For his Nobel Peace Prize com­mis­sion, Finbarr O’Reilly col­lab­o­rat­ed with sev­en Ethiopian pho­tog­ra­phers, includ­ing three women, to cre­ate a joint exhi­bi­tion around the Laureate, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The result­ing show, Crossroads Ethiopia, was co-curated by Addis FotoFest founder Aida Muluneh, the first black woman to co-curate a Nobel exhi­bi­tion. Finbarr and Aida dis­cuss the exhib­it and the col­lab­o­ra­tive nature of work­ing togeth­er to curate the images.

As the 2020 Laureate of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award, Finbarr cre­at­ed a new dig­i­tal project, “Congo In Conversation”, fea­tur­ing pho­to, video and writ­ten reports from a net­work of Congolese jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing their coun­try as it con­tends with the worst pan­dem­ic in a cen­tu­ry, the second-deadliest Ebola epi­dem­ic in his­to­ry, and the world’s worst measles out­break. The jour­nal­ists’ multi-platform sto­ries on health, secu­ri­ty, decol­o­niza­tion, and racial justice—more than half of them pro­duced by women—explore glob­al themes from local per­spec­tives. As pho­to­jour­nal­ism grap­ples with ever-shrinking edi­to­r­i­al bud­gets and grow­ing calls for a more inclu­sive and rep­re­sen­ta­tive indus­try, Finbarr shares how he has adapt­ed his way of work­ing to pro­mote and show­case over­looked African tal­ent.

This lec­ture was orig­i­nal­ly host­ed at VII Interactive, a new resource for shar­ing insights and infor­ma­tion on the craft of visu­al sto­ry­telling. We are build­ing dif­fer­ent plat­forms with­in the VII ecosys­tem, where the pub­lic can engage direct­ly, online with a live instruc­tor. VII Interactive offers pro­gram­ming that is free and avail­able to every­one, in addi­tion to paid class­es and indi­vid­ual men­tor­ing that can be fash­ioned to your needs.