The general asks for forgiveness from a woman whose brother he murdered.
Exhibition on view from
28th February to 19th March, 2011
11 am to 7 pm (Sunday holiday)
RSVP : Priya – 080 40535212 (10am to 5pm)
at 26/1, Sua house,
Kasturba Cross road,
Near the British Library,
Bangalore – 560080
Guided Tour by Ryan Lobo
Friday, 18th March, 6 pm onwards
Ryan Lobo co-produced the critically acclaimed feature documentary "The Redemption of General Butt Naked." which was awarded best cinematography at the recent Sundance film festival 2011.
He also discusses the project in his TED talk.
WAR AND FORGIVENESS
War enjoys exciting press in our storytelling tradition. Photographs of men firing guns and charging forward make for great selling visuals. A Pandora’s box of pestilence, humiliation, rape, egos’, NGO’s, poverty and intensely debated editorials read by people too far away most of the time, usually do not. Our headlines are normally readable. Our images are often of the ordinary and the obvious. They reinforce our worldview and our view of ourselves. After all we are normal and ordinary people deserving of justice and the right to live peacefully. Until Pandora comes knocking.
In 2007, I traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan and Liberia. I experienced other peoples suffering at close quarters, immersed myself in stories and on occasion experienced fear for my own life. Unlike many people, I was fortunate enough to leave.
Child of poppy farmer watches photographer as fields are destroyed
Besides Iraq and Afghanistan I traveled to Liberia to shoot a story about a brutal warlord called “General Butt Naked”. He got his name from fighting stark naked and claims to have personally killed more than 10,000 people during Liberia’s civil war . He commanded his child soldiers to commit unspeakable crimes and enforced his command with brutality. The general is now a Christian evangelist named Joshua. We accompanied him as he walked the earth, visiting villages where he had once murdered, and as he says, seeking forgiveness and as he says, endeavoring to improve the lives of his former child soldiers.
I expected him to be killed outright but what I witnessed opened my eyes to an idea of forgiveness, which I always thought seemed impossible. In the midst of incredible poverty and loss, I watched people who had nothing, absolve a man who had taken everything from them.
Child of Afghan poppy farmers
Does forgiveness or redemption replace our idea of justice? Joshua says that sorry isn’t enough and one has to live it and prove it. He says he does not mind standing trial for his crimes and speaks about them from soapboxes across Monrovia to an audience that often includes his victims. Our ideas of victory often involve defeating an enemy outside ourselves. A terrorist. A naxalite. Not within.
Iraqi prison
We look upon these victims and perpetrators as others far away. We prevent ourselves from seeing ourselves in them. We do not allow ourselves to see what we fear the most, and which is so much a part of our deepest potentials. I am fascinated with the general because he represents the possibility of what we could be, for worse and for better.
“The banality of evil” is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt that was used to describe how the greatest evils in human history were not executed by psychopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises and ideas of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal, and ordinary.
I have come away from war with a sense of guilt which for a long while I could not explain. I wondered what use it would be to exhibit photographs, which I know will not sell, of faraway wars in India until I decided that the most depressing thing about working in war zones was not the fear of death. It is seeing the same thing, perhaps the seeds of the same thing within ourselves, in our conversations and in the way we treat our own people.
Disease, war and horror weren’t the only things that exited Pandora’s box. The last thing to exit was hope. If someone as atrocious as the general can attempt to redeem himself, regardless of whatever idea of justice prevails or its execution and regardless of the good or bad opinion of anyone, there is hope.
Child of Afghan heroin addict pretends to be a monster
Before one begs for forgiveness, he had to forgive himself. Healing comes with confession and acknowledgement of perpetration and then hopefully, forgiveness. Healing for all sides. And that is hope. Maybe for all of us.
Hindu Kush
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17 comments:
From my own personal journey I have learned that we do in fact create our own personal war zones. In our psyche, soul, spirit. We do not realize how relative we all are as human beings in this world. The only way to "live" is truly through forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about inviting the hurt back in but is about letting oneself move forward. We hold on to the hurt if we are unable to let go. A difficult task for us fragile yet ever so immaculate human beings. The inability to forgive I believe does stem from our ego's constitution to not first face our own self and forgive the one in the mirror first. With less or having lost all is in many ways a blessing although tragic. Having lost all we have no place to turn but to our own shadow that never leave us. We then realize the self and perhaps by witnessing the shadow we realize the light that brings it to life...forgiveness is that awareness. We are all human beings with souls trying to make it through. It is a process to forgive a journey to find a way to. But through my little life thus lived had I not forgiven and learned to continue to do so the river of life would have ceased to flow. I know this very well know because I am sailing along the river finally able to move forward in a way that life was meant to be lived. Forgiveness is the beginning. Nice work Mr.Lobo. Inspired this writer as you can see. :)
Congrats Ryan! Hope to catch you soon.
