Faranji

 

My endless search for new people, places and cultures to explore with my lenses led me all the way to Ethiopia.

My journey had started way before I reached my destination. My mind and everyday life were filled with planning and daydreams of newly found customs, tribes forsaken by time and dirt roads as far as the eye can see.

Faranji means ‘foreigner’ Amharic but is mostly used to describe Westerners. This is what the locals would call me during my stay in Ethiopia. The word presented me with a challenge: to capture with my lens the friendly faces and smiles that accompanied that phrase, and its power to turn the unknown into familiar.

In Ethiopia, everything seemed new and somehow powerful: the places, the stories, the pace, the quotidian settings and objects. From these, I weave my own story as a foreigner but always truthful to the feelings, thoughts and conversations that inspire me to recreate my own version of that reality through my images.

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