After presenting the recipients of the 2017 W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund in Humanistic Photography awards on October 18, 2017 (Daniel Garcia Castro, Edmund Clark and Alex Majoli), The Eye of Photography joins the organization and features the works of the prize finalists.
This series is a document of the war against Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, one of the biggest and most under reported conflicts raging in our world today. I photographed the front lines of the conflict as well as the fallout, and looked for images that visualize the cadences of life in Borno amid waves of fighting and fleeing. By embedding with the actors directly facing off with Boko Haram — the soldiers and a myriad of vigilante groups — I’m able to tell the story of both the efforts and failings of the Nigerian government and a military that acts with impunity. This is a story of the high geopolitical stakes in the African and global battle against Islamic fundamentalism that seem mismatched with the meager rewards of brown and yellow scorched, arid earth. This can’t even be described as poverty – this is life at the edge of subsistence.
There is no way to photograph Boko Haram – they are everywhere and invisible all at once. I hope to continue to build on the unprecedented access I’ve gotten with the Nigerian military and to document the deepening humanitarian crisis spiraling out with each new military offensive, and each Boko Haram retaliation. I’m still searching for these images to weave in among those graphically and directly show violence and conflict – ones that breathe a more delicate life and meaning in to the ways we might understand another place and what it means to live there amidst a war that scatters everyone like children of birds.
Glenna Gordon
Glenna Gordon is a documentary photographer who works often in West Africa on long term photo projects, assignments for magazines and newspapers, and commissions for NGOs and other organizations.
