Intended Consequences at Aperture

This fascinating exhibit currently on view at Aperture features interviews with women who bore children as a result of rapes during the genocide in Rwanda. An estimated 20,000 children were conceived during the 1994 mass murders, and many women contracted AIDS from their attackers. Jonathan Torgovnik took the photographs and conducted the interviews, which reveal a diversity of views about the violence and the resulting offspring. Some women describe how much they wanted to destroy themselves once they discovered their pregnancies but found a wellspring of love as soon as the children were born. Others talk about the hatred they felt --- and still feel --- for their children, in whose faces they see the loss of their families and their lives. Each woman gives a brutal, honest, moving testimony. Go see it if you can.