Michael Tsegaye

Michael Tsegaye was born in 1975 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He originally started his career in painting, after graduating from the School of Fine Arts and Design of Addis Ababa University in 2002. However, he developed an allergy to oil paint and was forced to abandon his career as a painter. Leveraging on the skills he developed as a painter, including a strong sense of composition, he subsequently switch to photography. With a preference for social documentary and art photography, Tsegaye works extensively in detailing the contemporary urban Ethiopia. In Chasms of the Soul (2010), he explores the impermanent nature of seemingly permanent structures. He captures the fast mutations of Addis Ababa in Future Memories (2011) and the daily life of its residents in Working Girls (2009). He also traveled throughout the country to document the exquisite landscape of some cities in Ankober (2006) and Afar (2010). Tsegaye’s work has been exhibited worldwide and has been featured in several publications.

Aida Muluneh

Aida Muluneh was born in 1974 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Growing up between Yemen, England, Cyprus and Canada, she settled in Washington D.C, where she received a BA in Communications and Film from Howard University. She now lives and works in Addis Ababa, where she founded Desta For Africa, an organization whose mission is to offer opportunities to African artists. She began her career in photojournalism for the Washington Post, where she developed her skills as a documentary photographer. In 2007, Muluneh moves back to Ethiopia to work on a documentary, which explores her homeland’s history and culture. The images mainly shot in black and white were later published in the book Ethiopia: Past/Forward (2009). Her work also focuses on the representation of women in Temsalet (2015) and the image of Ethiopia, and has been shown across the world. In parallel, Muluneh also found herself attracted by art photography. Inspired by traditional body paintings from Ethiopia, she share her experiences gained upon repatriation in The World is 9 (2016).

Andrew Tshabangu

Andrew Tshabangu was born in 1966 in Soweto, a township near Johannesburg, South Africa. Initially interested to study drama, he studied photography in different institutions in his native city. Upon completion, he began his career by documenting the diversity of rituals and religious practices of black communities in Africa. Working under the apartheid, he decided to focus on those quieter things that were not often broadcasted. As an attentive observer of the urban life, he tries to capture the complexities of ordinary people. His photographs are saturated with a sense of quietness that captures the human spirit. Tshabangu travelled to different metropolitan cities, where he explored and documented activities of daily life as well as the transition of urban and rural areas. He collaborated for fifteen years with René-Paul Savignan, a photographer from La Réunion Island, with whom he produced Bridges (2013) documenting the spiritual and religious practice in their respective countries.

Zanele Muholi

Zanele Muholi was born in 1972 in Umlazi, a township near Durban, South Africa. She studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg in 2003, and exhibited her first photography series Visual Sexuality a year later. Her work is based on gender, identity, and sexual politics, and focuses mainly in raising awareness on the black queer community. In 2009, Muholi completed a MFA in Documentary Media at the Ryerson University in Toronto, with a thesis on the visual history of black lesbian identity in post-apartheid. Upon graduation, she founded Inkanyiso, a forum involved with visual arts and media advocacy for and on behalf of the queer community. In 2006, Muholi started to work on the project Faces and Phases, which document the visual history of the black lesbians. Unlike her previous work, which focused primarily on intimate moments, here she presented subjects as they might appear in public to a friend or lover, while striving to illustrate the immense diversity of the community. The series has been published in a monograph and exhibited worldwide in several events including the 55th Venice Biennale and Doumenta 13. With her growing popularity and positive reception of her work over the last years, Muholi continues to document and shot friends, strangers, communities on the fringe, and recently, herself.