I wish I could have been there to experience whatever you must have. But even these photographs depict the disgrace of humanity. Taking to arms,the violence,creating deprivations...We must be ashamed. Really liked the photos.Keep it up!
Amazing story, Ryan. All the best at the showing today!
Amazing story Ryan. All the best at the showing today.
Nothing can ever compare with the brutal physicality of war. I wonder if we will ever evolve, beyond violence, greed and discompassion.. I sincerely hope so.
Thanks for sharing your vision, I appreciate it, it's somewhere I would never imagine myself to be, there in the midst of it all.
Truly poigant, & beautiful photography.
Amazing perspective, looking into the eyes of the subject reveals their untold stories, each of the photograph is so amazing
The role of women in healing a war-scarred Liberia has been of special interest to me lately. From Ms Ellen Sirleaf, to the Indian peace keepers (that was quite a surprise!), to the women in government, rebuilding the nation. The story is a haunting one, as well as a beacon of hope to neighboring countries. Mr Lobo, thank you for your perspective, I found it immensely refreshing, with a lot of food for thought.
Bloody Awesome..the imagery!
My dear Ryan,
I went to see "War and Forgiveness" when it traveled to Calcutta some time back.
It was an eye-opener. You created for you and for other photographers around the world, a completely new level. Your sensitivity shines through these photographs and that's what amazes me the most.
From every frame, it is evident that you were 'close enough' to your subjects emotionally, and that's fantastic.
Wishing you all the very best in life!
Keep clicking and keep inspiring us!
http://sayandebchowdhury.blogspot.com/2010/08/forgiveness-is-mystical-act-of-love-for.html
Sayandebs writeup on the exhibition
PART 1
Apocalypse Within: “Always Already”
A review of Ryan Lobo’s ‘War and Forgiveness’
9/1/2010/ Moumita Sen
He stands with his hand on his chest. His face is white. His gaze is clear and direct, yet it betrays no meaning, no emotion. It is as if you would never know him. It is as if he weren’t real. Like the picture of a disembodied soul. Like a metaphor for Jesus resurrected. He has walked with his tiny feet across the songs of innocence and experience. Now he has attained what William Blake would call a state higher innocence. The aura that this picture emanates surely belongs to the realm of the sacred- the divine, the otherworldly, the sublime. He is as pure as an idea.
But the photographer tells you of a land where children behave differently. It is not the idea of childhood- of innocent playing and learning- that provides comfort to the ageing mind. It’s a land where you suspect that every second child is a suicide-bomber. Indeed, the photographer wondered what is the little boy holding to his body? Maybe, he was afraid for a while. Then he realized that the poor boy was hiding the tear in his shirt.
The man in the picture is Joshua. Formerly known as General Butt Naked. A legendary warrior, General Butt Naked has killed more than 10,000 people in the civil wars in Liberia. He now claims to have been transformed. He is no longer the man who used to fight stark naked, who used to rip new-borns from their mothers and drink their blood. He is now a Christian evangelist who wants to transform the lives of the child soldiers he once trained to be brutal murderers. Ryan Lobo accompanied Joshua as he returned to men women and families he had wronged, as he sought forgiveness. He expected the people to kill Joshua immediately. But strangely, in a journey so far away and so deep within, Lobo realized that the enemy one needs to face up to is not a monster outside. It is much closer, much more mundane.
This particular photograph, Lobo says, could be a scene from a Shakespearean play. A man is surrounded on all sides by whispers and persuasions. By different forces- good and evil, right and wrong. And he is desperately trying to hold on to something.
Ryan Lobo tells stories. In Images, in words, in silences. ‘War and Forgiveness’ is a collection of photographs that happened as the result of a journey. A journey that was outside and inside, sublime and grotesque, revenge and redemption. Lobo’s narrative is poised on dichotomies, scaling the opposing forces that drive man, from within and without. Ryan Lobo’s photographs strung together are a story of this sublime walk across the extremes of human possibility. The extremes of love and hate, revenge and redemption. The metaphor of distance is important here. Distance real and metaphorical.
PART 2
Ryan Lobo tells stories. In Images, in words, in silences. ‘War and Forgiveness’ is a collection of photographs that happened as the result of a journey. A journey that was outside and inside, sublime and grotesque, revenge and redemption. Lobo’s narrative is poised on dichotomies, scaling the opposing forces that drive man, from within and without. Ryan Lobo’s photographs strung together are a story of this sublime walk across the extremes of human possibility. The extremes of love and hate, revenge and redemption. The metaphor of distance is important here. Distance real and metaphorical.
