Maryam Ashrafi is a Paris-based Iranian photographer. Born in Tehran during the Iran and Iraq war, Maryam is passionate about sociology which led her to focus her interest on social and political issues. 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 worked on different subjects in Paris: from the mobilisation of the Kurdish and Iranian diasporas to riots following various social and political issues. Above all, as an independent freelance photographer who believes in long-term projects, she has covered the aftermath of wars from Kobane in Northern Syria to Sinjar in Iraqi Kurdistan from 2012 to 2018. Her work on Kurdish resistance movements has been the subject of several exhibitions and publications.
Her first book “Rising among ruins, Dancing amid bullets”, which has won the PrixHip and Lucie Photo Book prize documents the consequences of war and the lives of civilians returning to their homes in Northern Syria and the autonomous Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq.
Her long-term work on Kurdish issues has also driven her to work as a camerawoman in documentaries such as “I Am The Revolution” and her first documentary film; “Eternal Sentinel”, was released in early 2022 and has been selected for the FIGRA and PriMed festival in France as well as the Warm Festival in Sarajevo and has been screened at the Frontline club in London and Stanford University in the U.S
