05/16
2012
2012
If you’re in New York on Thursday, stop by the Dart Society Fundraiser at CPW25.
One of my prints is up for auction too.
I’m Glenna Gordon, an American photographer and journalist, presently commuting between West Africa and Brooklyn. Previously, I lived in Liberia. And before that, I lived in Uganda. I’ve traveled and worked in over a dozen countries in Africa.
This blog is named after a found object — a plastic lion that was in a crate of discarded items a friend and a few other artists had gathered. I sat on their roof in Nakasero, Kampala sorting through the crate. On that day, I was looking for something. “You are lost!” a Uganda might say. But, I’d found this discarded kid’s toy, made in China on the cheap, that somehow ended up in East Africa. Something about the hollowed out, paint-chipped figurine appealed to my understanding of this place: I’d never seen a real lion, after all.
... on Why Invisible Children can’t explain away this photo If you’re in New York on Thursday, stop by the Dart Society Fundraiser at CPW25.
One of my prints is up for auction too.
Few photographers are as controversial as Pieter Hugo. The racial undertones of his work have been discussed at length in many places. But, for the most part, Hugo has let his images stand on their own rather than contributing his own thoughts to the dialogue.
Until now. Guernica art editor Noah Rabinowitz interviewed Hugo recently and it’s one of the first times Hugo has spoken up. Rabinowtiz asks tough questions, and while Hugo doesn’t always answer them in full, the thoughts he does share are very telling. Make sure you give the whole thing a read, and here’s an excerpt specifically about race, criticism and Nollywood:
Guernica: Others may disagree, but in the Nollywood work, I see some comedy.
Pieter Hugo: A lot of people have missed that element of it. It was my Tarantino. I wish more people would see that. But you know what is happening, there’s a lot of reaction to that work. There were particularly strong reactions. One of the Nigerian authors who worked with me on Nollywoodhad threats made against him for collaborating with me on this work. He was called a race traitor. It’s quite scary when academics start dictating to artists that they should be politically correct or follow certain rules of behavior—which means we have to start making dishonest work, which means it becomes didactic and propaganda in nature. I find that very troublesome, very problematic. It’s taken me a long time to figure out why it affected me so deeply. It really upset me. It was never my intention in any way.
Guernica: How is the reaction, if you were to show the image to a Nigerian as opposed to a European or American?
Pieter Hugo: It depends. When you want to look at the Nollywood work and read it as an itinerary of the Nigerian film industry, of course it’s inaccurate. But if you want to read it as, this is a creative person’s interpretation of the phenomena, and has drawn inspiration from the aesthetics of the phenomena, and the audience’s reading of the phenomena, then critique the work on its own merits. Say, “they’re boring photographs where everyone seems to be placed in the middle of the frame.” But of course I’m not an anthropologist. That’s not what my preoccupations are. I found those criticisms debilitating for a really long time. It took me awhile to work through that.
My experience with the vitriolic criticism that has come from that work made me very conscious of how damaging it can be to engage your work on that level and to try to dictate to people what they should or should not do or how they should or should not approach the subject matter. And of course on another level it’s completely condescending, assuming custodianship of other people’s culture. There’s something incredibly patronizing in doing that. In Nigeria you are dealing with the third largest film industry in the world; the majority of the people read newspapers every day. In a way, the critic is more racist and more condescending. The racist word, using racism to critique anyone, unless it’s completely overtly so, is a very dangerous thing to do. It’s not something that should be taken lightly or thrown around without careful consideration.
Guernica: Do you think it is your responsibility as a photographer to provide interpretation of what you see?
Pieter Hugo: As an artist it’s not my responsibility to provide a responsible rendition of how the rest of the world should perceive or not perceive Africa. Firstly, I’m not really concerned with Africa, I just happen to work here and it’s become an extension of my topography and the world that I inhabit. Continually ghettoizing it in that way is also very dangerous, or thinking of things as purely Africa, all you are doing is perpetuating this notion of otherness in some way.
I’m thrilled to have received an honorable mention in this year’s Magenta: Flash Forward Emerging Photographers 2012. Many thanks to the Magenta Foundation.
Here’s an audio slideshow I photographed and produced for PRI along with radio reporter Bruce Wallace. Make sure you check out the whole PRI package with Bruce’s broadcast piece too.
BBC’s Focus on Africa recently broadcast a debate about Africa’s image. Thanks to @AfricanDigitalArt for including one of my images from As the Days Go By. for the accompanying slideshow The Many Images of Africa’s Daily Life.
Kate Thomas wrote a piece for Guernica called The House that Doe Built. A must read! And I finally got a chance to use that photo of the crazy stalactites at Doe’s house in Zwedru.
Back in October during Liberian election season, Dan Howden and I visited the Ducor (which every one who reads this blog knows is one of my favorite places ever…) and he recently wrote a dispatch for Roads&Kingdoms that includes a slideshow of some of my Ducor pix.
The Guardian recently ran a photo from my archive from the 2009 Miss Liberia pageant. The current one is causing quite the scandal – make sure you check out Afua Hirsch’s great dispatch, and you can see more images from the 2009 pageant on my site too. 
