Since 1992 the once resplendent coastal city of Mogadishu has been the epicenter of Somalia’s brutal civil war. The streets and infrastructure destroyed, the people mentally and physically frayed from the daily street-to-street warfare, kidnappings, suicide attacks, food and water shortages. But still, life goes on and the will to survive is a testament to human resolve.
I first went to Mogadishu in April 2011 when it was too dangerous to even leave the frontline clinic I was staying at. Five months later there was a lull in the fighting and I immediately returned. I did not want to snatch photographs from a car window, I wanted to meet Somalis face to face. So I decided to work with a background cloth, whose history dates back to World War Two and the London blitz when my grandmother used it as a blackout curtain.
With armed security we moved carefully around Mogadishu, finding secure areas where I could set up to make portraits of a cross section of Mogadishu society – from street sweepers, nurses, IDP’s, (internally displaced persons), and the ubiquitous security. Using the background cloth was a way to formalize the portraits and allow the people as individuals to shine, yet still allowing Mogadishu itself to be acknowledged through the semi-translucent cloth.
The city has become synonymous with war, Islamic fundamentalism, drought, and chaos. Therefore, it was important for me, as a continuation of the portrait work I have done in other conflict zones – using the same cloth - to present people as human beings to be honored, and not just as faceless statistics
Words and images by Jason Florio - Published in Virginia Quarterly Review
Online Exhibition - Forward Thinking Museum