Archiving Addis Ababa
Photography has a long history in Ethiopia. Today a team of archivers is using it to collect the memories of Ethiopians between the 1940s and 1980s.
This photo was taken in the 1950’s. Genet and Mulugeta (in the middle) dance at their wedding as Konjit Fanta and her brother Tesfaye (on the right) dance along. Image via Vintage Addis.
Photography in Ethiopia was used as a tool first by Emperor Menelik (reign:1889-1913). Photos at the time showed Ethiopians in triumphant poses, after the defeat of the Italians in 1896. Photography being much more common during the reign of Menelik’s successor, Haile Selassie (reign: 1930-1974), the focus was more on the symbolic power of institutions. Vintage Addis Ababa (founded July 2017) is a crowd-sourced visual archive that gathers old photos from the private collections of Ethiopians, mostly living in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, but also in the diaspora. Most of the photos date between the 1940s and 1980s. Each day they share one photo on their website. The website’s aim is to preserve these fragile historical resources by telling the stories of everyday people from Addis Ababa’s history.
The project was inspired by Dutch photographer Andrea Stultiens, particularly his work preserving and publishing Ugandan photo archives. Founded in July 2017, Vintage Addis already has an online following of more than 45,000 on Facebook and has received favorable coverage in media outside Ethiopia. A Kickstarter campaign was just completed to realize the printing of a photo book.
The founders of Vintage Addis Ababa are Philipp Schütz, Wongel Abebe and Nafkot Gebeyehu. All three live in Addis Ababa, where they met. Schütz studied at the School of Design in Zurich and moved to Ethiopia six years ago. Since then he has been working as a publisher, graphic designer and photographer. Abebe graduated from the Addis Ababa University School of Journalism and Communications in 2016. She currently works in communications and on various initiatives around youth empowerment. The Youth Mag and Young African Think’rs are two of the projects she has in engaged in. Gebeyehu, also a graduate of Addis Ababa University School of Journalism and Communications, currently works in communications and public relations. She is a co-founder and host of the weekly radio show The Schmoo Show on EBC radio in Addis Ababa.
Martha van der Wolf spoke to the Vintage Addis Ababa collective:
