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An estimated twenty thousand children were born of rapes that occurred during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Fifteen years later, the mothers of these children still face enormous challenges, among them, being stigmatized within their communities for bearing a child fathered by a Hutu militiaman.
Over the past three years, photographer Jonathan Torgovnik has made repeated visits to Rwanda to document the experiences of these women, allowing them to tell their stories. The portraits and testimonies featured in Intended Consequences offer intensely personal accounts of these survivors' experiences of the genocide, as well as their conflicted feelings about raising a child who is a reminder of horrors endured. An introduction by Marie Consolée Mukagendo, a Rwandan UNICEF staff member who has studied this aspect of the genocide, provides an in-depth analysis of this complex subject. In recent atrocities in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo, rape is being used systematically as a weapon—making this poignant reflection on the legacy of the Rwandan genocide urgently relevant. Included is a DVD produced by MediaStorm featuring interviews with the women from Intended Consequences. In spring 2009 Aperture, in collaboration with the Open Society Institute, Amnesty International, and Foundation Rwanda, will launch an international traveling exhibition of this work. Intended Consequences is made possible, in part, by generous support from Henry Buhl, SanDisk, Artis—Contemporary Israeli Art Fund, and the Consulate General of Israel, Office of Cultural Affairs, in New York. Additional support is provided by Amnesty International and Kodak. >Visit the Photography and Human Rights microsite >View "Jonathan Torgovnik, excerpt from Intended Consequences panel discussion" JONATHAN TORGOVNIK’s (born in Israel, 1969) photographs have been widely exhibited and published in numerous international publications, including Newsweek, Aperture, GEO, Sunday Times Magazine, and Stern, among others. He has been a contract photographer for Newsweek magazine since 2005, and is on the faculty of the International Center of Photography School in New York. In 2007, Torgovnik won the National Portrait Gallery’s Photographic Portrait Prize for an image from Intended Consequences. He is co-founder of Foundation Rwanda, a non-profit organization that supports secondary school education for children born of rape in Rwanda. Rwandan-born MARIE CONSOLÉE MUKANGENDO [introduction] has worked with UNICEF for over five years. She specializes in working with children affected by armed conflict. |
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