The act of photography is an encounter with ourselves and the world around us. In it we offer a look with our intimate and, if we intend to open up, also with others. The focus of this exhibition revolves around people and everyday life observed in Ethiopia, with a combination of images and narratives of a Brazilian and an Ethiopian, which reveal how we human beings experience the world. On the one hand, we have portraits made from the encounters of Professor Zare Ferragi during his incursion in several Ethiopian territories, in 2015. On the other, more intimate encounters captured by the lens of photographer Terhas Berhe in the daily lives of women who work with clay, gathering their hands to the malleability of the clay element, a work that moves between wet and dry, the result of the interaction among earth, water, air and fire.
The photo is not just an image, the result of a technique or an action, the product of doing or knowing how to do, a figure - virtual or paper - that can be seen in its finite object cloister. It is also, rather, a true iconic act, an image that relates to the subject who observes it (DUBOIS, 1993, P 15 our translation). It is noticed that cultural diversity and shared humanity are the guiding threads of the photo essay presented here, in line with other essays previously presented at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar).
This exhibition adds up to a larger project that, over the years, has tried to observe photography as a tool for transforming the world: a way of looking at worlds little observed in Brazilian reality. Thus, it seeks to establish dialogues between Brazil and Africa, with epistemological bases from the south, connecting South America to a country in the Horn of Africa.
The exhibition presented on this website, due to the pandemic context of COVID-19, will be available for physical circulation in different environments later. If interested, please contact us.
The photo is not just an image, the result of a technique or an action, the product of doing or knowing how to do, a figure - virtual or paper - that can be seen in its finite object cloister. It is also, rather, a true iconic act, an image that relates to the subject who observes it (DUBOIS, 1993, P 15 our translation). It is noticed that cultural diversity and shared humanity are the guiding threads of the photo essay presented here, in line with other essays previously presented at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar).
This exhibition adds up to a larger project that, over the years, has tried to observe photography as a tool for transforming the world: a way of looking at worlds little observed in Brazilian reality. Thus, it seeks to establish dialogues between Brazil and Africa, with epistemological bases from the south, connecting South America to a country in the Horn of Africa.
The exhibition presented on this website, due to the pandemic context of COVID-19, will be available for physical circulation in different environments later. If interested, please contact us.
Lalibela incites us to reflect on pilgrimage, this symbolic journey of the body, mind and soul to the deepest levels of ourselves. The pilgrim here, in addition to cultural and religious differences, in addition to the languages heard and the measured time, invites us to the dynamic tranquility of something excavated in the ground. Even though we know little about its historical context, the church of São Jorge opens in a place that is in the heart of this world in constant rotation.
The immensity of Lake Langano confronts the viewer's gaze. From it, a fisherman comes out carrying the fish that would be offered to us visitors at night. At the water's edge, watching the surface, I thought of my grandmother's death the day before, of the other worlds below and beyond ourselves. Lago Langano seemed to say to me: "Just as it is above, it is below", suspending the moment and producing a surreal and imaginal dimension ... I woke up with the arrival of the fisherman.
Under the vast agricultural fields along the Rift Valley, a boy walks with a stick in his hand. Opening like a cupped hand, the Great Rift Valley is a complex of tectonic plates created about 35 million years ago by separating the African and Arabian tectonic plates, a rift that can be an opening to the world of a children's imagination.
Cairo-Cape Town Trans-African Highway. A road, like a finger pointing a way, brings two friends who walk together. Even when we can't see the terrain clearly - in the darkness of the night or when life is full of doubts - a road and a friend are good companions, a guarantee that we will reach our desire, be it the new territory and the adventure or the familiarity of our home.
While a soccer game takes place in the background, which includes the participation of a sheep in the audience, two boys balance on a motorcycle, in what appears to be a teaching and learning process. Without balance and movement between mind and body, and a little courage, the two would not go smoothly on the daily course of their own independence, freedom and companionship. Hands, one on top of the other, suggest the balance result of this friendship.
My host in Ethiopia, Henock (white hair) watching a theatrical performance of his HIV prevention project, called "Zare Program". The program was created to be carried out covering Health, Education and Environment, three pillars of development. Zare is an Amharic word that literally means "Today", quoted by the NGO Timret Lehiwot Ethiopia to show that this initiative is a permanent point of action to create a better future. The project was launched in Awassa as part of the urban HIV prevention program in partnership with GOAL ETHIOPIA, with the financial support of Irish Aid. When I got there and introduced myself as Zare, they asked if I was the creator of the project... I replied that I was just an admirer.
High school students, before their theatrical performance for "Projeto Zare". The project was designed with the objective of contributing to the reduction of the incidence of HIV and the mitigation of the impacts of HIV on economic and social development. I got to know the pilot project, which focused mainly on addressing the issue of HIV through the focus on behavioral change intervention and on raising awareness of high school and university students (young people in school), through theater. The project also includes domestic workers, teachers, and health professionals, among others.
During a quick stop at a bus terminal in the interior of the country, I find myself playing this game of opposites: a blind man, without vision, and his companion, with vision. I reflect on how much the loss or lack of eyes is symbolic of the potential transformation that this whole Ethiopian experience brings to me. The "second view", that of the interior and of consciousness, is wiser and more precise. After all, there is no one as blind as the one who does not want to see.
An unusual presence arises from the forest. I see this girl, the middle sister, of nine shepherd brothers, who arrive next with their sheep. Any of us become small and young in the face of a grand forest, but she does not. To the sounds of crickets and different animals, as in an unfolding of the mythical Great Mother, this girl arrives opening paths, on the front line. Something ancestral is animated by the ancestral forest in which she walks, as a protagonist in the worlds of the typical and the archetypal that inevitably collide with each other.
Father and son. As we set up our camping tent on the shores of Lake Langano, he tells me that they are called Waaqeffataa, because they believe in the supreme being Waaqa, the "God of the sky", and points to the sun. They follow an ancient monotheistic religion indigenous to the Oromo people, called Waaqeffannaa, which have no writing (sacred text). Its mythology is based on oral transmission. At night, at the camp fire, I discover that long before the introduction of Christianity and Islam, the Oromo people had their own tradition of indigenous faith and belief system. They tell me that Waaqaa has different names between different nations and peoples; its identity and character cannot be fully understood by a human mind. As we eat roasted fish, I discover more: their belief is not organized and written on paper, but it is in people's hearts, minds, oral history and rituals... They respect and believe in the equality of humanity, despite their culture, language, status, autonomy and color differences. For the Waaqeffataas, after death we return to nature. The opportunity to discover all this was profound, especially the day after the death of my grandmother... the curious thing is that, before this conversation, I walked on the lake shore, feeling the wind... and the presence of my dear grandmother.
I was surprised by the strength of these women coming down the hill from Entoto, carrying a weight greater than their own body. They are the ones who help to collect the fragments and branches of wood, suggesting the human capacity, piece by piece, to collect dissociated substance in cohesive matter.