“A Light in a Shadow” Internews Exhibit & Catalog

I taught a photojournalism workshop for Internews Ethiopia in May, which I wrote about in an earlier post. The exhibition of the students’ work was a big success, and I want to share the results.

Habesha Art Gallery exhibited “A Light in a Shadow,” which consists of two photo essays collaboratively produced by five working photojournalists. The first essay on Metahara, a transport hub between Addis Ababa and Djibouti, shows the risk factors contributing to the high rate of HIV infection in the area. The second essay on Yaheweh Nesi Income Generating Project, an association of women living with HIV, shows the proactive response to the AIDS epidemic as a model for positive living.

Newspaper editors and representatives from the Ministry of Health were wowed by the exhibition. They did not realize such talent could to be found in Addis Ababa or that visual media could act as such a powerful tool for reporting. This reaction is similar to the reaction I saw to the Ethiopian entries to the Democracy Video Challenge. There is plenty of local talent to produce salient visual media that speaks to pressing local issues. What is lacking is support in terms of education, funding and distribution outlets. Internews is among the organizations that eagerly offers local media makers the tools needed to realize their potential and give back to their communities.

The photo essays exhibited in “A Light in a Shadow” can be viewed in full in the exhibition catalog below. View the catalog in fullscreen mode for full impact. See also coverage of the exhibition on Internews’ website.

New Project Live: A Talent No One Knew We Had

One of the major contributions I’ve made to Sudden Flowers Productions has been an introduction to the internet and digital interactive narrative. We just completed the web project that resulted from these classes.

A Talent No One Knew We Had is a collection of stories from Sudden Flowers Productions on their contribution to the 9th anniversary of Hope For Children, the community organization many of them call home.

Kick In to Fund Sudden Flowers’ Next Film

Sudden Flowers Productions, the Ethiopian youth film collective I am working with, has recently finished a script.  I’m helping them raise the modest funds needed to make the short film. “Yemayegefa K’en: The Day That Would Not End” is a work of fiction rich in themes relevant to contemporary youth in Ethiopia. The story follows 19-year-old Yehonen as he leaves behind family feuds in the countryside to pursue higher education in the city. In an unfamiliar place, his values are challenged and his past comes back to haunt him with the unfortunate fate of his sister.

We are using Kickstarter.com as a fundraising platform. Kickstarter gives people and organizations an easy way to leverage their own network to finance creative projects. Projects only receive funding if the fundraising goal is reached. Project creators must give rewards to donors depending on how much money is pledge and keep donors updated on progress, encouraging a close relationship with the projects they have funded.

There have been some generous donors to Sudden Flowers’ film after the first few days that the project was posted.  If you want to kick in, any small donation is very much welcome and you’ll get rewards and updates on the film’s progress from Sudden Flowers Productions.  The widget above updates with the current progress of fundraising.  Click on the widget to go to the Kickstarter page, get more information and make a pledge!

Photo Essay: Rotted Desires

I think I’m finished this photo essay on used condoms. Performing in the Vagina Monologues in Addis Ababa last month helped purge some of the frustrations that motivated the project.

Sex work is prevalent and highly visible in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. So, it was not hard to guess why a quiet residential street near my home there was consistently littered with used condoms. At night, the dark, winding road offered a reasonably safe location for transactions. This doesn’t explain why I decided to photograph the condoms, though.

Read the rest of the artist statement and see the full set of photos on my portfolio site.  If you have an idea for a better title of the essay, I’d love to hear your suggestions.
Update June 14, 2010: Thanks Jessica Berta for title suggestions.

Thoughts on Informed Consent & Photojournalism

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been teaching a workshop for Internews Ethiopia on photojournalism and HIV/AIDS coverage. Internews works to strengthen local reporting by offering training and small grants to journalists.

Throughout my time here, people have urged me to work with the local newspapers to improve their photographic coverage. It wasn’t hard to see why. The newspapers seems to be filled with ambiguous shots of men in suits. This constituted some 80% of the photographs published. The rest of the pictures were predominantly stock images of tourist sights and the occasional photo of an emaciated child. Talk about a limited visual vocabulary.

