Alley Games
2024-2025
Archival Pigment Print on Canson Edition Etching Rag
18” x 24” Framed
Edition 1/12
ARTIST STATEMENT. “The Games We Played in DC is a photography series exploring childhood play, memory, and community in Washington, DC. The project began in Addis Ababa, where photographing children at play reminded me of my own childhood, and later evolved in DC through oral histories, archival research, and staged portraiture.
Over the course of a year, I interviewed Washingtonians across all eight wards about the games they played and memories connected to them. I also researched photographs at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. These stories and historical references informed each image.
Working collaboratively with sitters, I paired games and gestures with narratives drawn from oral histories and archival research. I hand-painted backdrops, created vision boards, and prepared each scene. The series was photographed with a digital Hasselblad and printed as archival pigment prints on Canson Edition Etching paper, preserving the tonal depth and material presence central to my practice.” -Redeat “Red” Wondemu
ARTIST BIO. Redeat Wondemu is an Eritrean-born, Ethiopian American lens-based artist living and working in Washington, D.C. Working primarily with medium-format film, she hand-processes and prints photographs using traditional darkroom and alternative processes, including gelatin silver, platinum/palladium, and cyanotype. Her practice explores identity, memory, preservation, and the relationship between personal and cultural narratives spanning Washington, D.C. and Ethiopia. Grounded in portraiture and long-form documentation, her work considers photography as a vessel for holding what endures while acknowledging change and disappearance. Wondemu has exhibited at Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, Gallery Neptune & Brown, IA&A at Hillyer, DC Arts Center, Photoworks, Banneker-Douglass Museum, and Addis Ababa Museum. Her ongoing project, The Games We Played, documents childhood play across D.C.’s eight wards through photography and oral histories. She is a 2024–2025 Liana Paredes Fellow, a 2023 Photoworks Artist-in-Residence, and a recipient of HumanitiesDC and DC Commission grants. She also teaches photography and alternative processes.
2024-2025
Archival Pigment Print on Canson Edition Etching Rag
18” x 24” Framed
Edition 1/12
ARTIST STATEMENT. “The Games We Played in DC is a photography series exploring childhood play, memory, and community in Washington, DC. The project began in Addis Ababa, where photographing children at play reminded me of my own childhood, and later evolved in DC through oral histories, archival research, and staged portraiture.
Over the course of a year, I interviewed Washingtonians across all eight wards about the games they played and memories connected to them. I also researched photographs at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. These stories and historical references informed each image.
Working collaboratively with sitters, I paired games and gestures with narratives drawn from oral histories and archival research. I hand-painted backdrops, created vision boards, and prepared each scene. The series was photographed with a digital Hasselblad and printed as archival pigment prints on Canson Edition Etching paper, preserving the tonal depth and material presence central to my practice.” -Redeat “Red” Wondemu
ARTIST BIO. Redeat Wondemu is an Eritrean-born, Ethiopian American lens-based artist living and working in Washington, D.C. Working primarily with medium-format film, she hand-processes and prints photographs using traditional darkroom and alternative processes, including gelatin silver, platinum/palladium, and cyanotype. Her practice explores identity, memory, preservation, and the relationship between personal and cultural narratives spanning Washington, D.C. and Ethiopia. Grounded in portraiture and long-form documentation, her work considers photography as a vessel for holding what endures while acknowledging change and disappearance. Wondemu has exhibited at Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, Gallery Neptune & Brown, IA&A at Hillyer, DC Arts Center, Photoworks, Banneker-Douglass Museum, and Addis Ababa Museum. Her ongoing project, The Games We Played, documents childhood play across D.C.’s eight wards through photography and oral histories. She is a 2024–2025 Liana Paredes Fellow, a 2023 Photoworks Artist-in-Residence, and a recipient of HumanitiesDC and DC Commission grants. She also teaches photography and alternative processes.