Redeat Wondemu, a local Ethiopian American photographer who also goes by Red Won, hardly got a moment of rest the night her exhibit, Her, opened on Dec. 15 at the gallery Art of Noize. People began walking in to view her work almost an hour before the reception officially started, and by the time it kicked off the small venue was packed. From start to finish, Wondemu stood next to a table where her prints and Hasselblad film camera were on display to talk to visitors as they approached her with compliments and questions about her photography.

“We had a big response,” gallery owner Adrian Ferguson says. “Everybody was impressed with the work and Red’s attention to detail.”

It’s no surprise that so many people showed up to the reception, at least for those familiar with Wondemu’s work. Dozens of black and white photos as well as two large, cyan-colored self-portraits line the walls of the gallery with the faces of the artist and women she met during her visits to the East African country she calls home. Wondemu’s photos not only capture the subtle emotions of her models, but are also printed in a way that makes them look like paintings. Local painter Adèremi Inniss was one of the first visitors to arrive at Art of Noize and couldn’t contain his excitement. “These are gorgeous!” he said as soon as he laid eyes on her work.

“The use of contrast, the use of motion, the use of light … I feel like she’s taking photographs and transforming them into living, moving works of art,” he says. “They inspire me to want to paint when I look at them.”

Wondemu’s career is in the midst of taking off. Her, which will be on display at Art of Noize through Jan. 20, is her second exhibit at the gallery—her previous show there took place in 2022. During the past few years, her work has been displayed at local spots including Homme Gallery and Photoworks and not-so-local spots, such as the Addis Ababa Museum in Ethiopia. Louis Jacobson, City Paper’s photography critic, recently ranked her 2023 In Syzygy show as the second best photography exhibit of last year.

“What set it apart for me was the unusual nature of her photographic and printing process,” Jacobson says. “I love archaic printing technologies such as cyanotypes. The hand process forces the artist to create the irregular, feathered edges … as well as accidental splashes and splotches that add to each work’s uniqueness.”

If there’s one thing that makes Wondemu’s work stand out from other D.C. photographers, it’s how her process plays a part in her style. While there are plenty of photographers in the city and some working with analog cameras, not all are as involved in every step of creating their prints as Wondemu. “If it weren’t for Red being there once to help me, I would hardly step into a darkroom,” says Jeremy Ives, a fellow photographer and close colleague of hers.

In her own darkroom, Wondemu is meticulous in how she develops and prints her photos. She allows the ink to expand beyond the borders of the original image. Creating each print is an intimate experience, she says.

“I really enjoy the process,” Wondemu tells City Paper. “I enjoy coating the paper with emulsion. I love the way the image comes out when the developer hits. I feel very proud of my process.”

Wondemu’s skill in analog photography and her passion for photographing people from Ethiopia is the result of where her life has taken her. Born in 1984 in Eritrea, while the country was still part of Ethiopia, her family had to relocate to Addis Ababa when Eritrea declared independence. Addis Ababa is where she spent much of her childhood and where she first remembers encountering photography. Her father always carried around a 35mm film camera to take photos of her family. In 1999, as war waged between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Wondemu and her sister were sent to the United States to attend high school.

Afterward, Wondemu attended Georgia Southern University, where a boyfriend introduced her to Hasselblad cameras and medium format film photography. That romantic relationship didn’t last, but her passion for photography remained, and grew. “I got rid of the guy and kept my love for the Hasselblad,” Wondemu says. Though she wanted to study photography in college, her parents insisted she become a nurse. 

That’s what she was doing when she moved to D.C. in 2018, but it was the opportunities she found to display her photography that led her to stay. “I’ve found D.C. to be the most encouraging place for my work and a place that propelled me,” she says. “Stuff started to happen and I said, ‘Okay, maybe D.C. is the place for me to be.’”

The idea to photograph people, specifically women, living in Ethiopia came about when Wondemu visited the country in 2018. She had frequently visited Ethiopia since 2010 and took photos there, but she came up with the idea to do a portrait series after contemplating how life for Ethiopian women is even more restrictive than for American women. Wondemu says Ethiopia is a beautiful country, but it’s still influenced by strict religious convictions.

“Patriarchy is very much part of day-to-day life and how people function,” Wondemu says. “There’s an expectation to have a traditional life for a lot of women there. You’re expected after graduating high school or college to find a husband, get married, and have children—that idea is held above all things.”

