Modern storyteller, active photographer, relentless traveller... Guillaume Bonn takes us on a discovery tour of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital so close to his heart. This new carte blanche published by be-poles studio is turned into a journey to the heart of a city built on dualities. Shot entirely using an iPhone, this 32nd Portraits de Villes invites us to experience the turmoil of a city full of major contrasts.
Cosmopolitan, with astounding cultural wealth, Addis Ababa is both ultra-modern and replete with a poetic negligence. The city’s heart beats to the rhythm of the reconstruction sites that punctuate urban space. Run down buildings clash with recent constructions
and omnipresent scaffolding...
The wealth of its Art Deco architecture is combined – not altogether smoothly – with brand new structures. An astonishing city characterised by contrast, Addis Ababa and its population are in a state of rapid transformation. Those in traditional dress cross paths with the more European Addis residents at every turn. Guillaume captures moments of life snatched here and there, highlighting the striking contrasts between past and present, wealth and poverty.
Vintage driving gloves left on a car seat, a gleaming Beetle parked on a barely-tarmacked street... Concreted main highways, dirt tracks, a brand-new telephone box, then a pile of rubble abandoned in the middle of the road. A little further on, we discover a swimming pool where children are playing, a fitness centre and an Internet café Suddenly, on the wall, we spot a lithography in faded colours depicting The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the (re)creation of Addis.
Inseparable from its cultural and political heritage, the“New Flower” of the African continent is unveiled page by page. Shot between 2014 and 2016, the story of this photographic adventure goes hand-in-hand with the legacy of the communist regime during the 1970s, when the deprivation of freedom echoed a fear of photography and espionage.
Guillaume Bonn chose freedom in both his technique and the message he wanted to convey; the iPhone therefore seemed an obvious choice. This medium allows him to reduce his eld of vision. The grain is a little faded, the colours warm and woody. Efficient, discreet, fast and instant, the iPhone provides a great deal of freedom to capture a moment that will doubtless never be repeated.
Guillaume Bonn creates a portrait of a lively and energetic city that is going all out in the hope of flirting with a more prosperous future. With each turn of the page, we allow ourselves to be sucked into the whirlwind of a Portraits de Villes that is both moving and luminous.
Links
http://www.portraitsdevilles.fr/en/
http://www.thestoryinstitute.com/addis-abeba
Book
62 Pages
40 colour Photographs
Publisher: Be-Poles
1st edition of 1000
Text: Mary Anne Fitzgerald