Laia Abril (b. 1986, Spain) for her bookwork A History of Misogyny, Chapter One: On Abortion (Dewi Lewis Publishing - November 2017) has won the Paris Photo - Aperture Photobook of the Year Award and has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019.
On Abortion is a visual research project that draws on the past, present and current history of abortion to highlight the continuing erosion of women’s reproductive rights. For centuries, people have searched for ways to terminate unsafe or unwanted pregnancies. Despite the fact that today safe and efficient means of abortion exist, many women are still forced to resort to ancient, illegal or risky home methods resulting in approximately 47,000 deaths due to failed procedures each year. In this meticulously researched project, Abril documents the physical and psychological dangers caused by the continued lack of legal, safe and free access to abortion. Her collection of visual, audio and textual evidence graphically represents the consequences of unsafe procedures. It raises complex questions around the ethics and morality involved in any consideration of this subject, while exposing the myriad social triggers, stigmas and taboos that still persist around abortion and female health.
On Abortion is the first chapter of Abril’s long-term project, A History of Misogyny. Laia Abril is a visual artist, photographer and bookmaker from Barcelona. After graduating in Journalism, she enrolled at FABRICA – the Benetton artist residency; where she worked at COLORS Magazine as a creative editor and staff photographer for 5 years. Her projects have been shown throughout Europe, in the United States, and in China and have been published in media worldwide. Her work is held in many private and public collections. Her first book with Dewi Lewis Publishing, the critically acclaimed The Epilogue (2014), was shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture First Book Award, Kassel PhotoBook Festival and the Photo España Best Book Award.
"On Abortion is about as good as it can get, and I hope that more photographers will start working along this line of photobooks. With a world of photojournalism mired in what looks like a morass of problems (gender, diversity, Western-centric views, various photography problems), from which it is unable to extricate itself, another world is possible. And that is what Abril presents with On Abortion: she establishes the new gold standard of the research-based photographic book." – Jörg Colberg, Conscientious Photography Magazine
"this heartbreaking book is a must have" – Rémi Coignet
"splendid cohesion between text, ephemera, photography and design" – Rob Hornstra
Hardback / 196 pages / 114 colour and duotone plates / 245mm x 188mm
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