A Few From Ethiopia
A while back I shot images for a funding proposal to the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia, for programs hosted and oversaw: poetry workshops for women, and an effort to preserve and catalog Somali poetry that's disappearing as fewer people recite it in the digital age.
The brief called for real people in real places, not a whole stock library of Africa. I photographed people using their phones, solar panels, and computers. I worked with a skeleton crew and kept the lighting minimal, close to whatever was already in the room.
One setup was in a salon after dark. A group of Somali women sat looking at their phones. We blacked out the room and added a single flash, dialed down just enough to read as a television glow instead of a ceiling light.
It's the same kind of quiet, technology-centric editorial photography I bring to lifestyle and corporate advertising work closer to home. It's also the same kind of NGO and embassy proposal work I'd later shoot in Malawi for COTNI.