“But things are changing,” she adds. “Women there are realizing they need to pursue their own careers. The country has also been experiencing civil wars and that’s making life hard for everyone.”

The models found in the majority of Wondemu’s Her exhibit are women she met in Ethiopia in cafes and through Instagram. Before photographing them, Wondemu made sure to get to know her subjects over coffee or tea. When they got into the studio, Wondemu would continue talking with her models about their lives and recorded their talks as if they were interviews. These conversations were so intimate and personal that long chunks of time would pass between photos; sometimes, she says, hours would pass before she could finish a single roll of 15 shots. 

“It was an honor to be able to sit and hear what life was like for them because for many years I had missed out on the day-to-day there—the mundane,” Wondemu says. “We established friendships, and they still update me about their lives. They’re changing and evolving.”

Many of the women who posed for Wondemu were breaking social norms by graduating college or starting their own businesses. Their stories were mixed—some shared success, others despair. One model, Rebcka, who Wondemu met in 2019 and has photographed the most, always shared bits about her family and friends, but they eventually lost contact.

In 2022, Wondemu found out why. She invited Rebcka to the Ethiopia studio for a third time, and only then did she discover that Rebcka had been imprisoned for several months after her neighbors accused her of holding opposing political views. Wondemu says Rebcka was changed by this experience. She was traumatized, lost weight, lost her job, and lost many of her friends. But as Wondemu photographed her, she says Rebcka seemed hopeful and resilient despite what she’d gone through. Parts of her story are published on Wondemu’s website.

“The number of events that took place over the last three years make me feel like I was in a dream of some sort,” according to the site. “I’m still trying to wake up from it … I pray one day I get the love I deserve, the family I’ve always dreamt of. Until then life goes on.”

It’s Rebcka’s “quiet strength and resilience” that Wondemu hopes to portray in her current exhibit, whether it’s in her portraits or in her cyanotype prints she dubs the Phoenix series. She hopes that people looking at her art see defiance in the face of adversity as well as her own growth as a photographer. “My style has changed and I’ve grown from where I started making small prints to now making these larger prints,” Wondemu says. “The style and the title of the show basically describes my journey, I include my muses—the people that I photograph—in that story.”

Wondemu’s photos and the story she’s trying to tell at Art of Noize definitely had an impact on the people who’ve visited the gallery, especially fellow Ethiopian Lidia Mengistu. “It’s beautiful, it’s authentic,” she tells City Paper. “As someone from the same culture, I can almost feel the people that are in the pictures. It’s amazing.”

For those who were Black but not from Africa, they found another interpretation of Wondemu’s work. Jayrick Hayes saw the kind of representation Black people deserve in art. “It’s always good to see a reflection of yourself and see people that look like you through art,” he says. “It’s empowering.”

Hayes’ favorite aspect of the photos are their humanity. He’s happy to see Black people in photos that aren’t trying to be provocative. Rather, they are well defined, as if to say, “I’m no different than anybody in this room, or anybody that’s hanging on the wall with me—I’m just my own self,” Hayes says. He was particularly enamored with Rebcka’s photos.

“I think she’s looking at me,” he says. “I can only imagine what is in her mind. I feel like she’s actually paying attention to how I’m doing and cares about what’s happening outside of herself. It’s a powerful photo.”

Wondemu says people have come up to her at her exhibits to express how they felt seen in the photos. “Those are probably my proudest moments and best comments that I hear,” she says. “I didn’t see myself being represented in the art world for the longest time. So the fact that people are coming and saying, ‘I see myself in this image,’ is really great to see.”

“This is why I do it all,” she continues. “This is why I go through the process of picking this medium and spending hours upon hours to make a photograph.”

Wondemu’s “hours upon hours” is an understatement. Just to have her images shown to her D.C. audience, she takes 17-hour flights to and from Ethiopia, then there’s the time spent talking to her models, preparing them to be photographed, taking the shots, and, finally, developing the film. A lot of labor goes into making her art. So when viewers connect, Wondemu says the feeling is “pure bliss.”

Ferguson, the gallery owner, believes Wondemu has a bright path ahead of her. “I see Red going international,“ Ferguson says. “I see Red actually making it into big galleries in New York and beyond. I see Red on a scale beyond just D.C. galleries. I’m really excited for her future.”

Redeat Wondemu gives an artist talk starts at 3 p.m. on Jan. 13 at Art of Noize, where Her runs through Jan. 20. artofnoizedmv.com. Free.