Feature article
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ETSU alum shares in James Beard Award
By Fred Sauceman
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| Gadijah Carim fries koesisters, a South African doughnut. Photo courtesy Gediyon Kifle, from 'The Soul of a New Cuisine.' |
Gediyon Kifle had a tuxedo and two different suits on standby. He had never attended a James Beard Awards Gala before. Not knowing exactly what to expect, he was ready for any possibility.
New York City’s Beard Awards are the food world’s version of the Oscars, and in May of 2007, Gediyon wasn’t just going as a guest. He was in contention.
Rewind 15 years. Gediyon returned to his native Ethiopia in the summer of 1992 to give his father an honorable burial. His father had worked in foreign affairs before he and all of Gediyon’s uncles were executed by the Communist regime. Gediyon, his mother, three sisters and brother fled the country, all in different directions, some through Sudan, some through Kenya. Gediyon was the last to get out.
“That summer, we had gotten information that we were being allowed to exhume my father’s body and my uncles’, to bury them properly,” Gediyon remembers. “Up to this point, we couldn’t mourn. This was a closing chapter for me.”
At East Tennessee State University that fall, Gediyon began creating a new chapter, a journey that would lead him to the food world’s most prestigious gathering.
The career turn occurred back in Maryland, where Gediyon was struggling to learn both French and English. With the advice of a guidance counselor, he gave up French and took up photography.
Moving to Grundy, Virginia, to attend the Mountain Mission School, Gediyon slid into his first paying photo shoot, when a wedding photographer was stranded in the mountains.
Enrolling at ETSU in the fall of 1992, Gediyon says he was “blessed to work in three places — for the yearbook, the student paper and the University Relations office — above all, that office, where Larry Smith and Jim Sledge gave me the confidence to go out and shoot sports, to polish my craft and learn from experience.”
“In the whole time I’ve been at ETSU (since the late 1970s), I could name maybe five student photographers who’ve come close to Gediyon,” Larry says.
Soon after graduation in 1996, Gediyon began landing assignments with big-name magazines. In 1999, Gourmet magazine asked him to follow chef and New York restaurant owner Marcus Samuelsson back to Ethiopia, where Samuelsson, an expert in Scandinavian cuisine, was born. Samuelsson had grown up in Sweden.
“After that assignment, we were both passionate to do something to show the diversity of food and culture in Africa,” Gediyon recalls.
Gediyon made seven trips back to Africa, shooting sunsets, fishing expeditions, open-air markets and faces.
Those visits to his home continent would culminate in a book entitled “The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa.” Gediyon took every photograph in the book but one, and in May of 2007, the 344-page volume was named best international cookbook by the James Beard Foundation.
“I tried to capture, in my photographs, the essence of African life,” Gediyon tells me over a lunch of tacos back in Johnson City. “The people are incredible in hosting you, and those with the most modest of incomes give you the best they have to offer.”
The image that stands out most clearly in Gediyon’s mind depicts “the grace of a group of women in a bus station in Soweto, South Africa.”
And he recalls “a deep-colored sunset in Zanzibar, with the silhouettes of kids jumping from a fishing boat.”
In the book’s foreword, Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes, “I commend Marcus for recognizing the culinary gifts that Africa offers and for undertaking the huge and important task of documenting its cuisine and sharing it with the world so that people everywhere can experience the cuisine and the hospitality of this stunning continent and its rainbow nations.
“His work pays homage to Africa’s humanity. Let us break bread together and celebrate our diversity.”
Gediyon Kifle is now at work documenting the construction of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.
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Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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