Jonathan Torgovnik

Jonathan Torgovnik's dramatic and sensitive portraits of Rawandan rape survivors and their children are as real and moving as documentary and portrait photography can get. And they serve as quite the wake up call to those who insist that documentary photography is no longer relevant, and can no longer affect image weary viewers. The mothers, struggling survivors of the most brutal rape scenarios imaginable, now struggle to raise the children of those actions singlehandedly- many before the AIDS virus they also contracted permanently and prematurely separate them from their children.

These portraits (and accompanying text) remind us that these survivors are real, and the consequences of those heinous crimes will continue to reverberate long past their lives and unto those of their children- who themselves may one day fall victim to the same vicious cycle that also creates the automated killers known as child soldiers. For now, these photographs testify to the love, turmoil and perseverance so evident in the faces of mother and child alike.

For those so moved...