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Southeast Museum of Photography Presents INTENDED CONSEQUENCES Jonathan Torgovnik

The Southeast Museum of Photography presents INTENDED CONSEQUENCES Jonathan Torgovnik, on view through November 7, 2010.

“Between April and June of 1994, over eight hundred thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the space of one hundred days in the small central-African country of Rwanda. The genocide was sparked by the death of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, whose plane was shot down above Kigali airport. The Hutus began a massive slaughter of the Tutsis. Hundreds of thousands more were raped, tortured, and beaten. The international community failed to stop this genocide and a period of instability ensued.”—Marie Consolée Mukagendo.

During the 1994 genocide, over 100,000 Rwandan women were subjected to sexual violence perpetrated by members of the infamous Hutu militia groups known as the Interhamwe. Of those that survived this violence more than 20,000 have given birth to children. Fifteen years later, the mothers of these children still face enormous challenges, not the least of which is the stigma of bearing and raising a child fathered by a Hutu militiaman.

In 2006, Jonathan Torgovnik traveled to East Africa for Newsweek on a story about the twenty-fifth anniversary of the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. Torgovnik heard many horrific stories retold by the women who had been the victims of a systematic rape campaign by the militia groups in Rwanda. Intended Consequences is the result of more than 3 years’ research and photography by Torgovnik. Intended Consequences presents individual portraits of the women with their children that are accompanied by the women’s testimonies; intensely personal and honest accounts of the daily challenges they face and their conflicted feelings about raising a child who is a reminder of the horrors that they endured. Intended Consequences is a traveling exhibition organized by the Aperture Foundation of New York and is made possible by support from the Open Society Institute, Amnesty International, and Foundation Rwanda.

Jonathan Torgovnik was born in 1969 in Israel and received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. His photographs have been widely exhibited and published in numerous international publications, including Newsweek, Aperture, GEO, Sunday Times Magazine, and Stern. 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 also co-founder of Foundation Rwanda; a non-profit organization that supports secondary school education for Rwandan children born of rape.

This exhibition was made possible by generous support from the Open Society Institute, Amnesty International, and Foundation Rwanda. Additional support to Intended Consequences was provided by Henry Buhl; SanDisk; Artis — Contemporary Israeli Art Fund; Kodak; and the Consulate General of Israel, Office of Cultural Affairs, in New York.

Image: Jonathan Torgovnik, Valentine with her daughters, Amelie and Inez, Southeast Museum of Photograpy

The Southeast Museum of Photography exhibits, collects, preserves, and interprets photography to facilitate teaching and learning at Daytona State College, and enhances the community’s understanding and appreciation of culture, history, art and photography

Southeast Museum of Photography Daytona State College: 1200 International Speedway Blvd, Building 1200

www.smponline.org

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