DAS TOR INS LEBEN

Book project, 2007

The book project "Das Tor ins Leben" ("The Gate to Life") by Grit Scholz is a unique volume of photographs about female genitals with over 200 pages of photographs and a prologue in eight languages.

Grit Scholz photographed more than 60 women between the age of 18 and 70 years. She combined pictures of yonis* with pictures from nature to emphasise the uniqueness of shape and colours. Nature doesn't know a norm! Impulses which triggered this project were the artist's own uncertainty during puberty about the external changes of the yoni as well as the acknowledgement that many women whom she had met were unable to have a positive, loving relationship to their genitals.

The vaginal beauty operations, which have dramatically increased in recent years, as well as genital mutilation in the so-called Third World prompted her to realise this book project – by women, for women.

Grit Scholz: "I want my book to open the possibility of finding a natural, connected and loving treatment with the yoni, independent of existing education and views. With the help of photographs, photomontages and creative, artistic inclusion of pictures of nature and painting, I want to make the yoni's beauty, diversity and uniqueness visible. The gloriousness of Creation and the regard for the wonder of LIFE are the background of this book which is attended to serve as actual illuminating illustrative material."
(*yoni from Sanskrit = vulva)

(Grit Scholz)

  GRIT SCHOLZ

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Grit Scholz was born in Leipzig in 1965. After being busy for many years both in West and East Germany, she finally settled down in Elsteraue, Saxony-Anhalt. From 2002 to 2006 she helped to establish the LebensGut-Lübnitz (a farm of Community Supported Agriculture) in the mountain chain of Fläming near Belzig, Brandenburg. Living with 30 people on LebensGut-Lübnitz was an important contribution to her book project "The Gate to Life" and also for her later work as a pioneer. Since 2007, she has been organising the publishing company LebensGut-Verlag, tours as an orator and sets up exhibitions for her book project "The Gate to Life". She has got two daughters, is a freelance graphic designer, artist, photographer, author and facilitator. She advises women and couples in workshops and in one-on-one sessions.

www.lebensgut-verlag.de