hardcover

by Maryam Ashrafi (Photographer), Allan Kaval (Text by (Art/Photo Books))

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

Author Biography

Allan Kaval is a journalist for the famous French newspaper Le Monde; he was their correspondent at Erbil. 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 has a Ph.D in sociology and is a specialist in gender issues and armed conflicts. She is an 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.