Elliott Verdier discusses the role of a documentary photographer, acknowledging unspoken trauma and taking time to understand his own projects.
In conversation with Luke Newbould
26 May, 2023
Of my favourite documentary photographers, Elliott Verdier uses the unconventional large format camera to offer two interweaved narratives, one in black & white and the other in colour, reflecting ideas stemming from trauma, such as collective memory, generational transmission and resilience. Questioning his position as a witness and the subjectivity of his images, he completed his first long-term project A Shaded Path in Kyrgyzstan. He was subsequently aided by the French National Center for Visual Arts in 2019 for his second major project Reaching for Dawn in Liberia. Elliott discusses the idea of playing a role as a photographer, acknowledging unspoken trauma and taking time to understand the subject within his projects.
Your projects capture humanity at its most vulnerable in a loving form. How do you find approaching people with the conversation of trauma they are silenced to?
Since this is your first question, it’s the one I wanted to start with. I was looking for something clever to say but didn’t really find it, because I think the answer is actually quite simple. Trauma resides because the people who suffer it often aren’t even aware of the harm that’s consuming them, so how can they even talk about it? Well, you just have to take the time to ask. It’s not usually the people close to them who do it, as the routine settles in and things gradually sink into a daily routine. So being a stranger to whom you confide, who takes your story on and vanishes with it, is perhaps the best thing you can do.
Reaching for Dawn is interlaced with writings and recordings; working with Leymah Gbowee and Gaël Faye, you confront Liberia’s silence of collective memory and identity crisis without aggression. What is the importance of recognizing one’s own identity as a way to move forward?
I feel like « recognizing » is the keyword here. Because that’s all it is. You’re talking about the recordings I made of 14 people. 7 former executioners and 7 victims. The important thing was to recognize individuals by their history, their construction. Everything that led them to what they are today and not the actions that can bring judgment or pity or whatever. In the vast majority of cases, I find it fascinating to see how determined our paths are. Acknowledging this means accepting that the other person is mainly a product of her or his experiences. This gives us a vital step back to understand and accept the other, and forge the roots of empathy.
Trauma resides because the people who suffer it often aren’t even aware of the harm that’s consuming them.
I didn’t take any photos during my first trip. But wandering all around the territory and talking to people allowed me to define the story I wanted to tell and that felt right to me and for the people of Liberia: the unspoken trauma carved into the population’s flesh, crystallized in the society’s weak foundations, that bleeds onto a new generation with a hazy future.
Earlier in my life as a photographer it often seemed to me that I was playing a role, as if I was adopting codes to belong to an ideal that I had forged for myself. These codes of an idealized photographer, which also belong to a collective imaginary, tend to reproduce pre-existing patterns. Not only do they bring nothing new to the field,but worse, they maintain some rotten roots made by power and underlying domination.
During my first experiences as a photojournalist, deep down I felt uncomfortable, or even dishonest, towards myself of course, but even worse, towards those I was photographing. It was hard for me to put into words, to become aware of these patterns as the culture of photojournalism had built me up.
In 2016, after a brief experience at AFP (Agence France Presse) covering the news every day, it became clearer and clearer to me that the methods of the agency and of the photographers around me did not fit with my beliefs. I had to change something, to take time. That’s when I bought my analogue large-format camera.
Working with the large format camera requires me to discuss with the people I take pictures of. I must take time to explain the project to them. So when someone accepts to pose for me, it is also for the project and the story it tells. In Liberia, I felt the immense need for social recognition of the tragedy.”
It is vital to overcome the trauma. That’s why such few people declined to participate. I see in the stature and eyes of the people who pose this silent appeal for justice.