More reactions to the Taylor verdict, this one from Liberian Senator and informal family spokesman Sando Johnson, via AFP:
Johnson then recounted a rambling parable told by Taylor when he agreed to resign as president in August 2003 before going into exile.
The parable centred on three cows — a black, a red and a white cow — who befriend a lion. Having eaten up all the antelopes around, the hungry lion tells the white and red cows that they will be spared if they let him eat the black one. He repeats his trick until the white cow is left alone and gets eaten up too.
“You must be careful. Today is Charles Taylor. The black cow is going. The red cow is waiting out there,” Taylor said in 2003.
Johnson argued that history had vindicated Taylor’s prediction, citing the demise of Libya’s Moamer Kadhafi and the downfall of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, who is awaiting trial in The Hague.
“Who knows, now these three cows have gone maybe another three cows will come. Once African leaders are not firm… the black race is going to suffer because of subjecting ourselves to the whites for little or nothing,” he said.
Johnny Dwyer writes in Foreign Policy on the questions that remain after the verdict – a must read that details Taylor’s prison break (not that outlandish from a prison that had seen several breaks prior to his), and his supposed role supplying information to the CIA (spoiler: there’s no substantiated evidence that he did), to this great anecdote from Dwyer’s conversation with Taylor’s former Defense Minister Tom Woewiyu:
“I always used to tell him this parable about when the elephant tells you to do something, you don’t look at the elephant and say ‘no.’ Because the elephant is the most powerful animal on the face of the Earth,” said Woewiyu, who now lives in Pennsylvania. “America is the elephant of the world today.” Taylor told Woewiyu he believes his unwillingness to open up offshore oil development to U.S. companies led to his prosecution, a theory one former U.S. Embassy official described to me as “a crock of shit.”
Aaron Leaf questions the myth of Charles Taylor’s enduring popularity on Africa is a Country:
When I first moved to Monrovia and had colleagues and acquaintances profess their love for Taylor I was shocked, but it eventually got boring. Taylor supporters—posturing young men not old enough to have lived through war, greying NPFL partisans grasping at faded glory, former child soldiers messed up from years of trauma and drug abuse, boys and girls named after him (Charles and Charlsetta), relatives living off the money they made during his plunderous reign—made for a rather pathetic bunch. The common denominator was a love for Taylor’s enduring charisma and a belief in an international conspiracy to deprive Liberia of its rightful leader…
So when outsiders report from media savvy pro-Taylor rallies in downtown Monrovia and mingle with the crowds of men watching the verdict from tea shops and “intellectual centers”— overcaffeinated men in love with their own voices—it may not be very accurate.
What about the woman selling fritters across the street, or the Krahn laborer trying to avoid walking through the rally? Or all the people in the vast suburbs surrounding Monrovia that didn’t make make the trek downtown to share their opinions?
Tamasin Ford reports from some of those pro Taylor rallies for NPR,
Before the verdict was announced, crowds bustled and debated on the streets in downtown Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. There was a strong — maybe somewhat naïve — expectation Taylor would be coming back to his homeland.
People cheered and clapped as they saw him appear on television. The man who was president from 1997 to 2003 still commands a lot of support and even adoration here. But as the verdict finally came down, the mood shifted.
The judge declared Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting the war in Sierra Leone on all 11 counts. They include arming rebel groups with guns and ammunition in exchange for diamonds, the use of child soldiers, rape, sexual slavery and acts of torture. He will not be coming back to Liberia.
“It makes me crazy because Charles Taylor had no problem with Freetown people,” says 23-year-old student Amara Sanoe.
Finlay Young discusses Taylor’s popularity as part of a system of patronage for the Daily Beast:
This “kindness” was actually an intrinsic part of Taylor’s strategy, a counterpart to his ruthlessness. Patronage is a deeply embedded social norm in Liberia, a potent strategy in a place where so many have so little. I look after you, so you belong to me. Academic William Reno, in his 1999 book Warlord Politics and African States, describes how Taylor ran a “shadow state” based on personal links. Formal administrative institutions were largely impotent. Taylor was perfectly formed for the intuitive, opportunistic life of a rebel, but not for the stolid bureaucracy of government. Paul remembers how “everything collapsed as soon as he left (for exile in 2003). Because everything was built on him.”
When researching a recent article on the post-war experience of some of these young men, I was struck by the fact that the only person who escapes blame for their present predicament is the man who bears greatest responsibility: Taylor. For many, the coming of peace signaled the permanent loss of respect. In Monrovia, they squat in the crowded spaces between lavish compounds, the towering walls of which are a reflection of the mistrust which corrodes post conflict reconciliation in Liberia.
BBC’s Robin White reflects on his six phone chats with Taylor over the years, along with some of the original audio which is definitely worth a listen:
New Year’s Days are usually a bit thin on news and much of the discussion in the Focus on Africa office on New Year’s Day 1990 was along the lines of “how on earth are we going to fill the programme?”
And then, Charles Taylor called.
