Seeds for an Ethiopian Photo Curriculum

At Addis Ababa University’s Grad­u­ate Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­gram, I ran a two-day work­shop on tech­ni­cal aspects of pho­tog­ra­phy as a pre­req­ui­site to a month long inten­sive pro­duc­tion course. Dur­ing the work­shop, it became clear that many of the stu­dents had lit­tle expo­sure to tools like cam­eras and min­i­mal visual lit­er­acy skills, at least in rela­tion to mass media. We made a lot of progress in two days, but they clearly needed some instruc­tion on pho­to­graphic visu­al­ity and its var­i­ous appli­ca­tions for the field of journalism.

Alice Kle­ment, the pro­fes­sor of the course, invited me to guest lec­ture on pho­to­graphic com­po­si­tion, doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy, and visual sto­ry­telling. The fol­low up lec­tures vitally sup­ple­mented the tech­ni­cal skills train­ing that the stu­dents received dur­ing the pre­req­ui­site workshop.

The 33 first-year stu­dents of the Mas­ters in Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions were cho­sen for the pro­gram by Ethiopia’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. They will all con­tinue on to teach at the 13 new uni­ver­si­ties cur­rently under con­struc­tion across the coun­try. The stu­dents intend to use my pre­sen­ta­tions in their own classes after they grad­u­ate. The pos­i­tive response to the work­shop and lec­tures has been over­whelm­ing, and I’ve received a num­ber of effu­sive thank you notes over email.

You can see the pre­sen­ta­tions below. (The final pre­sen­ta­tion is in 2 parts.) I regret that there are not more exam­ples of work from Africa by Africans. I decided it was bet­ter to stick with what I know and admit its lim­i­ta­tions rather than deliver a weak les­son by using work I couldn’t effec­tively speak to. Alice Kle­ment reas­sured me. “Won’t it be great to come back in a few years and find ver­sions of your pre­sen­ta­tions retooled with Ethiopian exam­ples and inter­pre­ta­tions?” It totally will be.