Rwanda is a tiny, densely packed landlocked nation, nestled amongst terraced hills and valleys. In 1994, the Hutus killed nearly 1 million Tutsis in the worst genocide since World War II, while the United States and other UN members put their heads in the sand.
I had the opportunity to travel with Rick Halperin, director of SMU’s Human Rights Education Program, and other SMU colleagues to Rwanda, experiencing firsthand the remnants of wholesale genocide, while documenting my experience photographically. I have seen a dead body before, but to see hundreds of desiccated remains with spear points through skulls and skeletons of mothers holding infants was a different story. It was the most challenging set of subjects I have shot in my life. We saw these genocide victims at the Murambi Genocide Memorial, located near Butare in southern Rwanda.
The smell of 15-year-old bodies covered in lime, combined with their facial expressions of agony in death was gut wrenching and nauseating. But, as a student of photography and history, I was overwhelmed with the sense of wanting to document what happened in the country.
It is too easy to separate photo subject from reality and oneself, but in order to feel, or at least scratch the surface of the pain and suffering the nation went through, our group and I had the chance to meet genocide survivors. We met with two Rwandans, Mr. Immanuel and Juliet, who spoke at the Murambi site. Mr. Immanuel, who’s visiting SMU in the spring, has a hole in his head where a shotgun pellet penetrated his skull. His family was not so lucky. His wife and children were killed blow by blow from a machete. Juliet saw her husband and two children killed. Speaking through a translator, it was still possible to hear the pain in their voices as they recounted their stories in detail to our group. Many SMU group members were in tears, blind-sided by the enormity of their stories.
Hearing them speak was far more potent than any classroom discussion or interview on the History Channel. Here we were on the ground, face to face with living victims of mass murder. To me, this signaled what a photojournalist, or anyone with an interest in portraying the truth and stories of crimes against humanity, has to do. Capture the strongest, most gut-wrenching images one can to show the rest of the world. It might be hard to point a camera at dead bodies or people crying as they tell stories of their family’s murder, but those who are not there first hand need a strong visual image to bring the story into their living room. Most telling images of the 20th century do the same thing. Kent State, the Moon Landing, Tiananmen Square and Afghanistan are all defined in part by images. I hope that my pictures at least show the aftermath of what happened in Rwanda and that it brings a better understanding to the SMU community of a place all too easy to sweep under the rug of “African problems.”
Rwanda is not all doom and gloom, however. The population is steadily growing and there is a flurry of construction and foreign investment in the capital, Kigali. President Paul Kagame continues to offer free education for all Rwandans, and more Rwandan students are going to universities than ever before. Environmentally, plastic bags are outlawed and Rwanda is home to the largest solar power plant in Africa. The Virunga Mountains and Volcanoes National Park are home to Mountain Gorillas, and are only found in a select few countries, a multi million dollar tourist draw. Think Dian Fossey and “Gorillas in the Mist.” Kids waved and smiled when I took their picture, and even the gorillas appeared to ham it up for the camera.
