Ethiopia on film – not the decisive moments, but the original life of an original people.
I exposed this Acros Neopan 100 film (now discontinued by Fujifilm company) almost 4 years ago during my attending a filming of documentary film “Jerusalem Dream” in Ethiopia. I wrote already around 20 posts wit dozens and dozens color and BW images taken with both – film and digital cameras (mostly with digital) and still have a lot to categorize and to post in the same manner of the short series and stories. In my plans to publish a photobook about this visit, but working on this book will take even longer time, bcos i always have an issues when i have to choose a limited numbers of my photographs for some body of work.
About this series – it’s not about epic and “the decisive moments“, but about the usual life of a people in cities, whom I saw during my walks, and a few landscapes – very attractive and somehow dramatic by my opinion. Recently many street and documentary photography became obsessed with an idea to proclaim all their photographs as the only “the decisive moments” – not less and not more. But, real life has a lot more shades and not only BLACK and WHITE – millions of tones of gray in the middle, sometimes “boring” in terms of decisiveness, but still available and interesting as moments of the real life of real people. Anyway – I hope you got my point of view.
enjoy the “gray” life of an original people.
Sometimes these everyday scenes become a decisive moment, Victor — as in your lovely images! What is going on in that shot with the umbrellas, though? Very interesting post!
thank you Heide for the beautiful words – as i wrote later in my Twitter post – our live is “the decisive moment” ;-))
about this moment – some sellers jist sit with less homemade products at the side and umbrellas just saves them from the hot sun.
As an Ethiopian taking images with gray or black and white color is a nice thing to do. But I think you hide the truth with your color choice because for an outsider coming to Ethiopia thinking apart from the mountain view it is not original anymore ; my opinion by naming this image original life of an original people you acted to positively to all your human thermostat telling you it is not original apart from the mountain view which is in its own all together.
A life but not as we know it. Hope there is happiness and laughter too and lots of hardship, that shows through your fotos.
thank you Paula. even one who visited there and saw some small part of this huge country and really think that he know it is wrong. Ethiopia is different in every small its part. I some touristic who go to the tribal part of the cpuntry they have np idea that there are few sorts of very tasty local beers and tjat there are night clubs in Addis Ababa with all the environment around – Mercedes-Benz cars and selection on the doors.. just as example of how different can be an expression.