Photo exhibition offers snapshot of ‘War and Peace in Liberia’

World Today

They helped expose the horrors of war without uttering a single word. Two photographers captured images of Liberia’s civil war — documenting the bloody conflict for the world to see.

More than a decade later, those images are on display in the U.S.

CGTN’s Nick Harper offers an inside look at ‘War and Peace in Liberia.’

Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros’ photographs not only told the story of civilians caught in the conflict. They changed the course of history.

Hondros was in the capital Monrovia with former President Charles Taylor’s government forces; while Hetherington was embedded outside with the LURD rebels. Some of his images contradicted the rebels’ narrative proving it was they, not the government, who were shelling innocent civilians.

Hetherington and Hondros’ images from Liberia ultimately ended up here in New York. In September 2003, the U.N. Security Council approved sending a 16,000-strong peacekeeping mission to the country.

The exhibition documents the U.N. disarmament that followed; the beginning of reconciliation and the eventual election in 2005 of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed in Libya in 2011. Their legacy is the impact of their images and the effect they had on the future of Liberia.