Stuart Freedman
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The Lord of the Flies - The Mental Landscape of War | Today’s conflicts are not fought between countries but within them. Through this work I have tried to explore the mental landscapes of those conflicts that are being fought within Africa and the result - a damaged generation. This story is not about child soldiers or kids in uniform. Rather it is an attempt to show that entire countries carry within their borders, those that have, as young unformed minds, committed atrocities. These are minds that have experienced socialisation where the standards of behaviour are determined by the possession of weapons and the power of life and death. It has become fashionable after Robert Kaplan’s notorious essay (“The coming Anarchy”), to see this “senseless” violence as a microcosm of a planet driven to war by over population, environmental crisis and tribalism. “Loose molecules” of violent youths kill and rape with a “New Barbarism” which is beyond our comprehension. This is too easy - Kaplan’s arguments rely heavily on a stereotype of African man as a savage. It has everything to do with colonial legacy and Victorian ideas of  “the black male”. All children have a capacity for violence but these young people are pawns of a larger geo-political struggle that is being played out in Africa. As states implode at the hands of warlords and would-be messiahs, the social forces which hold them together are also disappearing. There is a savagery in Africa but I do not believe that it is any more inherent here than in any other place. Crucially, at the end of the Cold War, the West is losing it’s rationalale for involvement in Africa - by turning our heads away we are simply blaming the victims. These young men are as sinned against as sinning. Victims of an accident of birth. Rather than viewing Africa as “Hearts of Darkness” country, we ignore this generation of young, damaged minds at our peril and damn ourselves by our own insecurities and inaction.

The Amnesty Award for Photojournalism 1998

Exhibited at Visa pour L'Image 1998

Exhibited at The Scoop Festival, Anjou 1998

Exhibited at the Leica Gallery, German 1999

 

Former Child combatant and graffitti in a re-education centre which helped traumatised former boy fighters. Freetown, Sierra ...
Three former child combatants. Freetown
Two former boy fighters from Charles Taylor's militia on the streets of Monrovia argue with and threaten another boy
In a Freetown, ghetto, a young man cleans his pistol. Once a sergeant in the Sierra Leone army, he makes his living by petty ...
Former fighters pick on one of their own for money. Socialised into violence, many cannot revert to normal behaviour. Freetow...
Two boys in Freetown inspect a violent Indian cinema poster
A former fighter for Charles Taylor's militia looks anxiously out of the window to see if the police will raid his squat. Mon...
'Foday', a former child combatant with a prostitute in a brothel where he is the enforcer. The girl was abducted from her vil...
Former combatants pray at a chapel. Freetown, Sierra Leone
Former combatants are locked in a room whilst being treated for (forced) drug addiction. Freetown, Sierra Leone
Allieu, 18, sleeps in a disused car in Freetown. Originally from a village near Bo, he was forced to fight by government forc...
An orphan boy formerly a soldier with government forces sits listlessly at the Freetown home of his friends parents. Depressi...
Boys accused of genocide crimes in Gitarama Prison, Rwanda
A disturbed boy prisoner, held on genocide charges. Gitarama Prison, Rwanda
Juvenile members of the Interehamwe. Gitagata Prison, Rwanda
A former kidnapped fighter with the Lords Resistance Army who remembers killing at least twelve "but only two with a machete"...
A boy sits alone at a centre for child abductees in Gulu, Northern Uganda. Forced to fight, he is deeply traumatised by his a...
A former kidnapped child combatant for the Lords Resistance Army receives confession by an Italian priest, Father Guido. Gulu...
An insane former soldier chained to a wheel hub at Papa Kitoko's hospital in Luanda, Angola
Children of the genocide. Boys in Kigali market sniffing solvent. Such boys acted as guides for the genocidal mobs. Kigali, R...
A former boy fighter argues with his girlfriend who he runs as a prostitute. Monrovia, Liberia
A recaptured youth in the custody of the Ugandan security forces. Kidnapped and forced to fight for the Lords Resistance Army...
Two very young traumatised boys, whose village had been captured by the RUF.and were forced to act as porters. The boy in the...