Eastern Libya · 2011

A boy sits on the sunlit harbor pavement beside a large painted boat, with a car and ruins beyond. — 01

Libya as Libya

Photographs and words by David Degner

On my second trip to Libya in 2011, I traveled with a backpack and a camera, visiting small towns across the east. I could stop for tea, talk with people, see ruins and wander without a minder. There were few guidebooks for this kind of trip. Much of the time I was simply seeing where I could go.

I wanted to photograph Libya as Libya. The revolution was still being fought beyond Benghazi, but there were also markets, orchards, families at home and children swimming along the coast. I had come back to spend time with that part of the country.

A brown bull stands among straight tree trunks in a shaded grove. — 02

Boys play football among tall stone columns and ancient walls. — 03

A large wave breaks over dark coastal rocks as children shelter and swim below. — 04

Long shadows cross a town square lined with shops and Libyan flags. — 05

A boy inspects a white pigeon while other boys gather around him. — 06

Getting across

My first trip had begun very differently. I had been living in Egypt for more than a year when the Egyptian revolution broke out. After about a month covering it, I was watching events in Libya with the other journalists based in Cairo. We were waiting for a way into the east.

When word came that the border would open the next day, I withdrew as much cash as I could. I had few supplies. At the border I joined a Wall Street Journal writer I had been working with, his fixer and several other journalists. We were among the first groups across that morning. After some negotiation on the Libyan side, we headed toward Tobruk.

A small white minibus stacked high with luggage crosses an empty road beneath a deep blue sky. — 07

Along the way, we stopped at a military base to see whether the soldiers really had gone. The gate was open. A few people were looking around, but the base was deserted. We found helmets to use for protection. While the writer explored, I took photographs.

A shepherd grazing his flock inside the walls came over and demanded my camera. I thought I might have photographed him without realizing it. I offered to delete the pictures, then to give him the memory card. He refused both. The translator explained that he was threatening to kill me if I did not hand over the camera. I gave him my Canon 5D, and he smashed it on the ground in front of us.

I had just made it into Libya, and my camera was broken. Then I remembered the small Canon point-and-shoot in my bag. It ran on AA batteries. I used it to keep photographing, including a small protest on the way to Tobruk. Some of those photographs appeared in The Wall Street Journal the next day.

A man holds a rifle above a bloodstained floor scattered with papers and clothing. — 08

A crowd raises signs and a shoe bearing Gaddafi’s portrait outside a public building. — 09

We spent the night in Tobruk and continued toward Benghazi the next morning. Once there, we settled into a small hotel and began reporting. Other photographers helped me get working equipment again: a Getty photographer lent me a Canon Rebel he had bought to cover the uprising in Bahrain, and Timothy Caldwell sold me a 5D at short notice.

A woman guides a girl through rubble while other visitors walk behind them. — 10

Figures stand in a dark underground opening while a man looks down from the bright ground above. — 11

A young man rests his arms over an earthen ledge and looks downward. — 12

A man walks through a burned room with Arabic writing on the wall. — 13

A man stands among debris in a burned hall with tall windows. — 14

Men stand shoulder to shoulder in prayer among earthworks and scattered rubble. — 15

Behind the fighting

I stayed for about a month. Most days I worked with a writer or a small group of journalists, sometimes French, sometimes American, sometimes British. Whoever needed a photographer, I would go with them.

We worked close to the fighting, but I avoided going to the actual front lines. Often I found what was happening just behind them more interesting: the people organizing and supplying the opposition, the new governments taking shape, and the work of keeping things going.

