Ryan Lobo, storyteller
Joshua after his baptism © Ryan Lobo
How do you live with yourself if you know you have done some truly awful things? This man has killed thousands but is on a mission to redeem himself. But does forgiveness and redemption replace justice?
I recently saw the talk by Ryan Lobo at TED and I wanted to refer t his work here. One trend in photojournalism today is to bring into focus the stories that drive the news, the tragedies, conveying most times a sense of despair and human suffering that leaves us with the thinking of impossibility, the feel that things can”t improve. Ryan Lobo usually takes a different perspective. He focuses on the hidden stories, the small stories that are ignored by many other documentary photographers but that represent the texture of the lives of people surrounded by tragedies. These stories provide context to understand and provide a view that is focused on a sense of hope and possibilities, the chance to build up better futures for the people. These are the stories that are ignored but these are the stories that speak loud to the audience and connect the storyteller with the reality of life.
The story of the Redemption of the General Butt Naked is a story where the unimaginable turns reality because of the greatness of the people and the power of forgiveness. A story that speaks about change but also about the irony of justice in places where there is not.
Listen to the TED talk and see his work. It is genuinely uplifting.
Joshua listens to people fighting over food in a slum, some are his former victims
Children were warned during the war that the general would eat them if they behaved badly