It was great to partner with Internews as the team there is smart and well versed in the challenges of working with Ethiopian news organizations. Since Internews Ethiopia’s focus is on health reporting and HIV/AIDS, I spent a lot of time in the workshop stressing issues of sigma and informed consent. The stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia is staggering. Reporting on these issues should strive to ameliorate the suffering of affected people, and it takes time and patience to understand what kinds of pictures will do this. Photographs have an amazing power to strengthen the emotional bond between people, but in order to do that photos must convey insight and intimacy. No wonder that so many HIV+ people are reluctant to be reveal themselves to the camera as it could easily make them vulnerable to the negative impact of HIV/AIDS stigma.

Continue reading…

The Silk Museum of Tbilisi, Georgia

The State Silk Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while, so I want to put up some photos I took there. The exhibition on display is the original one designed when the museum opened in 1887. It was such a delight to see the museum just after presenting my Parsons thesis project at the Tbilisi International Festival “Life Beyond Tourism.” As much research as I had done on Wunderkammers (Cabinets of Curiosities) for that project, I had never seen a modern one of this magnitude in such spectacular condition up close. There were even Jacquard loom punched cards on display! The origins of modern computing displayed in a spectacular example of the origins of modern museums and libraries! I had to stop to catch my breath more than once.

The Silk Museum is now home to The Georgian Textile Group, founded by Nino Kipshidze in 1993. This group of (mostly?) women holds exhibitions in the capital on traditional and new Georgian textile practices and also administers workshops in the countryside to encourage the continued practice of traditional household textile production. In my brief visit to the museum, I could see that these women revel in their craft and love the museum dearly. I can’t wait to go back.

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“Life Beyond Tourism” Festival in Tbilisi, Georgia

The “Life Beyond Tourism” festival in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi last week, organized by Faculty of Media Art at the Tbilisi State Academy of Art as part of the Degree & Professionalism project, attempted to bring together international art and design school alumni to present their thesis projects and get a taste of Georgian culture. The timing was unfortunate as many of the European participants could not come give the volcanic ash shutting down huge swaths of air space. Luckily for us participants from Parsons the New School for Design, our flight went through Istanbul, so there were no problems getting to Tbilisi. The only other foreigners to make it to the festival were Armenian participants from the Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction who arrived by land.

Tbilisi, Georgia

I had no idea what to expect in Georgia. I was recommended for the festival because my Parsons thesis, Lilliput: A Photographic Travelogue, is pertinent to the festival theme. Four Parsons alumni and Academic Dean Lydia Matthews were treated to a week of sightseeing at various historic locations around Tbilisi, a performance of traditional dance and song, amazing food and wine, and an opportunity to see what Georgian art and design students are up to.

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Yamrot and Tewodros’ Wedding

Congratulations to Yamrot and Tewodros on their recent marriage. Yamrot is a member of Sudden Flowers Productions, the youth film collective of HIV/AIDS orphans that I am working with here in Ethiopia. She has been the backbone of the collective since shortly before I arrived in October. Yamrot and Tewodros were married on April 10th with a reception at the home of Woinshet, director of Hope for Children.

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Photojournalism Gets Serious About Digital Media

Photojournalists frequently indulge in nostalgia for job security that probably never was by launching attacks at digital media and the internet for destroying a fabled golden age of photojournalism. In the face of this anxiety, the Spring 2010 Nieman Report on Visual Journalism has assemble a lucid and motivating set of articles that shift the focus of the conversation.

Photojournalism is changing, propelled by newsroom budget cuts, multimedia possibilities, and the ubiquity of digital images. In Visual Journalism, photojournalists write about emerging digital business strategies and their efforts to expand the reach of their photographs online and on gallery walls.

In college, I left a photography program for a design and technology program. The photo curriculum was clearly outdated, and too few people were doing anything about it.  The Nieman Report on Visual Journalism is an inspirational reminder that many photographers, editors, and critics are seriously engaging with digital media and all the changes that digital is bringing to media in general. In the articles, they propose strategies and take their colleagues to task for the missed opportunities.

Here are some highlights: Continue reading…

Not the Only Photographer in the Classroom

Now that I’ve been to this 2nd grade class at Menelik II Primary School a few times, there’s only moderate commotion and excitement from the kids when I visit. The last time, when boredom with the science lesson had reached a peak, a bunch of them devised a new diversion and turned the cameras in their OLPC XO laptops on me.

When I looked up from taking this picture, four other kids were holding their laptops up above my head to take pictures of me. The teacher was relieved when I encouraged them to get back to their lesson even though I wanted to egg them on and see what they’d make.

(See my earlier comments on Messing Around with Photography in Cross-Cultural Exchanges.)