Vintage Addis Ababa
Recollections of everyday people
Vintage Addis Ababa, launched in July 2017, is a documentary and fine art project that crowdsources old photographs from the public in order to tell stories of everyday people in the past. I co-founded this initiative to preserve personal images that are fragile and prone to damage and loss for future generations. By the end of 2018, we had digitised more than 2,000 photographs from 100 contributors in Addis Ababa. We used social media to publish and source the photographs, reaching tens of thousands of Ethiopians in Addis Ababa and beyond.
Self-initiated project
(Co-produced with wongel abebe and nafkot gebeyehu)
Date: march 2016–May 2019
Categories: curating ‧ writing ‧ design ‧ publications
Location: addis ababa, Ethiopia
◄ portfolio
Funded by:
In November 2018, we published a photography book with over 200 of these familiar photos and many stories. The book was launched in Addis Ababa with a grand exhibition, and we also organised book launches in North America and across Europe. More than 1,000 copies of the book were sold in the first year.
“The project peels away the popular cliches to reveal a more innocent city with an intimate and familiar past.”
The Guardian (Tom Gardner)
Vintage Addis Ababa in the news:
