ETHIOPIA • 2024
After the Drought
In the Somali and Afar regions — a record of what communities reconstruct when the rains return, and what they choose to leave behind.
Year
2022
Region
Ethiopia
Duration
5 weeks
Format
35 mm film
Published In
Der Spiegel
The New Yorker
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
The word “after” is misleading. The drought does not end — it retreats. It leaves marks on the land, on the livestock, on the faces of children who learned to ration water before they learned to read. I arrived when the Belg rains had just returned.
What struck me was not the relief — it was the speed. Within two weeks of rain, grass appeared where there had been nothing for eighteen months. People moved back to pastures they had abandoned. Animals were walked fifty kilometres to new grazing. Life recalibrated with extraordinary efficiency.
Shot on Kodak T-Max 400, developed in Addis Ababa. The black and white was the only honest choice. Colour would have made it beautiful. This was not about beauty.
PHOTO ESSAY
A mother and daughter walk to the new water distribution point, 6km from their settlement. Somali Region, Ethiopia.
Cattle herded toward newly available pasture following the early rains. Afar Region, Ethiopia.
The first grass in eighteen months. A week after the rains.
Jijiga, Somali Region, Ethiopia.