There are a lot of articles about surfing in Liberia. But, this one by William Powers, who lived in Liberia during times of war and times of peace, made me ready to be reachin’ back.

I’m thrilled to have my photo of a stormy morning at the beach in Robertsport accompany it.

The next day, an old buddy from “Taylor time” picked me up in his dented Toyota. Harris Johnson, a computer technician in a Yankees cap, grinned as he gunned his car downtown, Monrovia’s fire-scarred skyline looking like something out of Mad Max. We passed over the bridge to Bushrod Island, a hardscrabble industrial section of town, and I spotted the ruins of a pre-war movie theater and remembered the exquisite little groundnut-soup shop that had been tucked behind it. Harris pulled over. Throughout the war, the place had always been half empty, but we found it buzzing with a lunchtime crowd. We were shown to the only seats left and heard from the kitchen the rhythmic sounds of cooks pounding the cassava-yam dough called “dumboy.” A pair of goats bleated from a room to our left as we savored each spoonful of peanut-flavored soup.

Read the whole thing at the Atlantic, and you can see more of my tearsheets here.

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. 

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:

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’m thrilled to have one of my work featured on Verve Photo: The New Breed of Documentary Photographers. The Ducor was one of my favorite spots in Monrovia and I visited often. To see more of this strange and beautiful place, check out this multimedia piece I worked on with radio reporter Jason Margolis for PRI. 

And, here are some more photos from the Ducor.

Thrilled that two of my photos from Liberia are currently on display in a gallery in LA as part of the International Photography Award’s themed competion One Shot: The City. Big thanks to IPA and everyone else involved in this show.

Buses that were once labeled “A Gift from the Government of India to the People of Liberia,” were re-labeled with signs from the National Tax Administration saying, “Your taxes at work.” Despite the buses, there is a severe lack of public transportation in Monrovia, and outside of the capital it is almost nonexistent.

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?):

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.

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.