Photobook "Reaching for Dawn" by Elliott VerdierDunes Editions

“Reaching for Dawn” is a photobook published by Dunes Editions (Paris – France) with photographs by Elliott Verdier.
The series (66 photos: 36 b&w and 30 colours) witnesses Liberia’s post-civil war mechanisms of resilience, a country where the population’s rampant trauma is left unattended.
The dark and enigmatic monochromes (printed with Silver ink on black paper) are contextual images that establish the setting for the color portraits (quadri offset on ivory paper). These black & white images are a reference to the night that so often appears in witness accounts, a moment in time where the trauma becomes palpable. They distill a heavy atmosphere that spreads the suffocating silence over the country. From this silence, words emerge, transcribed onto fragile paper (Golden star k), to haunt the Liberian night with inaudible whispers.

152 pages. ISBN: 978-2-9576132-0-5