“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.