Irina Werning: Untamed
Irina Werning’s book Las Pelilargas explores the cultural significance of long hair in Latin America, and the sense of belonging it has come to embody.
By Gaia Squarci. Photographs by Irina Werning.
“For many Indigenous communities, hair is a physical expression of thought—an extension of the self, much like rivers flowing or plants growing from the earth,” writes Irina Werning. Her research began in the Andes in 2006, sparked by an encounter with young girls wearing exceptionally long hair while photographing in schools within Argentina’s Indigenous Kolla communities.
Over the following 18 years, Werning traveled through remote towns, posting handwritten notices in schools, hospitals, and marketplaces, and even organizing informal hair competitions to find those who carried this tradition forward.
The book opens with a series of black-and-white photographs, shot in natural landscapes or in front of stonewall homes, that evoke a sense of continuity and ancestral life. The color images that follow shift the focus toward a playful, modern form of portraiture in which hair and body language, rather than facial expression, take center stage.
Irina Werning photographs women and men alike, and one of the stories includes the donation of a girl’s long hair to make wigs for cancer patients. Throughout the project, hair assumes multiple symbolic roles without ever being reduced to a single meaning. Its unruly, rebellious nature, running wild, remains intact.
The book “Las Pelilargas” is published by GOST and available at the price of 55€.
