On April 6, 1994, the hills and villages of Rwanda turned dark.
In the 100 days that followed, 250,000 to 500,000 Rwandan women and girls were subjected to sexual violence on a massive scale by Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe.
An estimated 20,000 children were conceived during the genocidal war in Rwanda, and many of their mothers contracted HIV during the encounters that left them pregnant. And yet, despite numerous accounts of the tragedy, the stories of these women and their children, the majority of whom were rejected by family and community, went unheard and unseen.
In February 2006, photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik made it his mission to make their stories known.
“I had traveled to East Africa to document a story of the 25th anniversary of HIV/AIDS for Newsweek Magazine,” he remembers. “While there, I heard the testimony of a rape survivor. As a result of that rape, she had a child and contracted HIV/AIDS.”
Deeply moved by the description of how her entire family had been killed, and by her recounting of the unimaginable abuse she experienced, he decided to return on his own to document the stories of these women — most of whom were left alone, powerless, and bereft of dignity — and their children.
Over the next three years, he made repeated visits to Rwanda. “Every time I went back, I felt more and more conviction about how important the stories were, about how strong these women are,” Torgovnik says. “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. Their stories must be told.”
The mosaic of portraits and testimonies he collected is currently on view in a traveling exhibition and a book recently published by Aperture, both titled Intended Consequences. The exhibition and the book offer intensely personal accounts of the survivors’ experiences, as well as their conflicted feelings about raising a child who is a reminder of horrors endured.
Awareness Not Enough
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When Torgovnik first began the project, he was prepared to visit Rwanda a couple of times, submit his story to a magazine, create awareness for the women, then move on to the next story. But that story influenced him profoundly — both as a photographer, and as a human being.
“It changed my life in many ways,” he says. “Because of the depth of the emotions involved, and because it brought me to a different level in the way I think about the subject.”
For the first time in his career, he felt he wanted to go beyond just creating awareness. “I wanted to do something beyond publishing the story in mainstream magazines in U.S. and Europe and around the world,” he explains. “I wanted to do something more.”
So he did. In February 2007, he and Jules Shell co-founded Foundation Rwanda to raise money for the mothers, fund the secondary education of their children, and create awareness of the consequences of genocide and gender-based sexual violence. It is his hope that people will take action — either through Foundation Rwanda, or within their own communities, helping battered women’s shelters or other agencies that serve women and children in crisis or need.
Torgovnik also hopes to go back to Rwanda in 10 years to follow up with the children. “This was and continues to be a very important, very personal project for me,” he says. “These women are dealing with multiple levels of trauma. Not only the memories of their families being murdered, multiple rapes, but also the daily challenges as they face life with HIV/AIDS or other sexual transmitted diseases, and as mothers of children of the militia, children of the enemy so to speak.”
Right Film, Right Paper
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Though Torgovnik shoots both digitally and with film, he prefers film.
Intended Consequences — which has garnered many accolades and awards, including the 2007 Photographic Portrait Prize from the National Portrait Gallery (UK), the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography, and a Documentary Photography Project Fellowship from the Open Society Institute — was shot on KODAK PROFESSIONAL PORTRA VC Film.
“KODAK PORTRA VC Film is the most beautiful and natural translation of what I see,” Torgovnik explains. “The colors are vivid, with the right contrast. I love the grain, and the saturation. It’s beautiful, but not exaggerated.”
He specified that the exhibition images were printed on KODAK PROFESSIONAL SUPRA ENDURA Paper for similar reasons. “I like the neutrality of it. It’s always been consistent and reliable. I liked it many years ago and I still like it now. It’s the best paper in terms of translating what I saw with my camera, and with my eyes, into a photograph.”
Learning on the Front Lines
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Torgovnik began his career as a combat photographer in the Israeli Army. “After basic training, I was able to serve as a photographer,” he says.
With little instruction, he was given two cameras and told to document the different activities of the military, both operational and training.
“I was just thrown into the field and it was really my first learning experience in photography,” he recalls. “And it was a wonderful experience. Both photographically and as a process for learning about life. It affirmed my dream of being a photojournalist, a documentary photographer.”
Upon fulfilling his tour of duty, he moved to New York to pursue his BFA at the School of Visual Arts, and has been learning through the process of taking pictures.
Torgovnik describes his work process as a fluid one. “I do things from my gut,” he says. “It’s a continuous process of experiencing life through the process of taking pictures.”
Whether he’s covering Bollywood, cholera in Dhaka, elections in Guatemala, methamphetamine addiction, or twins, he’s driven by basic curiosity. He looks at each project as a building block for growth.
“Every project, every stage gives me something that contributes to the development of my vision, my way of seeing and taking pictures.” To that end, he’s continually working on personal projects, many of which are born out of commercial assignments for NGOs or magazines.
“Usually, those assignments are short, and you can’t really cover all the aspects of that story within the time the magazine gives you,” he explains. “If I feel it’s a fascinating story that has potential to become a bigger story, I take it on myself and go back and continue it with the time I feel is necessary to let it grow and mature.”
In addition to juggling multiple projects and running the Rwanda Foundation, Torgovnik is on the faculty of the International Center of Photography School.
“I really like giving back, and giving back from my experience,” he says. “Photojournalism is not an easy field to enter into. There’s a lot of competition. You need to believe in what you’re doing, and that it is important, and that you can make it happen. It can be frustrating, especially in the beginning.”
Of course, he learns from his students as much as they learn from him.
“That’s big part of the satisfaction I get,” he notes. “There’s something you lose at some point as your career goes along, a kind of innocence. When you start out you’re really passionate about photography and projects, and you have this innocence that lets you work almost 100% from your gut. I see that in my students. It’s amazing, too, just to absorb from them different ideas and ways of looking and seeing.”
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| In Torgovnik’s Camera Bag [ Back to top ] |
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