Silver Halide Martyrs – Eritrean revolutionary archives

Greg Marinovich:

Uniquely, the Eritrean revolutionaries fighting for independence from Ethiopia made a decision in the ’Sixties to assign fighters – both male and female – to record the war. They wanted to be in a position to write their own history, and not have their epic struggle distorted by the outside world. They also had to use propaganda to unite the diverse peoples of Eritrea against Ethiopia. The warrior-photographers brief was to be both soldier and reporter, and to decide when to shoot with the camera or with the gun.

The archive chronicles the full tapestry of the Eritrean struggle: the early rebellion; the famine of the ’Eighties that Emperor Haile Selassie exacerbated in an attempt to starve the revolution into submission and the ten long years when the Eritrean guerillas were living in underground bunkers, besieged by the massive Ethiopian army.