The War Diaries

Guest blogger: Jason Florio

Follow Jason on Twitter at @floriophotoNYC

See Jason’s online portfolio here

New York- I’ve known photographer Jason Florio for nearly a dozen years now. Our paths have had this dramatic before-and-after symmetry. Jason shot in northern Afghanistan just before 9/11, I just after. He shot in Baghdad just before it fell, I, again, just after. Jason was in Lebanon not long before the most recent Israeli invasion, me during it in summer 2006. Jason traversed Libya when Qadaffi’s rule was unwavering, I as it was falling to pieces.

Below is an except from Jason and his wife Helen’s most recent adventure along the River Gambia beginning in Afrique l’Ouest (Francophone West Africa) and ending in the Anglophone sliver that is Gambia where Jason has been traveling for many years now. Enjoy!

“The River Gambia is one of Africa’s last major free-flowing rivers, starting as a mere trickle from under a rock in the Fouta Djallon highlands of Guinea. It meanders through the gold-rich land of south east Senegal, and through the length of The Republic of The Gambia (the country is named after the river) and enters the Atlantic Ocean having coursed it’s way for over 1100km(approx. 685 miles)  and broadened to 14km wide. Plans are afoot to build a hydroelectric dam on the river on the Senegal-Guinea border.

The dam would bring much needed power to a dark region, but would displace ancient villages, change the natural flow of the river, drastically effect the fragile eco system. The reduced flow would create greater salinity in the river further upstream, severely impacting the lives of villagers whose very survival is based on crop irrigation by the river. Documentary photographer Jason Florio, and his wife, writer/producer Helen Jones-Florio, accompanied by two Gambian fishermen followed the river for two months by canoe and motorcycle from source-to-sea.

Traveling in-part in the footsteps of 19th century explorers to the region including Mungo Park and Gaspard Mollien, their aim was to create a modern day account of the people and communities along the length of the river, before the dam stops its natural course forever.”

Fula tribesmen with swimming horses
Jan 5th 2012 – 7.54am – We spent a peaceful night at Karantaba village with the spirit of Mungo Park sharing the warmth and companionship of our fire. Scottish explorer, Park had based at Karantaba in 1795 and 1805, before setting off on two journeys to find the Niger River and ultimately where it met the Atlantic Ocean. Park found the river on his first journey, but died on the second after being ambushed by locals while on the river.
In the morning I saw a small ‘barra’ (ferry) being oared across the river and next to it were two horses swimming. I ran to the edge of the water just as they were emerging and made the photograph. The horses belonged to two Fula tribesmen who were heading to a local market to sell their harvest of ground-nuts. The horses being used to pull their ‘‘seretto’ or horse-cart. ©2013 Jason Florio

Hawa the rice cutter
Jan 11th – 5.23pm- We moored for the night at Ka’ur village on The River Gambia. After making camp we walked towards the village to buy food. On the way we saw a group of ladies who were busy cutting rice and stacking it for drying. They insisted I came into the muddy field and help them harvest, before I could make any photographs. Once I was deemed a temporary part of their team I was allowed to take photographs of them. Hawa was the group leader and just before I was about to continue on to the village, she turned towards me with her head laden with rice, and her knife between her teeth. I made two frames before she turned again and to finish her work. She told me they cut the rice for a lady who owns the field, and are-paid 30 Dalasi per day – about 80 US cents. ©2013 Jason Florio

Watchman on the Pier
A watchman relaxes on a floating jetty near the samll Gambian village of Bonto. Bonto became infamous in 2009 when a two tonne cocaine stash, with a street value of $1bn, was discovered in a riverside warehouse a few hundred meters from the jetty. The street value of the haul far exceeded Gambia’s $782 million annual GDP in 2009. ©2013 Jason Florio

For more images from the River Gambia Expedition, click here

A Hindu temple along Serangoon Road, in the heart of Singapore's Little India. ©2010 Derek Henry Flood

Singapore- After finally moving on from KL, I’m passing though Singapore’s Little India for a night en route to Bali. Little India (Little Tamil Nadu) is probably the most sanitized Indian neighborhood on the globe and not bad for it. Tamil is one of Singapore’s four official languages along with Malay (also the national language), Mandarin, and English, sometimes referred to as Singlish in local jargon. I’d read in the Wikitravel entry on the city state that Malaysian newspapers are banned here and purposefully grabbed one in KL the bring through customs hoping to stir something up but it was allowed in or not noticed, a bit of a disappointment. I ditched my gum in KL but more because it was old than trying to start something here. As I don’t have much going on at the moment, I’m going to plug a really great article trilogy by Brasilero wildman Pepe Escobar on Asia Times about a time that I fondly recall with photos by Jason Florio of pre-9/11 Afghanistan.

New York- Photojournalist Jason Florio had a slideshow at the Apple Store in the South of Houston street district tonight where he took the audience through over a decade of adventure and memory spanning Islamic Asia and Africa with 9/11 interspersed. Jason has the before pictures to many of my after. Afghanistan just before 9/11, the towers just before the collapse, Iraq just before the neoconservative destruction of the Ba’ath Party and so on. I took a few snaps on my Blackberry but check his site for a more complete view.

Perhaps the last photo of Massoud alive (at least by a Westerner) from August of 2001. Looks good blown up huge in the Apple Store theater. ©2001 Jason Florio

A diptych from Jason's pre-war "Poets of Baghdad" series. Jason told the audience that he tries to humanize people that are otherwise being demonized to justify vulgar foreign policy objectives. ©2003 Jason Florio

New York- Jason Florio has a big photo essay in the current Winter 2010 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review called The Pirate Port about the quasi ragtag Somaliland coast guard in Berbera and their dealings with pirates based out of Bossaso in neighboring Puntland. The whole issue of VQR is dedicated to Africa and seems pretty interesting. I saw the bold cover shot on the rack at Barnes & Noble and it caught my eye. The photo essay is pretty lush especially in a time when a lot of publications seem to cutting back on their photo budgets. I love that the article shows a different side of the struggle for Somalia than the Shabab/Ethiopia angle. It shows that Somalia, well the breakaway Somaliland region anyway, is a region that you can actually visit and tour around within reason. The Somalilanders who inherited some of the ideas of parliamentary democracy from the British who ran the region as a protectorate, have been running the area as an independent state since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991 but have obviously failed to get anyone to care outside of their own diaspora and the odd internationalist intellectual. This VQR is definitely worth a look for anyone tired of the same stories being run in the MSM.

More of Jason’s work can be seen on his revamped site here. Jason did an article last year for Men’s Journal called “The New War for Hearts and Minds” on Human Terrain Teams in Kapisa Province in Afghanistan that became pretty controversial for some reason (I think having to do with a subset of right-wing bloggers called “Mil (-itary) bloggers.”). There are more great photos on his site than were printed in the original article. Makes me wish I still had my photography site up….

Afghan commandos in Kapisa Province. ©2008 Jason Florio