Eric Gottesman

@yatreda @SamSpratt @havner @joeyldotcom @fewocious @calebleeadams I see you @fewocious !!

I'm beyond joyful to be a part of this happiness and celebrate this love with our friends. 🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍 @SamSpratt 🤵🏻‍♂️👰🏻‍♀️@havner I love you 🌹

Sudden Flowers # 78 from “Sudden Flowers” by @EricGottesman in collaboration with Sudden Flowers Explore more on @AssemblyCurated nft.assembly.art

Sudden Flowers # 41 from Sudden Flowers by @EricGottesman in collaboration with Sudden Flowers Explore more on @AssemblyCurated nft.assembly.art

This collection of collaborative works by @EricGottesman / Sudden Flowers is deeply moving and speaks to the real power of photography. I encourage everyone to spend some time with it today. Wow. nft.assembly.art/collections/su…

Don’t miss the "Sudden Flowers” collection on @AssemblyCurated, a powerful project by @EricGottesman in collaboration with Sudden Flowers, an art collective of young people in Addis Abba, Ethiopia. nft.assembly.art/collections/su…

Such a great conversation... very powerful to listen to @EricGottesman and Sudden Flowers members talking about experiences of making together, the role of photography in processing grief and trauma, imagining the future, and the beauty of collaboration. twitter.com/AssemblyCurate…

🕐 1 DAY UNTIL "SUDDEN FLOWERS” "Sudden Flowers is only Book One of this project. It is my history, my childhood. I want to share it with my kids when they grown up. We have to keep telling our stories because we keep living our lives." - Yamrot Alemu of Sudden Flowers

Join us!

Banded Passport Pictures, 2004. @AssemblyCurated

This sounds so old-timey now. But the (relatively recent) idea that subject and photographer could be on relatively equal footing in the creation of photographs bucked over a century of colonial-inspired photography. Hard to imagine now that everyone is subject and photographer.

When this project started, only photographers had cameras. I didn’t have a cell phone. I used Polaroid positive-negative film (yes film!) which allowed photographer and subject to see the image at the same time. That was radical in 1999!

General is Kissing the Girl, 2004. Photograph by Tenanesh Kifyalew. @AssemblyCurated

We published #SuddenFlowers with @FishbarBooks in 2014, launching in London and at @AddisFotoFest. Before it was published, I circulated 10+ drafts among members of the collective. It took us 15 years to publish. It was worth the wait.

In 2006, after showing the work of #suddenflowers in #addisababa, we decided to tour it around Ethiopia in a traveling coffee ceremony called #AbulThonaBaraka. We showed pictures, talked with audiences and served coffee in small towns, cities and villages.

Yawoinshet, 2003. Woini is an incredible teacher to me and so many others. She introduced me to a group of kids living together in Addis Ababa in 1999 after their parents died of AIDS, and that is how #SuddenFlowers began. We worked together for over a decade. @AssemblyCurated

Sudden Flowers Exhibition. British Council, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2000.

In advance of the #SuddenFlowers NFT with launch @AssemblyCurated this week, I’m thinking back on all our exhibitions together over the years, including my first ever photo show in #AddisAbaba City Hall in 2000. Also the first exhibition about HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia.

Join me and Sudden Flowers on @AssemblyCurated Twitter Spaces tomorrow to hear about our long-term collaboration in a neighborhood in #AddisAbaba #Ethiopia. We are launching NFTs of this project to add to the conversation about who gets to participate in new digital spaces.

Don’t miss the drop of "Sudden Flowers” on Assembly Curated. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2022 11:11 AM EST Join the Assembly Discord to be the first to hear the announcement → discord.gg/SQqVMybhFV Assembly Curated → nft.assembly.art