Gediyon Kifle received a bachelor’s degree in mass communications at ETSU in 1996. Today, he is a freelance photographer based in Washington, D.C., and he also creates documentaries, mainly on topics of human rights and social action.
Now, Kifle has added something new to his list of accomplishments. He contributed the photography to a unique cookbook, The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa. The volume was created in collaboration with Marcus Samuelsson and has a foreword penned by Desmond Tutu, with text by Heidi Sacko Walters.
Kifle and Samuelsson have worked together before and have a great deal in common. Both were born in Ethiopia and raised elsewhere – Kifle in the United States and Samuelsson in Sweden. They were pleased when the book came to the attention of Tutu, the South African cleric and anti-apartheid activist who agreed to write the foreword.
The cookbook claimed a prestigious James Beard Award in the International category for 2007. A soft-bound edition was released in September, and, on a recent visit to Johnson City, Kifle was surprised to see it offered for sale in a local Starbucks.
Kifle enjoys his work, which he describes as the result of his ETSU classroom work and his student job in the Photo Lab in ETSU’s Office of University Relations. He finds his career “challenging and rewarding” but notes that working for himself means he spends his time “less and less on photography and more and more on business.”
Although he has always had an interest in food in its many forms, Kifle says an assignment for “Gourmet” magazine was the first step toward entering the field of photography in this specialized area.
Future assignments will soon take Kifle to Asia, where he looks forward to sampling the cuisine of Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

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