“At FARC, I developed powers I had never dreamed of because we were fighting for a mutual cause. I gave it my all as a guerillera – and became a woman fighter, not lastly because I experienced first hand how powerless women are in Colombia’s male-dominated society,” Milena describes her life as a guerillera. In intimate portraits, photographer Ann-Christine Woehrl and author Cornelia von Schelling document six female FARC fighters – Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia. What makes this project special is that it depicts the bitter civil war and the long peace process in Colombia from the perspective of female ex-rebels.
The largest guerrilla organization in the world was made up of 40 percent women. There was equality among the FARC – the rebels had left behind classic gender roles. They now feel a calling to fight for the interests of women in traditional Colombian society. In November 2016, after 53 years of bloody civil war and lengthy negotiations, the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels was signed. 7,000 guerillas were distributed on transitional camps and handed over their weapons to the UN. President Manuel Santos received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016.
Photographer Ann-Christine Woehrl and author Cornelia von Schelling have conducted several interviews with former female FARC fighters from 2017 to 2019 and have documented their shocking life stories. The six biographies are exemplary for the path of more than 3000 female rebels, who despite great obstacles are doing everything to become a part of Colombian society again.
ANN-CHRISTINE WOEHRL, was born in 1975. She works as a freelance photographer. Her work focuses on social topics, women’s rights and religious issues in Latin America, Africa and South Asia. Her photographs have appeared in newspapers and magazines, and she has published the books Voodoo – Leben mit Göttern und Heilern in Benin, Die Frauen von Havanna, and Montevideo. In 2013, her work Witches in Exile was shown at the gallery Pinter & Milch in Berlin, at the International Festival of Photography Belo Horizonte in Brazil, and at the Angkor Photo Festival in Cambodia. Her project IN/VISIBLE was funded by the German foundation VG Bild/Stiftung Kulturwerk.
CORNELIA VON SCHELLING, grew up in Colombia and Brazil. She has a doctorate in American Studies and is the author of numerous non-fiction books and biographies. They include two books in collaboration with photographer Ann-Christine Woehrl, Die Frauen von Havanna and Die Rebellentochter – the story of a young Colombian guerrillera, recorded in the women’s prison of Bogotá.
EXHIBITION: PEACE HAS THE NAME OF A WOMAN – Colombia in Transition. Photographs by Ann-Christine Woehrl. 22 November 2019 – 29 March 2020 . Museum Five Continents, 80538 Munich, Maximilianstr. 42. museum-fuenf-kontinente.de//der-frieden-traegt-den-namen-einer-frau
BOOK: PEACE HAS THE NAME OF A WOMAN – Colombia in Transition. Ann-Christine Woehrl. Cornelia von Schelling. 22.5 x 27.5 cm, 172 pages, 84 photos. German, English. Hardcover, bound in linen, French fold protective cover. ISBN 978-3-903101-68-5 . EUR 49.90 lammerhuber.at//der-frieden-traegt-den-namen-einer-frau-kolumbien-im-wandel
About EDITION LAMMERHUBER
IT’S ALL ABOUT PASSION ...
Dear fans of beautiful and sophisticated books,
“An extraordinary publisher, dedicated to little known themes, who presents them with courage and high quality, without descending into stereotypes.” This is how the jury of the FEP European Book Prize of the Year Awards argued their choice of Edition Lammerhuber for Best Publisher 2017, an accolade also awarded to the publisher from Baden bei Wien in the preceding competitions in 2013 and 2015 of this biennial event.
Present on the book market for more than seven years, with a steadily growing programme, we have worked our way to the top – internationally. Your are best at what you love doing. And we love books, we love photography. The photobook is the ideal medium to combine these loves. Photography documents the world in a very particular way and shapes human memory like no other medium does. Our ambition is twofold: We want to publish books with fascinating themes from art and science, with excellent photography, sophisticated texts and brilliant authors, but, most of all, we want to make books that have something to say, books that transport important themes into the heart of society. For us, a book charged with emotional photography is a point of reference for communication that reverberates far beyond the number of sold copies. We believe that we can make a real impact with a book. For us, a book is not just a commodity but an incomparable cultural technique.
Edition Lammerhuber wants to be the publisher for writer-photographers, for whom seeing is a vocation and whose ways of seeing the world is a process of insights. A process they are capable of transforming into the immediacy of a photograph, a creative act, initiated and completed within seconds or split seconds. As in the motto of Hungarian photographic artist László Moholy-Nagy, who declared, “Photography is there to make the visible visible.” Edition Lammerhuber strives to be home to the best ‘cyclops’ of our time, legends and new talents alike.
And how does an Edition Lammerhuber book come about? The theme must be important to us, the photography captivate us, there must be something special, magical, in the pictures. Once a decision has been made to publish, the photographer visits us at our publishing house. We go through the photographic material, determine the format of the book, think about a setting to suit the theme. This is when the almost magical process of designing and layouting starts. It usually takes about a week for the concept to be completed to the point where the work of everyone involved can be browsed on-screen, then it passes on to the next steps in the production.
Our declared aim is to approach a perfect book through a passionate creative process. Craft aspects are an essential part of it and of our publishing philosophy. All production steps up to the printing are done in our house. Our own experts produce the prepress. We really care about the reproduction quality of the photographs, the feel of the printed papers and the quality of the binding. We check every single printing form.
So it is hardly surprising that some reviewers call the books of Edition Lammerhuber pieces of art emanating from a ‘book chamber of marvels’ and that nearly all titles gather awards, including those of the Art Directors Club New York, the Deutsche Fotobuchpreis, the Pictures of the Year International (POYI) Awards, USA, the Visa d’or, France, the FEP European Book Prize of the Year Awards or the World Press Photo. Today our books are available in more than 170 countries, usually published in two, sometimes three, languages.
Exceptional photography is not only found in the books of Edition Lammerhuber but also in a photo competition jointly initiated in Vienna in 2013 by Edition Lammerhuber and the Photographische Gesellschaft. Under the general heading What Does Peace Look Like? , the Alfred Fried Photography Award, worth 10 000 euros, chooses the peace image of the year. Participation in the award has exploded in recent years, confirming the status of photography as a medium for transporting essential socio-political themes. From 2017, a separate competition for the peace image of the year is open to children up to the age of 14.
At the biennial LUMIX Festival in Hannover, the Lammerhuber Photography Award for young photo journalists is presented, with a prize money of 5000 euros. Photography and the photobook are an essential, defining, medium for society and for our publishing house. This is why we believe it is important to encourage young photographic talent.
We would be honoured to see our books available from your bookshops and libraries.
Yours
Silvia Lammerhuber and Lois Lammerhuber
Publisher