In its June 2019 magazine, The Atlantic featured Ethiopian photographer Aïda Muluneh, whose bright, staged images push back against the usual foreign pictures of famine, war, and dust that still define Ethiopia for many outside viewers.
Muluneh’s work explores Ethiopian identity through color, costume, and carefully built scenes, and her Addis Foto Fest aimed to give African photographers a platform to shape how the continent is seen rather than only how it is consumed.
Visual stereotypes are not a soft side issue for Horn readers. They shape aid pitches, investment stories, and diaspora memory as much as any policy brief.
Kept as culture and arts archive, the Atlantic note dates Muluneh’s international profile in 2019 and the argument that Ethiopian image-making belongs in Ethiopian hands.
Sources: The Atlantic