My Photo scholarship 2010 entry
Worldwide | Sunday, October 17, 2010 | 5 photos
An honest representation of my experience in Ethiopia would include a photograph that doesn’t exist: me, sitting on a curb, crying over the pieces of my broken camera. I don’t think I fully appreciated that little point-and-shoot until, in one horrifying moment, it was gone.
But any photographer – even a woefully under-trained amateur like me – has to be resourceful, so I pulled myself together and scrounged up a back-up camera. As I traveled around Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley, however, I quickly forgot my own tiny tragedy. The people of the Omo Valley have lived through famine, AIDS, and war, but remained regal, curious, and joyful throughout it all.
Their smiles shamed me into action. I wanted to record Ethiopia as the joyful and strong country that I experienced, not as the tragic place I had read about. Although I had been trained in print journalism at school, I’ve come to realize that words alone aren’t enough. I can easily write down statistics about illness and poverty, but I could never write the faces of the people and moments that so inspired me in Ethiopia.
My dream is to join the new generation of photojournalists who combine photography with print journalism to document the people, stories, and places of the world. I have fallen in love with the storytelling power of photography, and I passionately believe that it is a skill and an art that every journalist must learn.
If you’re looking for someone who grew up in a darkroom, I’m not your girl. But if you’re willing to take a chance on someone who has spent more time with disposable cameras than digital SLRs, someone who learned about aperture and ISO and shutter speeds on Google, and someone who desperately needs a mentor, then I can’t wait to learn from you!
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