My life will forever be intertwined with Ethiopia. In my teenage days, this country is where I first found my vision as a photographer. Later, Ethiopia would be where I found my home and my soul mate. ETHIOPIA is a monolithic collection of my images captured over the course of thirteen years. It is an ode to every region of the country and a celebration of all the unique peoples found within. These seemingly disconnected cultural threads are woven together in a cohesive visual style in order to truly see Ethiopia— which itself is the sum of all the diverse lands and theproud people who inhabit it.

The dignified vision found in the portraits is not to obscure other searing
realities within Ethiopia, such as the wealth inequality and traumatic conflict
spread across the country. It is to highlight the prestige I have always
recognized here. This collection is about the timeless and pure things that
have withstood the politics of the day, and to challenge the way the outside
world can perceive this country. This is my tribute to the enduring Ethiopia.

Ethiopia

For centuries, the art world was seen through the eyes of a small few who, under a patriarchal society, chose the aesthetic and the narrative—and whose main depiction of the sacred female body was as an objectified and sexualized woman. 

Delphine Diallo aims to change this dynamic. Her intention is for every woman she photographs to feel the image she makes of them is a personal gift. “I am not taking pictures, I am giving pictures,” as Diallo puts it. By engaging in intimate conversations with her subjects, Delphine removes the sense of vulnerability that often comes with being photographed. Working with body painters and jewelry and mask makers, Diallo also uses traditional mythology and spiritual symbols to empower her subjects. Her portraiture is all about connection and exchange. She believes women are deep beings and connects with them on an emotional level. The French-Senegalese photographer spends more time speaking with her subjects than photographing them. 

Diallo’s photographs are never discriminating, yet deeply communicative, and portray women beyond judgment, soaking up their limitless beauty. Diallo's works are meant to encourage every woman to write a personal narrative, to take a stand, to have a firm voice. No preparatory models, sketches, or plans lay behind her photographs, which depict only outstanding feminine painted bodies. It is all a part of the vision flowing out of the artist's mind, grounded in her right brain hemisphere, predominant in her energetic and vibrant personality. 

Drawing elements from eastern mythology and philosophy, whilst always ennobling and empowering women, her practice is reminiscent of Oriental 19th-century painting. Looking at Krishnamurti, Frantz Fanon, Joseph Campbell, Bruce Lee, Aimé Césaire, and A.D. Wilson as deep inspirational sources, her photographs raise awareness, appealing to all women to awaken their senses. Diallo immerses herself in the realm of the feminine universe and her eloquent portraiture technique unveils and stirs unexplored emotion and insight meant to reach beyond appearances. 

“We are in constant search for wonder and growth. I see art as a vessel to express consciousness and as an access to diffuse wisdom, enlightenment, fear, beauty, ugliness, mystery, faith, strength, fearlessness, and universal matter”.

Divine

“I suppose I could make a work where the sun is shining, the mom is lying out in the grass, the kids are happy, and everything is perfect, but that wouldn’t interest me—and it wouldn’t be truthful. My aim is to create a more nuanced, subtly humorous and satirical portrait of the way we live today.” - Julie Blackmon

The playfully artful and chaotic elements present in the photographs of Julie Blackmon (American, b. 1966) are drawn from the everyday people and places of Blackmon’s daily routine in her hometown of Springfield, Missouri, which she describes as “a generic American town in the middle of the United States.” At first glance, the works may conjure backyard paradises of children at play; a closer look reveals children alone in backyards, garages, and neighborhoods, where the absence of adults suggests a looming potential for danger. The images brim with fantasy and subtle satire that capture a delicate balance between the darkness and charm of contemporary American life.

Blackmon carefully sets her scenes, but like film and theater
directors, she is in pursuit of unscripted moments that provoke,
disturb, and challenge the viewer. Some of the images reference
paintings by Dutch masters, French impressionists, and such modern painters as Hopper and Balthus, but they are updated with a satirical, penetrating eye and Blackmon’s belief that artful fiction can capture the truth more memorably than the truth itself.

Homegrown

For the past 30 years, Sally Davies has been documenting the streets of Manhattan. She’s watched neighborhoods negotiate with gentrification, post-9/11 anxiety, economic uncertainty, and a steady stream of “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere” optimism. Davies has taken memorable photographs of ordinary doorways, wet curbs and corners, the glow of bar-grill signs, bodegas, bakery windows, wheelchairs on rooftops, incoming weather, graffiti, and vintage cars. As she has said, “You either fall in love with moonlight on a garbage bag or you hate it and move along.”*

Davies started the New Yorkers by shifting from her usual view of the urban outdoors to the idea of chronicling the spaces and stories of the natives and transplants who give the city its particular vitality. 

In these portraits, you will meet waitresses, musicians, cab drivers, painters, teachers, shopkeepers, writers, designers, producers, parents, a gossip columnist, and a psychic to the stars, among others. They are singularly sensational, and they attest to multiple jobs, friendships, marriages, divorces, children, and pets. Young and old, straight and gay, casual and formal; they pose in cramped kitchens and elegant living rooms, laying on beds, sitting in bathtubs, surrounded by the surfaces and souvenirs of living. There is an abundance of brick, wood, leather, and metal, and collections of refrigerator magnets, religious and street art, books, Pez dispensers, vinyl records, and plants.

These photographs and texts speak to what all New Yorkers understand—to live in this city is to embrace struggle, sacrifice, love, and change. When I spoke with Davies over breakfast in February 2020, I asked her what this project reveals. She said, “This is the end of an era.” That comment has returned to me repeatedly. This book went to print during a pandemic that stopped the world as we knew it. We were in our homes for hours on end, adapting to new habits, while thinking and feeling deeply about where and how we live. These New York people were right on time.

by Stuart Horodner
*Sally Davies in Michael Ernest Sweet’s “Photographer Sally Davies Discusses Women Street Photographers,” HuffPost (December 15, 2015) 

New Yorkers

The Artist

The Story