We recently forwarded the New Criterion piece in which Dalrymple describes his rediscovery of the power of photography. After some of our commenters discussed their enjoyment of Dalrymple’s own photos (and just in time for the Spectator piece below), commenter Tuesday Msigwa has created an online album of the 16 photos in Monrovia, Mon Amour.
The Skeptical Doctor
Dedicated to the work of Theodore Dalrymple
I would like to see the photos. Is there a way to set it up so that someone from the US can view them? They presently require an hotmail.co.uk account or a live.co.uk account. If one asks for customer help, they insist on a space being filled with the name of an English county even after one has told them that one lives in the US.
Ah, you apparently got much further than I did. I did not realize it was a problem only for non-UK users. We will see if we can post them somewhere for our fellow Americans.
TMAY, try it again with your existing Windows Live account. Tuesday has graciously made a change that seems to allow U.S. access.
Civilisation doesn’t appear to sit well in Monrovia
It doesn’t today, but it once did. See here for my summary of Dalrymple’s conclusions about Liberia: http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/Monrovia__Mon_Amour__A_V.html
Steve, that’s very interesting… harrowing also, of course.
“The freed slaves, who came to be called Americo-Liberians, viewed the African natives much as they had themselves been viewed by white Americans: as savages.”
There’s the theme of the alienated barbarians, so to speak, taking revenge on, vandalising, what they don’t understand… or rather understand only that it humiliates them; a grand piano, medical records, light switches… didn’t they do well.