The Suri are a semi-nomadic agro-pastoralist people living in the southwestern lowlands of Ethiopia's Southern Nations region. For generations their way of life — cattle herding, flood-retreat cultivation along the Omo River — remained largely unchanged. The completion of the Gibe III dam in 2016 ended the river's annual flood cycle, devastating subsistence farming across the Lower Omo Valley. Forced resettlement and large-scale sugar plantations have since absorbed much of the Suri's traditional land. These photographs were made in 2017, as that transition was accelerating. What they document is a way of life the Ethiopian state has treated as primitive — and is actively dismantling. Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Region, Ethiopia, 2017.