Emily Schmall and Clair McDougall write about identity and Liberian history for the Daily Beast:
But Liberia’s notorious modern history—from Doe’s coup and his own torture and death at the hands of rebels; through Taylor’s presidency, his exile to Nigeria, and his war-crimes trial; and up to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s reelection late last year—is conspicuously absent from the textbooks that circulate in Liberian schools. When the prewar generation, including Johnson Sirleaf, was growing up, young Liberians read the civics books of A. Doris Banks Henries, a Yale-educated Methodist missionary whose The Liberian Nation: A Short History starts in 1839, when freed American slaves sailed to Africa to bring “civilization” and Christian values to a “savage, primitive, belligerent people.”
Dan Howden reports from Taylor’s home in Monrovia, White Flower, where he spoke to Vicky Taylor:
Among the great and good who would celebrate Taylor being found guilty will be many who were once seduced by his unusual charisma. They might be embarrassed to know that their tributes, signed photographs and gifts to a guerrilla leader who terrorised and captivated Liberia still decorate White Flower, Taylor’s modernist mansion on the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia.
Six years on from his arrest it’s a mouldering heap, where his young wife Victoria and their daughter, conceived during a conjugal visit to the Netherlands, wait for him to come home.
Sitting in the courtyard with its poor copy of Rome’s Trevi Fountain and a collection of rusting sports cars, she maintains that her husband has been the victim of a deep conspiracy.
“He’s not what the international community demonised him to be,” she says of someone charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and the recruitment of child soldiers…
“They say he stole $3bn. Where is that $3bn?” Vicky says gesturing around the decaying White Flower.
Indeed, the grand residence, built in four steps down the side of a hill in the once upscale neighbourhood of Congo Town, has seen better days. Dead birds and palm fronds compost in the drained swimming pool and stray dogs wander across the wrecked courts where tennis enthusiast Taylor used to play.
The inside has fared a little better and the chapel on the ground floor has Jewish Menorah candlesticks in homage to his new religion. The house’s bric-a-brac of politics and high living is at odds with her claim that he wants to return to Liberia to be a farmer.
The often bizarre and contradictory path of Taylor’s life is mapped out across the dusty reception room at his former residence. Kofi Annan smiles from a signed portrait stacked on the floor with similar keepsakes, a copper plaque commemorates a “peace award” given to him by the regional power bloc ECOWAS. Bearing down on the room’s white and gold French furniture is an oil painting depicting a serene Charles rising through clouds towards a smiling Christ. Among the family portraits lies a well-thumbed copy of the book Israel at 50.
Earlier today, Charles Taylor was found guilty on 11 counts of planning, aiding and abetting crimes of war in Sierra Leone.
In Brooklyn, I watched on my laptop, awake and jet lagged at 5 am. I streamed the trial and incessantly refreshed Twitter and Facebook, eager to hear updates from Monrovia and Freetown.
In Liberia, just as the verdict was announced, a rainbow-like halo formed around the sun, several friends and colleagues said. Many Liberians interpret this as an sign of the death of an important person.
Taylor might be dead in the water, but for some, the trial is a political farce aimed at making a fool of a beloved leader, while George Bush, Ellen Johnson, and General Butt Naked walk the streets with impunity. For now, things are still calm, it seems.
Afua Hirsch explains in the Guardian,
Ever since Charles Taylor was extradited to the Hague in 2006, there have been two trials going on. One – the criminal inquiry into whether he is guilty of the 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to his involvement in the decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. For many, including the thousands of victims in Sierra Leone, the fact of the trial was only an important precursor to establishing his obvious guilt; a fair process to add the stamp of legitimacy to the inevitable outcome. Today, as they watched Taylor be convicted of aiding and abetting war crimes on all counts, they have seen justice done.
The second – the one popularly discussed in Liberia, which has watched its former president become the first African head of state to be convicted for war crimes – is the trial of the system of international criminal justice itself. Here, and perhaps here alone, many people believe Taylor is innocent and his conviction an injustice. The fact that guilt for joint criminal enterprise and command responsibility of the RUF– more serious charges than aiding and abetting – could not be proved against Taylor, for them is only a cursory nod to his general innocence. His trial is the product of an ornate plan designed by the international community to humiliate Liberia and cement its status as a pawn at their mercy. Vox pops by the Liberian press on the streets of Monrovia report views that his trial has been “nothing but a western conspiracy” and that “there has been no tangible evidence provided” in court.
CNN ran some of my photos from Liberia yesterday. When I struggle to explain why many Liberian still love Taylor, their views on international justice, or the complex understanding of the role America has played in their past and recent history, I find myself thinking back to the day I took this last photo of the Atlantic Ocean from the rooftop of the Ducor: a magnificent storm was brewing.
I’m not yet convinced that it has passed.
I had no idead any of this was coming: a forgotten photo spring boarded its way back into my life when Invisible Children released Kony2012. Many peers condemned it, other colleagues ignored it, and some applauded it. For the first few weeks when I was inundated with licensing requests and copyright battles, I just struggled to keep up with my email. And when the chaos subsided a bit, I realized I desperately wanted to go back to Northern Uganda.
The video left a giant visual blank and I wanted to fill that in.
Huge thanks to the amazing Jakob Schiller, whose patience and commitment to getting the story right shine through and to Raw File for showcasing this work.
