Journalist Tim Hetherington, who took photographs, conducted interviews, and wrote cross-referenced captions for each photo, worked hard for every inch of the beautiful hard-bound volume. He lived behind rebel lines in the African country of Liberia during its civil war there in 2003, returning to document changes there through 2008.
His photographs, all taken on film (not digitally), sweep across the wide pages with an eerie sense of darkness, an effect that Hetherington is keenly aware of. But he felt it naturally came about because of the subject matter.
“That’s what I like about photography—part of it is almost inexplicable,” says Mr. Hetherington. “There’s a magic to it, which I kind of like. I like that bit that we can’t quite explain. We just know, does it move us or not, is it interesting?”
Hetherington is a philosophical character, and it comes through in the nature of his work. Originally from London but now based in New York City, he instinctively looks at issues from a variety of standpoints and on multiple levels.
A key example of this is two images that don’t seem to be connected, but share an underlying thread of relevance. The book starts with the close-up image of an eye, and ends with a photo of a rotting orange. They were Hetherington’s last photos taken in Liberia in 2008.
“That says a lot, that those are my last images I made in Liberia, because they’re working on a completely different level to the other images [in the book],” says Mr. Hetherington. “They’re both beguiling images—very simple. I think there’s something very strong about them in the context of other pictures.” He adds that the orange was a bit like Liberia by the end of the war—rotting from the inside.
Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold is enough of an education for a casual observer who is affected or struck by the images of human beings suffering through the drama and pain of war. An image of a man and woman bidding each other goodbye as the man goes off to fight is particularly striking. Another of a lush, green tree through the window of a decrepit, abandoned hospital is equally moving.
But upon careful study, its value only increases. Although the book has a dark feeling simply by virtue of the subject matter it depicts, it also manages to strike hopeful strains of humanity and the continuation of life.
Hetherington is known for his work as a photojournalist and videographer, but doesn’t like to classify himself as belonging to any particular genre.
“I’m interested in images and communicating—I’m not interested in the mechanics of it, apart from the mechanics giving me the ability to do the communicating,” says Mr. Hetherington. “Fundamentally, I’m interested in the form.”
This willingness to explore the part of the story that best conveys the message makes for a steady flow of interesting and engaging photographs in his book. Yet there are layers of information on nearly every page draw that you into an informal history lesson.
Stacked under the photos are captions with dates going back decades or longer of events that took place at some of the sites. It’s an eerie window into the past. There are also cross-referenced notes to other pages in the book for more information.
The intelligence of the book is more by design than accident. Hetherington is a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair magazine, and was educated at Oxford University in literature. He also studied photojournalism at Cardiff University.
Once disillusioned with the world of photojournalism, a stint at the U.N. as an investigator for the Security Council for the Liberian Sanctions Committee in 2006 led to a fateful epiphany. When the veracity of something he wrote in a report to the Security Council was called into question, he understood the power of images.
“I realized that it was the very fact of seeing and the very act of witnessing—all wrapped up into one [that convinces people about the truth],” said Mr. Hetherington about the experience. “As a photographer you have to be present, you have to witness, you have to be there.”
So he quit working for the U.N. and went back to photography, but his literary roots are reflected in the style of Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold.
For someone who is a deft writer but also has an eye for striking imagery, it’s a lucky accident for audiences of his new book that he encountered such a doubtful soul at the U.N.
Hetherington’s role as a witness to the truth in Liberia is intelligent and sensitive, without being afraid of the dark—or shedding light into it.
Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold by Tim Hetherington (2009) is published by Umbrage Editions (umbragebooks.com) and is also available at amazon.com.