In 2007, Ryan Lobo travelled to Iraq, Afghanistan and Liberia. And as he says, he immersed himself in the stories of these lands. He thought he would not escape alive many times in this journey. But he did. Unlike many unfortunate others. The exhibition is a result of his journey across these lands.
He says somewhere that when he held his photographs, he felt he was holding on to something true. There is an appeal to the quality of the “real” in Lobo’s photographs that is essential to his narrative. Ryan Lobo is also a documentary film maker. The photographs can easily be imagined as stills from a docu-drama about the photographer’s encounter with a world ‘distant’ from his own. The images seem to point to a context. The images are strung in a narrative and they make meaning in relation to it. The images, it seems, look out for something outside of them. A clue, a story, a gut-wrenching scream. Lobo seems to use the invisible quality of his craft, its unmediated appearance, and its “truth claim” to foreground people, characters and their stories. It is as if he is witnessing some episodes of a tragic drama of the human condition. It is important to witness. To see, at least. It is as if Ryan Lobo transforms us into witnesses as we see what he saw.
Each portrait becomes a tale one wants to know. But there is only that much that the face or the eyes will say. It is the unknowable in these gazes that lure us. Like Sherbat Gulah’s eyes, they refuse to be silently gazed at. They stare back, or stubbornly look away. Sometimes they shine a torch in the viewer’s face and see from the dark while the viewer tries to deal with the uneasiness of suddenly being seen by an image.
He believes in what he calls “compassionate story-telling”. Empathy is essential to his art and thought. Forgiveness, compassion and empathy are the concepts that Lobo is trying to photographically and philosophically grapple with in this work. Empathy- to be able to transcend one’s self-hood and for a brief moment, to try to become another. The exercise of empathy is essential to any work of art, history or community living. Lobo, here speaks about the possibility of healing, redemption and hope.
As I read the travelogue of this photographer, he seemed to me to be the Captain Willard of Apocalypse Now, who embarks on a journey into depths, into ‘The Heart of Darkness’. It is the encounter between a Colonel Kurtz and a Captain Willard. Ryan Lobo’s photographs reminded me of the same civilizational and moral crisis that haunts Coppola’s film. Without the epic conclusion of Coppola’s allegory, here the two men do not engage in a fantasy of the grand end of everything. Instead they try to heal. They dream of hope for the human community.
At the end, like Captain Willard, our photographer realizes the possibility of being Kurtz, of becoming a General Butt Naked as inherent in every man. Even in himself. He says, “We look upon these victims and perpetrators as others far away. We prevent ourselves from seeing ourselves in them, in what we might fear the most, and which is so much a part of our deepest potentials. I am fascinated with the general because he represents the possibility of what we could be, for worse and possibly for better as well.”
The viewer and the reader- the one who is made to bear witness- also, meets the possibility of transformation, the possibility of transcendence, the possibility of making and thinking new.
Part 3
He believes in what he calls “compassionate story-telling”. Empathy is essential to his art and thought. Forgiveness, compassion and empathy are the concepts that Lobo is trying to photographically and philosophically grapple with in this work. Empathy- to be able to transcend one’s self-hood and for a brief moment, to try to become another. The exercise of empathy is essential to any work of art, history or community living. Lobo, here speaks about the possibility of healing, redemption and hope.
As I read the travelogue of this photographer, he seemed to me to be the Captain Willard of Apocalypse Now, who embarks on a journey into depths, into ‘The Heart of Darkness’. It is the encounter between a Colonel Kurtz and a Captain Willard. Ryan Lobo’s photographs reminded me of the same civilizational and moral crisis that haunts Coppola’s film. Without the epic conclusion of Coppola’s allegory, here the two men do not engage in a fantasy of the grand end of everything. Instead they try to heal. They dream of hope for the human community.
At the end, like Captain Willard, our photographer realizes the possibility of being Kurtz, of becoming a General Butt Naked as inherent in every man. Even in himself. He says, “We look upon these victims and perpetrators as others far away. We prevent ourselves from seeing ourselves in them, in what we might fear the most, and which is so much a part of our deepest potentials. I am fascinated with the general because he represents the possibility of what we could be, for worse and possibly for better as well.”
The viewer and the reader- the one who is made to bear witness- also, meets the possibility of transformation, the possibility of transcendence, the possibility of making and thinking new.
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Truly fantastic stuff, Ryan. These are unforgettable images and emotions. Congratulations and love.
beautiful storytelling. loved this post.
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