Faith in Chaos





“If they could have gotten their hands on God, they would have killed Him, too,” Sierra Leoneans say about the rebels. The civil war in Sierra Leone, 1991 – 2002, is labeled the cruelest in Africa’s recent history. Tens of thousands of civilians died, and hundreds of thousands more were raped, burned, tortured, enslaved, and mutilated. The Sierra Leonean amputees, their limbs cut off by rebels, became this war’s heart-wrenching icons.
For five years, I have been documenting the lives of youth in Sierra Leone as they create chances for themselves in a land where opportunities are rare. Before the war, Sierra Leone was the poorest country in the world (according to UNDP figures). It still is, and now it’s in shambles, too.
I first visited Sierra Leone one year after the peace agreement was signed to produce a photo essay on “Faith” for the World Press Photo Master Class. I connected with the kids who were the most affected by the war but who had emerged as the strongest: young people, amputated and blinded, bouncing back to demand the chances that were stolen from them. Former child soldiers and members of rebel gangs were transforming themselves into police and security forces. Even kids who lost their minds in the war and living in a mental home, succeeding in returning to the world of the sane.
I returned three times, each for months on end, to document the struggle of these youngsters. It’s a story that sheds light on a side of Sierra Leone (and of Africa) that we don’t often get to see — of stamina, pride, and self-confidence... Victims of war and poverty? Yes. But their determination humbles us all.


Bonet was born in la Colònia de Sant Jordi, Majorca. In 2002 Bonet was selected to the World Press Photo Master Class with his work titled Faith from Sierra Leone. That same year he was nominated one of the top 30 young talents of the year by the New York photography journal PDN. He was also selected by Photoespaña for his work on Procession of San Lazaro in Cuba. In 2003 he won the Kodak Young Photographer of the Year in Visa pour l'Image in Perpiñan. He also won first prize for FotoPres, first prize in the Fujifilm Europress, and first prize for the Zilveren Camera Holland. In 2004 the Luchetta Foundation in Trieste nominated Bonet the best press photographer of the year and he was also a finalist for the W.Eugene Smith Award for Humanitarian Photography, an award he was to win the following year in 2005. In 2007 Bonet won the second prize in the World Press Photo in Sports for his work on the amputees football league in Sierra Leone.
Bonet is a founding member of the photo agency Noor.
Faith in Chaos Lesson Plan
Pep Bonet and Sara Terry are the two artists who have contributed their photographs to this section. Their images illuminate both the toll that the eleven-year civil war took on the civilian population and the human capacity for resiliency and courage.