Working Toward a More Inclusive Industry with Finbarr O’Reilly and Aida Muluneh
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.