zurück <<
Intimate Enemy
In late 1997, after having completed Another Africa, a book of
photographs with text by Chinua Achebe, I was haunted by the thought
that my work in Africa still remained unfinished. I reviewed the
photographs of Sub-Saharan Africa I had taken over the past eight years
and I realized my encounters were incomplete. Something remained for me
to confront in Africa. What that was remained an open question. It was
only later that I would come to know that the Rwanda genocide had
profoundly effected my perception and perspective.
In 1994 I had returned to Seattle to prepare an exhibition of my
photographs of Africa. During the last days of the genocide as I worked
in my darkroom, I listened—as was my habit—to the BBC. I watched the
news; I read the newspapers; I took in as much information as I could on
the genocide. It was difficult to look at my work on West Africa while
listening to the news from Rwanda. The two experiences, the images from
both places, my experiences on site and at a distance did not resonate.
As each day passed, I heard more and more reports about the genocide. I
became even more confused. Often the media depicted the genocide as
“tribal.” Print and visuals focused continually on the horror of the
killings without contextualizing anything. This all seemed quite one
sided: the lack of history, the simplistic, sensationalistic—sometimes
even pornographic—appeal to emotions without analysis. With each day as
I heard and saw more about the genocide, a feeling grew of impotency. I
understood nothing about the conflict—not even the images. I felt that
somehow there must be a way to show the horror of genocide without
making sensationalistic imagery. I wanted to explore the space between
the victims and perpetrators and the outside world…not to simply
demonize the perpetrators. I felt that in condemning those responsible
for the genocide that we easily made them into the “other” and in so
doing escaped the questions required of each of us as individuals. If
the “other” were hardly human then it was easy to say we would never do
this…that it was unthinkable. But it is not unthinkable, as we have seen
many times, in Armenia, in Cambodia, in Germany, in Bosnia, in Darfur:
genocide continues to take place often with impunity.
I now know that these days in 1994 profoundly affected my ideas about
what was to become eventually Intimate Enemy. Somehow I knew then that I
wanted to explore the Rwandan genocide from a perspective different from
what I had experienced in Seattle. I not only wanted to construct a
context from which to view the actual event. I also wanted to find new
ways of seeing and thinking the very idea of genocide. When I wrote, in
1997, the initial project description, I had envisioned it thus: “I
intend to present the human face of these people and, in doing so, to
bring their stories closer to those of us not directly involved with the
genocide….People are simultaneously archetypes and individuals in this
project. In this way and within a specific anti-sensationalist context,
I believe that ideas surrounding healing, reconciliation and a strong
culture of human rights might ultimately emerge.” This remained my
starting point, from beginning to end, as I photographed.
The very specific subjective and aesthetic parameters of this project
were also evident to me from the start. In particular, I wanted to
rethink, rework, expose the genre of the portrait, in particular the
black-and-white portrait. I wanted to present human beings in a seamless
fashion without attributing specific characteristics or imposing set
categories. I saw my portraits as an archive where individuals would be
more democratically represented. As I would write in my diary when in
Rwanda: “This is the most documentary project I have ever attempted. I
am allowing the images little poetic and emotional space; viewers will
have little room for escape.” Through a stark black and white
portraiture, with a limited depth of field and a background obscure in
detail but present nonetheless, I wanted the audience to enter a more
intimate space, to ask questions, to experience directly the ambiguous
physical resemblances between genocidaire and rescapee. Ideally and
idealistically, I believed a common humanity would emerge as each viewer
witnessed and realized how they themselves were affected by this
genocide. I hoped that the portraits of the living would collapse the
past and present and that the portraits of survivors and perpetrators
would bare the traces of those who perished.
The very organization of the project was daunting. It took over eight
months of emails, faxes, letters and telephone calls to convince the
Rwandan Ministry of Justice to grant me permission to visit and work in
Rwanda. These were months of long waiting, wondering when and how the
authorities would finally respond. The procedures did not end there.
