Elliott Verdier, a young French photographer, offers a personal look at Liberia through his photographs, currently exhibited in Paris.

An exploration of Liberian memory

Reaching for Dawn is an exploration of Liberian memory, its silences and its oversights by the young French photographer. Elliott Verdier offers us with this series a personal look at the gray areas of Liberia’s history – in particular, the civil war that ravaged the country between 1989 and 2003 – as well as the resilience of its inhabitants. Of the war, we do not speak. No real memorial has been built, no day is set aside for commemoration. Executioners and victims are still face to face outside of any attempt at national reconciliation. The trauma etched in the flesh of the population is crystallized in the weak foundations of society and bleeds onto a new generation with an uncertain future. From his first trip, Elliott Verdier did not bring back any images; going to meet the inhabitants - all the inhabitants –, he immerses himself in the history of the country, its atmosphere, its stories and records testimonies.

Copyright Elliott Verdier

Resilience and hope for a better future

Subsequently, accompanied by his camera, which requires building a real collaboration with the subjects photographed, he establishes the need for dialogue at the very heart of the creation of the image. He thus delicately confirms the documentary intention of relaying to those who do not speak and who have nevertheless agreed to confide in him. It is these stories that still lead Elliott Verdier to create a visual dialogue between color images and others in black and white. This exchange reflects the violence of the paradox that underlies both the founding of Liberia and the daily reality of its inhabitants : while during the day, resilience and hope for a better future seem to animate the country, at night the silence, absence and the ghosts of war resurface, haunting the nightmares of Liberians. The result is an admirable work of symbolism and meaning whose poetry is equal to the complexity of the story. With Reaching for Dawn, Elliott Verdier questions, records, photographs… in a word, documents, in the noblest sense of the term, the painful scarring of a country.

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