The 1994 massacre in Rwanda remains unimaginable 15 years later. And those 100 days of violence continue to echo through time, with equally unimaginable ramifications. Photographer Jonathan Torgovnik has documented one of them in a terribly affecting project on the mother-daughter relationships that grew up out of systemic rape. In 2006, he began a three-year project photographing and interviewing women who had children after being raped, and has now collected the images in a book, Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape. MOTHER JONES has a gallery of images from the book, along with gut-wrenching commentary from the mothers, such as this one:
I love my first daughter more because I gave birth to her as a result of love. The second girl is a result of unwanted circumstance. I never loved her father. My love is divided, but slowly, I am beginning to appreciate that the younger daughter is innocent. Before, when she was a baby, I left her crying. I fed the older one more than the younger one, until people in the neighborhood reminded me that was not the proper thing to do. I love her only now that I am beginning to appreciate that she is my daughter, too. We have not revealed everything to the girl—she thinks she is like her sister.
It defies commentary. But the collection is a must-see.
—KAI WRIGHT