Once I was allowed to enter Rwanda, I still had to assure, through a
fairly complicated process, my access to the prisons. I had to wait for
letters to be written to the directors of each prison requesting their
help and assistance. Each letter had to be signed by the Minister of
Justice and officially stamped by the Ministry. I still remember waiting
for three days for signatures in a tall office building filled with
uninterested bureaucrats and secretaries.
Retrospectively, I realize these letters were vague pleas for help from
the Ministry of Justice on my behalf. In each venue the party
responsible would read the request, query me further about the project
and then deliberate as to whether or not I should receive access, and to
what degree.
There was also the fundamental problem of language. I had a translator
who accompanied me in all my travels, throughout the entire project. We
succeeded in developing a good working relation but certain limitations
still existed. Often he could not or would not ask the questions I
posed. We discussed this a few times and I finally came to realize the
there were just certain questions that he as a Rwandan could not ask.
Our negotiations were long and difficult but we found a compromise. I
remember when we first met my querying him as to whether he was a Hutu
or Tutsi, he answered he was a Rwandan. He had returned from Burundi. My
questioning arose from numerous issues and I did not want undue problems
to arise when questioning inmates…. based upon ethnic issues.
Every day we traveled together to a prison, a survivor group, a
courthouse or a prosecutor’s office. With letters of introduction and
authorization in hand, we pleaded our case and hoped to gain access to
interview and to photograph. A typical day went like this: we would
arrive early morning at the prison, meet with the director and speak
with him for an hour of so. Once we received permission (if not that
day, then the next), a guard would accompany us to the prison doors.
Then, we would enter without companion. There were no guards inside the
prison. There was, rather, a hierarchy among the prisoners themselves.
The prisoner in charge of security would greet us and then lead us to
the prisoner in charge of inmates. From my diary about my first visit
inside a prison,” in the Kigali prison, for example, some prisoners were
dressed in pink, others half-dressed, and still others were in street
clothes. Those in charge of security wore yellow berets; those
responsible for information had red and white berets…I kept feeling
their eyes upon me. For some I seemed simply a diversion, but the look I
received from others is haunting still…I am interested in arresting time
– rather than portraying the fluidity of it here….and to capture that
look with my camera….”
My prison visits varied in length. Sometimes I would spend up to seven
hours in the prison, meeting people, interviewing, finding places to
work, understanding the new site where I found myself. I often entered a
prison without knowing whom I wish to interview. Even in 1998,
information was scant and there was little way to access any information
at all. The only document I did have was a copy of the Rwanda Laws on
Genocide that contained the definition of the four categories of
imprisonment. In general I tried to work with individuals most culpable
for the genocide.
I decided to work with category 1 and category 2 genocidaires, many of
whom were sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Given that there was
no list of prisoners which to consult and with whom to pre-arrange
interviews, I needed to decide on the spot whom I was to interview and
photograph, and this was an efficient, albeit problematic, strategy.
Despite the fact that I worked primarily with these prisoners, I did
meet, along the way others, alleged genocidaires and minors who were too
young to be Category 1 but whom nonetheless participated in the killings
of the 100 days of the genocide. My hope was that somehow through the
images one could ultimately sense how all were connected and affected by
this horrible crime.
Thus, I have chosen to present the images here without captions.
Although the information is present elsewhere in the book, I believed as
a photographer it was my responsibility to portray people without
emphasizing my own preconceptions. I wanted something of each person to
come through in the image, as an emotional and retinal experience. The
more transparent my representation of each individual, the more
opportunity exists for the person’s aura to present itself, even if
momentarily. To recognize the aura is to identify the person. Of course
I am involved in this process; the photograph is not a “truthful”
document. Something of both the subject and the photographer is revealed
in these photographs. By closing the space between oneself and the
“other,” we can perhaps begin to ask more critical questions, to change
fixed patterns of behavior, to arrest the impulse that reduces the
individuality of strangers to mere savages and in so doing, conveniently
remove ourselves from any complicity in or responsibility for their
actions. Everyone lost in this genocide… It is my hope that these
portraits will serve to put a more human face on the tragedy of Rwanda
and bring us one step closer to seeing and thinking differently so that
such a loss will never be experienced again.
Robert Lyons
zurück <<
nach oben