Monrovia, Broad Street, 1977
Possible Worlds will screen the Australian premiere of Jeff Topham’s documentary LIBERIA ’77 on August 13, with the filmmaker in attendance. But there’s more to this fascinating film...
What the creators discovered during the course of filming has led to a new and exciting project. On request of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Topham brothers are behind a drive to source photographs of Liberia pre-1980, that is, before a military coup and two civil wars destroyed much of the evidence of the country’s more peaceful and prosperous past.
As the film explores how photography creates meaning as well as evidence of history, the new project aims to re-build the identity of Liberia as a nation using that photographic evidence. During the civil wars, Liberians destroyed their photographs, and even cameras, as family happy snaps could make them targets for soldiers. The Topham brothers discovered that with the obliteration of photographic records, many memories were also wiped away, to be replaced by knowledge only of conflict, accompanied by new tragic images of violence, war and child soldiers.
President Johnson Sirleaf & the Topham brothers
The film follows the brothers Jeff and Andrew as they return to Liberia, the land in which they spent much of their childhood, to rediscover the places and people photographed by their father. Their expectations of the journey rapidly change as they realise their father’s photographs don’t just represent their memory of Liberia, but a stimulus for collective memory.
Liberia’s history is now contained in private collections of photographs around the world, and this is the driving force behind the project. As their website states, “If it means something to you, it will mean something to others”. The plan is to create a collection in the National Museum in Monrovia. If you have photos of pre-war Liberia you can share them. If you don’t you can still spread the word via Facebook, twitter, and other social-media, view some of the photographs that have been submitted so far, or read about the brothers’ journey in Liberia.
LIBERIA ’77 premieres Saturday 13th August at 6:30pm, Dendy Opera Quays.