California Story Fund
Building Community: The Ethiopians of Los Angeles
Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the
University of Southern California
Project Director: Donald Miller, USC professor of religion
Documenting the Ethiopian immigrant experience in Los Angeles
Watch the DVD
California is home to an estimated 100,000 Ethiopians, many of whom left their home country to escape political persecution, victimization and repression, especially after the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. Before the revolution, few Ethiopians left Ethiopia to settle elsewhere. Today, continuing repression and food crises continue to drive people out.
The Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California, which investigates the role of religion in communities, became interested in Los Angeles’ Ethiopian group because of the community’s strong connection to religion. Rebecca Haile, an Ethiopian American lawyer and writer, who has lived in the United States since 1976, helped Project Director Donald Miller conceptualize the project and make connections to an Ethiopian community church.
The project’s photographer was Ara Oshagan, who for more than 10 years has been photographing survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Oshagan immersed himself in the community, attended religious and secular events, and took hundreds of photographs while Haile conducted 13 in-depth digital audio interviews with congregants of different ages, genders, education backgrounds and occupations. The project’s goal was to hold up a mirror to this community to show the role of religion in preserving Ethiopian culture and how various issues were affecting people’s lives,” said Miller. The result is a rich multimedia DVD that includes colorful still photographs, traditional and contemporary music, and sound bites from the personal interviews.
Ara Oshagan: Photographer
Ara Oshagan's work revolves around themes of identity, community and its aftermath. Since 1995, he has been photographing survivors of Armenian genocide. Working with photographer Levon Parian and a team of oral historians, this work was exhibited at the Downey Museum of Art in 1999 and attracted national attention.
Rebecca Haile: Project Interviewer
Rebecca Haile is a lawyer who has worked in law firms in Washington, D.C. and New York. For the past few years, she has been working as a freelance writer in New York City. She is the author of “Held at a Distance,” a memoir about her return to Ethiopia after 25 years in the United States. Born in Addis Ababa, she received a B.A. in English Literature in 1986 from Williams College and a J.D. in 1991 from Harvard Law School, where she served as editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Los Angeles’ Ethiopian and Armenian immigrant communities are the subjects of a new exhibit of photographs by Ara Oshagan at the Center for Experimental Art and Architecture in Los Angeles. The exhibit will be on display until the end of October 2008.
