postage cost as much as the camera.
And now Taylor was really invested
in this—whatever it was. “My family
thinks I’m crazy because I’m interact-
ing with this guy in Liberia,” he says.
Willie kept in close touch, telling
Taylor he wanted to be a journalist. He
wrote, “I’ve decided 2 really commit
n devote myself 2 dis business, what
other pictures you want me 2 take?”
Still skeptical, Taylor said he’d like
to see 20 shots of life in Liberia. A
week later, a bunch more blurry pho-
tos came through on his phone.
“Joel has to be the worst photogra-
pher on the planet,” Taylor said in a
YouTube video he made chronicling
his adventures. By now, he had real-
ized something interesting was hap-
pening and decided to document it.
When Taylor wrote back, he shared
some advice for taking better pictures—
hold the camera steady, for one thing.
The next batch of Willie’s photos came
a few days later and contained about
20 more shots of people doing every-
day things: walking in town, tinker-
ing on their houses (some of which
could only generously be described as
shacks). For Taylor, the images were
heartbreaking. He had never seen such
poverty. But their quality was much
better—which posed a big problem.
“When he put in the work, I thought,
Oh no, now I’ve got to figure out a way
to compensate Joel for these pictures,
or I’m going to be the scammer,” Taylor
says.
He decided to make a booklet usingthe pictures, calling it By D Grace
of God, a phrase borrowed from
Willie’s messages. Then Taylor took
to YouTube, where a few thousand
people had started to follow his dis-
patches, and to the crowdfunding site
indiegogo.com, where he figured he’d
sell a few copies of the 16-page book-
let, featuring a dozen of Willie’s Liberia
photos, for $8 a pop. Sales exploded.
“People from around the world and
places that I’ve never even heard of
were buying Joel’s book,” Taylor says.
Soon he had raised $1,000. He told
Willie he could have half. And the
rest? Well, Taylor decided that Willie
would get that, too—but with a catch.
Taylor told him he had to donate that
$500 to charity.
That is more than a year’s salary
in Liberia. So Taylor didn’t really ex-
pect an unemployed, impoverished
hustler to just give all that money
away. Then another batch of picturesWillie’s photos of life in Liberia struck a
chord with people around the world.rd.com 89The Stranger Who Changed My Life Reader’s Digestco
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