War, Torture, and Liberia



This afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Gregory Stemn. Mr. Stemn is a world-renowned photographer, who spent 20 years chronicling images from the Liberian Civil War. The images he has collected are moving, shocking, and saddening. I feel it is very important this book gets published in a way that moves and motivates people to better understand the conflict and learn what they can do to help.

Am I turning soft on you here? No, Africa has long been an area of both interest and confusion for me. I fully admit my knowledge of this conflict is shallow, at best, but I'm eager to learn more. It's hard to stomach some of the images I was exposed to today, but it is the ugly part of war we need to remind ourselves of.

War to the majority of Americans is something that happens far away, and we see its effects packaged neatly and delivered back to us in flag covered caskets or a solider in a wheelchair. Very few of us experience the rawness of being exposed to the front lines. Maybe if we had war's very worst images in our mind's eye, we would be less likely to support war and war-like violence as a means to solve our problems with other countries.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Good point although I wonder if people would just become more numb to war by seeing the pictures,ha in the same manner that the graphic images on the news no longer seem to bother people..
Unknown said…
That is a very interesting point you bring up. I suppose the way to do it, is in a manner that brings hope and talks about what people in the present are doing to fix/prevent future events such as this.

We are actually struggling with how to prevent the most very graphic images. Obviously they are not suitable for everyone, so do we do 2 editions of the book or simply include a CD with the extra images and an explicit warning?
Anonymous said…
I don't know what the "ha" was in my previous comment.
I think the CD idea is a good one..
Unknown said…
Thanks for the feedback on the CD idea. Most everyone seems to be leaning towards that idea, so it's nice to get "independent verification".

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