ETHIOPIA

"I arrived in Addis Ababa, six years ago already. So I set out to embark on this work, vague in nature except for the idea that it would be solely dedicated to portraits of women. Why start off with the Horn of Africa? Because I’d never been there before. Like many, I’d read Monfried and parts of the biography of Rimbaud.

I still remember a photo showing two Eritreans in Asmara, a living representation of the pictograms of ancient Egypt. I’d long dreamed of seeing with my own eyes the strange drawn-out silhouettes of the girls of Somalia.

The first thing I did when I arrived in Addis in 2001 was to draft a questionnaire that has barely changed over all these years - one that I give all my models in an identical form, whether they’re ministers, refugees, activists or prostitutes…"

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard