TITLE: Orthodox Christians of Ethiopia - Customs and rites

With a membership of between 45 and 50 million adherents the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the largest Oriental Orthodox Christian church. As seen from the present pictures taken at different locations Christianity is still playing an extremely important role in the everyday life of the Ethiopians and is present not only in organised worship places such as churches but also in private homes (see first picture). The series (a more comprehensive photo essay can be seen on my website under: http://corneliucazacu.com/portfolios/orthodox-christians-of-ethiopia-customs-and-rites/) attempts to depict the religiosity of the Orthodox Christians of Ethiopia in different situations, from baptism to funerals, individual and collective prayers, priests and worshippers, landscapes comprising religious architecture.
As somebody who´s been to the Holy Lands I felt the atmosphere in Ethiopia to be more biblical than the one in Israel and Palestine, the silhouettes in white against the dramatic, sometimes Monument Valley-like, landscape, reminding me of an exotic, archaic, more original form of Christianity, original in the sense of placing a heavier emphasis on Old Testament teachings than the one found in the European churches.
The subject is so vast that a minimum of 15 photos would have been more appropriate for the jury to be able to assess the entire submission.

AUTHOR: Corneliu Cazacu (Germany)

My name is Corneliu Cazacu and I am a Danish-Romanian photographer and writer based in Munich, Germany. Specialised in nature/architecture/reportage and music photography (see www.rockphotographer.us).

Published in newspapers and magazines such as Romania libera, Foreign Policy, EUobserver, Dilema veche, etc. As a music photographer provided images for the website and tour posters of Banned from Utopia, the US Frank Zappa tribute band, and Robert Martin, its leader. Collaborations with several other bands and musicians, in particular those participating in the yearly Zappanale festival in Germany..

Winner of two first prizes and a second prize in the "Mihai Vasile" photography contest organised by the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism, Romania, 2015 (http://www.premiile-mihai-vasile.com/corneliu-cazacu).

Winner of the SIR photo contest Munich, 2016 (photographing integration of refugees in Munich).

Published in the April 2015 National Geographic US edition (two-page spread).

Winner of Travel Photographer Society contest 2017 (People & Culture; http://travelphotographersociety.com/tps-awards-top-45/).

Some of my photographs can be found in private collections in the US, Germany, France, Denmark, Romania, etc.

Exhibitions:

1996-1997: Plougmann & Vingtoft Headquarters, Copenhagen, Denmark
1998-2016: Collective yearly exhibition in the European Patent Office, Munich, Germany
2015: Presentation of Maidan revolution photos and participation in the panel debate "Ukraine in the eyes of Eastern European Intelligentsia" in Bruxelles, Belgium