Intended Consequences @ Aperture Gallery
From the Aperture website : During the 1994 genocide, hundreds of thousands of Rwandan women were subjected to massive sexual violence by members of the infamous Hutu militia groups, known as the Interhamwe. Among the most isolated survivors are women who have borne children as a result of those rapes. The number of children born from these atrocities is estimated around 20,000. Due to the stigma of rape and "having a child of the militia," the women’s communities and few surviving relatives have largely shunned them. Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape brings together Jonathan Torgovnik’s remarkable portraits of these women and children, and their harrowing first-hand testimonies. THIS exhibition was utterly harrowing, as it should be. It consisted of testimonial after testimonial by Rwanden women, describing their horrific ordeals at the hands - weapons, knives, broken bottles - of their captors. Each account was presented as a large portrait of t