Check out this 3 minute documentary I made on Humanoid Asteroid, a live action version of the classic arcade game Asteroids, by game designers Nick Fortugno and Sam Strick. It includes footage from the New York and Los Angeles runs (Come Out & Play and IndieCade) and interviews that elucidate how nostalgia, human AI and dance come together to make a fun play experience.
I enjoyed my first encounter with the Hacks/Hackers MeetUp group this weekend, which brings hackers and journalists together to think in new directions about journalism and digital media. The Great Urban Hack at Eyebeam was a two-day, overnight hackathon where 12 teams worked on original projects.
This post links to most of the work I did over the past year as a Fulbrighter in Ethiopia (October 2009 — August 2010). While it will take some time to fully digest my experiences there, summarizing my work in one place serves to bookend that adventure. The past month and a half back home in NYC has been an energetic leap toward new projects as I reconnect with friends and look for paid work. Before I jump headlong into independent games and digital media strategy and art happenings, let me take stock of what I worked on over the past year.
It was a great pleasure to see One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) at work on the ground in Ethiopia. OLPC distributes XO laptops to children in developing counties. The unique design of the laptop’s hardware and operating system encourage learning by doing. I enjoyed being a fly on the wall (and occasional benign disruption) to photograph 3rd and 4th grade students using their laptops at Menelik II Primary School in Addis Ababa. Selections from the photo essay are below. The full set is posted here. OLPC has a strong brand with worldwide awareness of its mandate. This look at the laptops in use is rarely part of that image. Are there efforts to make the process and results of the project more readily available? And what about the work that they youth produce with the laptops? How is that being assessed and showcased? This essay only scratches the surface. Making it has pique my interest to see and do more.
Many thanks to GTZ for inviting me to photograph!
Several weeks ago, I completed my Fulbright work in Ethiopia. The next handful of posts here will showcase some of the projects I worked on and reflect on lessons learned. First up, a photo essay:
Tigist and Haimanot Damtew are young entrepreneurs who run T&H Designs, a growing jewelry design and training business. It’s unusual for young women to own a business in Ethiopia, but Tigist and Haimanot’s biggest advantage could have been their greatest downfall; they are twins. According to the Gemini Trust, Ethiopia sees twice as many twin births as Europe. One third of those twin babies don’t reach their first birthday making for an infant mortality rate is four times higher than Ethiopia’s general population. Tigist and Haimanot lucked out by receiving support from the Gemini Trust as soon as they were born. They are best friends and trusting business partners who have worked together to develop their business.
Below are some of the photos from the project and an interview with Tigist and Haimanot, where they explain how their business came about, some of the challenges they’ve faced, and what it’s like working together.
Check out this gallery on my portfolio site to see the full set of photos. Many thanks to Deborah Zinn of IFESH for facilitating this photo story.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