A dense crowd fills a square, with a portrait and Libyan flags raised above the people. — 16

Men bow in prayer along the waterfront beside a tank and Libyan flags. — 17

A seated crowd raises open hands in prayer along the waterfront. — 18

Three men pray with faces turned upward, one raising his hands. — 19

Men sit beside a battered car and a makeshift shelter under a Libyan flag. — 20

A long line of men stands in a school courtyard beneath an overhanging roof. — 21

A lone man peers around a red metal gate between two ochre guardhouses. — 22

A man stands alone in the sand holding a long weapon horizontally across his body. — 23

A wheeled artillery gun stands alone on flat, empty sand. — 24

A man touches an aircraft wing propped upright in a public square. — 25

Men talk face to face in a crowded outdoor market. — 26

A man in a brown jacket sits beside a sunlit window and curtains. — 27

People ride in the open back of a truck crossing a broad dock beneath a cloudy sky. — 28

Sending the pictures

Each night I sent photographs to editors. Finding internet took some work. SIM cards offered free, unmetered access that let me follow the news, although I do not remember using them to transmit pictures. Much of my filing was possible because NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro generously let us use her satellite phone. Some internet cafes also offered inexpensive satellite connections.

One night, a French writer and I were reporting on the possibility of Benghazi coming under siege. There were reports of Gaddafi’s aircraft and ground forces approaching. We took the writer’s satellite phone into the hotel yard to send our work. I could hear jets overhead while we struggled to get a signal.

The photographs were taking so long to upload that I kept making them smaller and lowering the quality. I wanted to get them sent and get back inside.

A masked man sits in a vehicle screened with leafy branches. — 29

Men sit around a gun in a wide expanse of desert beneath power lines. — 30

A man carrying a pistol walks beside the rim of a sandy crater. — 31

A young man in a dark tracksuit holds a rifle upright beside an earth bank. — 32

A rifle with a small portrait attached rests beside ammunition and a battery in a vehicle. — 33

Men sit inside and gather around a dented car on sandy ground. — 34

A doctor sits alone at a desk in a bright, sparsely furnished room. — 35

A hand holds a compact camera in front of two men lying in hospital beds. — 36

A man with a bandaged arm looks toward the camera from a hospital bed. — 37

Medical workers gather around a man on a stretcher, one holding an IV bag aloft. — 38

An older man presses his hand to his face while speaking with another man outside a hospital. — 39

One man leans against a bare hospital wall with a hand raised while another stands in the foreground. — 40

Armed men stand beside a body covered with a patterned cloth on a hospital bed. — 41

The bloodied face of a dead man lies partly covered by a patterned cloth. — 42

A pale cloth covers the face of a body lying on a bed. — 43

A tiled mortuary table stands empty, with a pair of scissors near its edge. — 44

Returning

Eventually I ran out of cash. A few ATMs still worked, but I was waiting for day-rate payments from the work in Egypt, and getting newspapers to pay correctly into either my Egyptian or American account was often difficult. I also needed a break. I went back to Cairo.

When I returned to Libya, I was mostly on my own. I knew I could call the journalists in Benghazi if I needed help, but I was free to spend the day talking with people or exploring another town. The photographs from that return visit were made in June and July. The war was still going on.

An elderly, white-bearded man stands in a square holding a rifle across his chest. — 45

Framed portraits cover the walls of a room lined with empty chairs. — 46

Men walk through a narrow street past a painted Libyan flag and portraits, with low sunlight behind them. — 47

A young woman wearing a headscarf and a vest covered in badges sits with other women. — 48

A family in Shehat

In Shehat I met a very kind family who had just had a baby. They were worried about the baby’s health, and with the hospitals no longer working normally, they had not been able to get the child properly examined.

I remembered a Red Cross ship anchored in Benghazi. The next day we arranged a car and drove to the port to look for help. The ship was gone. It had left the night before.

I never learned how the baby was doing afterward. I still worry about that family.

A woman sits on a rug beside a baby, with a cup of tea nearby. — 49

In Tobruk, a friendly man took me to his home on the edge of town, fed me and gave me a place to sleep. Back in town, he dropped me outside a photo studio. The photographer wanted to take my picture. I was not sure what to make of the arrangement, but I went along with it. As he prepared his camera, I photographed him.

A photographer adjusts his camera on a tripod beneath a large child’s portrait, while a boy sits at a computer. — 50

I learned to trust what I saw, but not too much. I had to question the accounts I was given, and the assumptions I brought with me.

A boy stands beside irrigation water flowing between rows of fruit trees in red soil. — 51

An older farmer rests his arms on a red tractor amid sunlit fruit trees. — 52