Around 1 pm, word spread that shots had been fired at the CDC headquarters in Monrovia. When I arrived, CDC supporters eagerly escorted me upstairs into the room in the main building where a man, shot in the head, was clearly dead. They said others had died too, as many as four or five. Others were injured as well.The phone network went out, and it was hard to tell what was happening.

The strangest part was a stand off between the Liberian riot police and the Nigerian UNMIL unit. The jury is still out on what happened there. It seemed that many people were itching for a fight.

“Tonight, tonight there will be a massacre.” I heard it again and again. Let’s all hope it isn’t true.

All photos copyright Glenna Gordon/AFP.

Six months ago, when Tim Hetherington died, I had just returned to New York from the Liberia-Ivory Coast border. His work, which I thought of often, was with me then as I made the difficult adjustment from humanitarian crisis to Brooklyn life.

Yesterday, when Gaddafi died, I was teaching a photography workshop to a group of Liberians, using Tim’s book as a guide. It was hard to get them to move on to the next activity — they could have easily spent the rest of the day looking at Long Story Bit by Bit. I was reminded, once again, of the importance of his work to both an international audience and Liberians.

On the Lens, Mike Kamber speaks at length about what kind of photographer Tim was and his important legacy.

More than any journalist I know, Tim was conceptual in his work. He thought about the big ideas behind an event, the dynamics, history and driving forces. He then tailored his photography and multimedia work accordingly, trying to dig through and expose these forces. His methods stood in stark contrast to many of us who photograph what fate and others present to us, unwittingly allowing the narrative to be shaped through our acquiescence.

In an astonishingly wide-ranging oeuvre that ran from photo books to articles and film to personal videos, Tim smashed boundaries and enlarged our understanding of what a documentarian and journalist could be.

“I’ve never seen myself as a war photographer,” Tim said in an interview withGlenna Gordon. “This is about narrative. I’m very open to any visual conceits and any possibilities at my disposal to better explain to people the ideas I’m exploring. I like art photography, I like still life, I like war photography. I like to include everything to weave a tapestry to explain to someone, ‘What happened?’”

I’m honored that Mike brought up the thoughts Tim shared with me a couple of years ago, and reminded, once again, of what a loss his death was, not just to his loved ones and his friends around the globe, but also to the world of image making and journalism.

If you’re in New York, make sure you stop by the opening of Tim’s Libya work at the Bronx Documentary Center. 

Volunteers have spent the past five months building the Bronx Documentary Center in Tim Hetherington’s memory. This weekend, his work from Libya will be shown there for the first time. Next week, classes of high school students will visit the gallery to learn about journalism, the Libyan revolution and Tim Hetherington. The BDC is located at 614 Courtlandt Ave. in the Bronx.

Follow @followbdc and @nytimesphoto on Twitter.

The photos I took of Prince Johnson back in 2009 are making the rounds. Back in 2009, I drove over to Duport Road listening to Michael Jackson – he had died that morning – and feeling apprehnsive about entering a warlord’s home alone.

I had nothing to fear, of course, except for being assaulted with self aggrandizing revisionist history. See my interview with him on Foreign Policy here. 

Now, years later, his name in the headlines, I wonder why people are surprised that he’s backing Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She’s got the money, and CDC has publicly said they will implement Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations. That might be an offensive aimed at EJS, but our friend Prince would suffer consequences as well.

His support for EJS is important, but victory for her party is still far from a sure thing.

Below are my favorite photos from the PJ craziness of 2009. The first is of a room in the Capital building where I spent hours and hours waiting. The second is PJ with his pet eagle. I mentioned the eagle to another journalist who went to interview Johnson, and he returned from the interview with news that the eagle has died.

Voting in Liberia’s elections yesterday was calm and organized. I spent most of the day in Bomi County waiting for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to vote, and then came back to Monrovia in the evening.

EJS stood in line for nearly half an hour before a special line for the “elderly” was created so she could be vast tracked to vote. I hear the Tubman and Weah didn’t wait in line at all.

All photos copyright Glenna Gordon/AFP

I took this portrait of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in August 2009 for the New York Times Magazine. The interviewer, Deborah Solomon, is often hard on her subjects and I worried about future access to the president because of being associated with what could have potentially been a stern piece. I had nothing to fear, as the west continues to embrace Ellen while she struggles at home.

I’m off to Nigeria this morning, but I’ll be back in Monrovia on Monday for the election showdown and big fist round vote on Tuesday.

A couple snaps from the CDC rally on Friday. No talk of the EJS Nobel, but that’s not surprising. CDC, the main opposition party, will use this as another opportunity to point out that Ellen’s accolades abroad don’t mean changes for Liberia.

All photos copyright Glenna Gordon/AFP

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of months in New York working on  a new edit of my work from Liberia. I’ve thought a lot about what it is that pulls me to this strange country and what it is that I’m trying to say about  this place. I have more clarity on this than ever, and a brand new set of portfolio images that I will use as a starting point for the next couple of weeks snapping the elections in Liberia.

Big, big thanks to Alison Morely at the International Center for Photography, Alan Chin, Jason Eskanazi, Candace Feit, Erica McDonald, and many, many others for all the feedback and assistance recently and over the past couple of years.

Please check out the full edit on my website here, and a couple of the newly rediscovered and sequenced images below too.

A weekend or two ago, I went out to Staten Island for the last time before I head to Liberia next week to cover the elections. My time in New York has been busier than expected, and I didn’t get out to the Island as often as I would have liked to, but I’m still happy to have formed relationships with the Liberian community there. Every time I arrive on Park Hill Ave, someone calls out my name. “Sis G! How you?” and it’s like I never left Monrovia. But then I glance up at the walls of New York Housing projects, the parking lots filled with American teenagers, and I know I have.

I’ll be back in New York in November, and complain about the cold and missing Liberia with my friends on Park Hill.

See more of my project from Staten Island here on GlennaGordon.com. 

There’s a new report out from Amnesty International on the state of prisons in Liberia. You can also see photos on BBC, and other images on glennagordon.com.