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February 25, 2009

Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape

Posted by Anna Bowen at 04:08 PM ET

The Aperture Foundation Gallery in NY is hosting photographer Jonathan Torgovnik's show, Intended Consequences, which includes interviews and photographs of Rwandan children born of rape during the genocide and personal interviews with the mothers. Torgonvnik, contract photographer for Newsweek magazine, and prof at the International Center of Photography School in New York, is also co-founder of the non-profit Foundation Rwanda.

Foundation Rwanda exists explicitly to serve women and children who have been stigmatized as a result of rape during the genocide. It is estimated that 20,000 children were born as a result of rape.

A satellite of the show will also be used at the UN on April 7th of this year to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide. Testimonials and stories of those who suffered during the genocide will be read by UN officials and will include some of the interviews conducted by Torgovnik. A corresponding book will also be published in April.

Torgovnik was moved by an interview he heard in Rwanda with a woman who was a victim of rape during the genocide while he was working on another story for Newsweek. Through that story he was able to make parallels to his own family's suffering during the Holocaust and returned to complete this project. A selection of the testimonies are available to be read on the Foundation Rwanda webpage.

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Reader comments:

The fantastic and fearless Wronging Rights has a pretty devastating critique of this project.

Posted by: Allison at February 25, 2009 07:18 PM

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From that Wronging Rights post:

I know, I know. It will "raise awareness." And that's important, because the Rwandan genocide is totally a secret.

Thanks for pointing that post out, Allison. It's kind of like what Duke Ellington said about music ("If it sounds good, it is good"): If it seems exploitative, it is exploitative?

Posted by: Graham F. Scott at February 27, 2009 01:05 PM

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Thanks for the heads up, Allison. I think there is something to be said for critiquing the "gaze" of this journalist who has gone in and snapped photos of women and children who are victims of rape as a tool of war. I think the exhibit does raise awareness. And I think although I am no specialist either, it seems pretty clear that the Foundation is meeting the needs of a group of individuals who were already set apart within their communities, in contrast to what Wronging Rights has to say:

Yeah, probably I would also need expertise to understand why it would be a good idea to single people out for services on the basis of a characteristic so inherently divisive and potentially damaging as being the child of genocidal rape.

My no-doubt unnoticeable reaction was to not post any photographs to accompany this blog. I think the testimonies are far more powerful than the photographs, which really (from my point of view) don't break through the objectifying, "othering" of communities in the "Global South."

I chose instead to just report on the exhibit. Thanks for the dialogue.

Posted by: Anna at February 27, 2009 04:30 PM

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