Elliott Verdier: Samuel in a Lake Nicknamed the Zwedru Sea, 2020

From Reaching for Dawn

56 x 70 cm
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
Digital print on Canson Baryta Prestige paper, 340gsm
Accompanied by signed artist label
£1,200, unframed

Shipping worldwide

Enquiries: tom@opendoors.gallery

Description

Elliott Verdier is a documentary photographer based in Paris, France. He has been featured extensively in publications such as The New York Times, Vogue Italia, M le Monde, British Journal of photography, Financial Times and This is Paper. He has exhibited at Festival Circulation(s) (2021), Rencontres du 10ème (2021) and Belfast Photo Festival (2019). Verdier was a finalist of Prix Levallois (2019) and recently the Aperture Portfolio Prize (2021).

 

“Of the bloody civil war (1989-2003) that decimated Liberia, its population does not speak. No proper memorial has been built, no day is dedicated to commemoration. The country, still held by several protagonists of the carnage, refuses to condemn its perpetrators. This deafening silence, that resonates internationally, denies any possibility of social recognition or collective memory of the massacres, condemning Liberia to an endless feeling of abandonment and drowsy resignation. The trauma carved into the population’s flesh is crystallized in the society’s weak foundations, still imbued with an unsound Americanism, and bleeds onto a new generation with an uncertain future.

This photographic and sound work was spread over a two year period. The images were made over the entire country, from the diamond mines of Gbarpolu to the fishing harbors of Harper and through the immense slum of Westpoint. The analog photographs, made with a large format camera, offer two interweaved narratives, one in black & white and the other in color.

In parallel to the photographs, recordings of men and women’s voices are added, be they victims or perpetrators, to recount their damaged fate. The dark and enigmatic monochromes are contextual images that establish the setting for the color portraits. These black & white images are a reference to the night that so often appears in witness accounts, a moment in time where the trauma becomes palpable. They distill a heavy atmosphere that spreads the suffocating silence over the country. From this silence, portraits emerge to humanise the dark landscapes, this history, and to tell the incredible resilience of this population. For despite everything, Liberia is now at peace.” – Elliott Verdier, 2021

 

Artwork above
“The head of a young man, his expression serene, emerges from water the colour of rust. On the surface, the perfect symmetry of his reflection creates a mirrored presence by tracing the outline of a butterfly, a two-headed being with one face turned symbolically towards the future (the sky) while the other is directed towards the past (the water). From the tension between the opposing gazes comes immobility. And so the photos in ‘Reaching for Dawn’ emanate a kind of mournful expectancy, for theirs is an enigmatic and non-tranquil state, one where the present is always on the point of vanishing. Fixed in a suspended moment in time, human beings, places, landscapes and objects morph into memory. A jagged memory that haunts the history of Liberia, a country where the promise of its name appears to have run aground for now, like a rusty vessel on one of Robertsport’s beaches.”

Gaël Faye
Singer-songwriter, rapper, writer

 

For all enquires, please contact: tom@opendoors.gallery