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.
I found the scarlett lion on the roof of a friend’s house in Kampala back in 2006 when I went through a crate of discarded items he and a few other artists had gathered. On that day, I was looking for something and I found the lion: a discarded kid’s toy made in China on the cheap, that somehow found it’s way to 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.
Chief Boima’s new album is right up my alley — after years in Africa, and now finding myself bouncing back and forth and spending more and more time in New York, the strong urban beats remixed with traditional African tunes sounds wonderfully funky and familiar, yet new and engaging. Give a listen! And check out his show at the Zebulon in Williamsburg on January 31.
Chief Boima f. Sorie Kondi, “Without Money, No Family” by The FADER
The kind folks over at Africa is a Country put up a post about some of my Liberia work that was featured on LightBox earlier this week. An anonymous Liberian said in a comment,
Glenna Gordon (the photographer) context in this article is so bias and subjective. Of course, as a non Liberian, you would expect a more objective view, but as a Liberian, we can clearly see who she sides with and with whom she hangs out… We, Liberians need to tell it in our own voices, our way, or else this is all one outsider’s opinion after another.
Of course he’s right. But the point he misses is that I’ve never claimed objectivity. Oppositely — I think of my work as deeply personal and very influenced by my own thoughts, experiences, and relationships in Liberia. While many forms of journalism and story telling are personal, I’m more and more conscious of the role this plays in my own work. The photos I take are the photos I choose to take, and two photographers in the same situation will come back with two very different sets of images for that very reason.
A few weeks ago I had a half-formed idea that I tumblr’ed (since what is Tumblr for if not half formed thoughts?):
As my thoughts on photography change and my vision evolves, I look through old folders of images and think often of the pictures I didn’t take, of all that I looked at without seeing. The memory of photographs not taken is perhaps stronger than images sitting on a hard drive, forgotten.
That looking through old images, that culling and curating, is also important. Time and memory help me understand my own subjectivity, opinions, and experiences in a place that I care about so deeply.
I pulled together a new collection of photos from those forgotten images sitting on old hard drives: And the days go by. It’s about everything the commentor accuses me of. But, perhaps by embracing this, the accusation becomes a catalyst in the continual trek to understand the images I’ve made, the stories people have shared with me, and the world we all live in.
Selected images here. More on my website here. More on my harddrive, still forgotten and waiting for the right moment to be remembered.
I’ve spent the better part of the past three years working as a photographer in Liberia. Writing this with my laptop perched on my knees as the C train rattles along from Brooklyn to Manhattan, I’m sad to be missing the inauguration of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the beginning of the next chapter for Liberia. But I couldn’t be more thrilled to have my work up on Time’s photoblog LightBox. Please stop by and take a look, and see more images from Liberia on my website, and, below, some thoughts on my work and time in Liberia.
“Steal from steal, make God laf.”
A thief who steals from another thief makes God laugh.
Liberia’s civil war ended nearly a decade ago and the country is, at least nominally, peaceful. Some things are getting better for some people.
But after so many years of conflict, no one makes plans for the future.
I first visited Liberia in January 2009, and since then, signs of progress assure donors and investors that their money is well spent. A couple of times a year, the government and businesses put a fresh coat of paint over all the buildings along the main roads. They paint over the mold and the wet, but in the soupy tropical air, the quick coating won’t keep the walls clean.
Freed American slaves came to Liberia in the 1820s. They called themselves the Americos. They wore top hats and hoop skirts despite the hot West African sun. They brought antebellum inequality with them, but this time, they were in charge. The indigenous people of Liberia became second-class citizens in their own country. More than a hundred years of grievances led to a coup and political unrest in the 1980s, followed by a civil war that lasted fourteen years, displaced a third of the country and left 200,000 dead. In a country of just three million people, no one was untouched.
The past will always out; fixing the surface doesn’t fix the problem. In my work, I seek traces of war wounds – psychological and physical – and examine the devices improvised to hide the hurt and embrace the present. I seek out signs of a time before the conflict, where a romanticized past is still visible. I try to understand what it means to live today without thoughts of tomorrow.
Get in touch with the African Artists Foundation asap!
From the LagosPhoto blog:
Noor Photographer Stanley Greene will honour us at African Artists’ Foundation with a visit THIS January!
He will offer a 3-day workshop FREE to serious minded photographers interested in photo-documentary. Tentative dates for the workshops are: 7th /8th January and the lecture on the evening of the 9th Q/A.
Take advantage of this unimaginably rare and unique opportunity.
Email: contact@africanartists.org if you are interested in participating in this workshop.
To preview his work: http://www.noorimages.com/newsblog/singleview/article/black-passport/
(c) Stanley Greene
Liberia-Ivory Coast border at Buutuo. February 2011.
I’m starting the new year by looking at old work. The images that catch my eye are different now than they were before. This, I suppose, is photographic growth. Sometimes I wonder what the other side will look like.
HT to Bombastic Element.
Also, I’m tumblring these days. See it here.
And a new year filled with growth and light.
A bit late posting about this, but last week at Guernica we featured an interview with Azu Nwagbogu, the founder of the African Artists Foundation, the brains behind LagosPhoto. Thanks to Joe Penney for doing the interview. There’s also a slideshow of some of the great work that was on show in Lagos — please head over and check it out!
This Nando’s advert, which is no longer being broadcast, has already been done the rounds on the internetz but I couldn’t resist reposting it here. My favorite part is Mugabe and Idi Amin doing the Titanic move on a tank. Which scene is your favorite?? Does anyone find this offensive? Or is it just funny?
See this photo and others in the Foreign Policy photo compilation Once Upon a Time in Mogadishu.
