Bleeding Scars from Rwanda

Abstract

Much of the photography and literature published in response to the Rwandan genocide focuses on catastrophic human damage and highly visual manifestations of suffering. This work, whilst essential to documenting the events and the aftermath of the killings, has been in danger of obscuring the individual person, a tendency which is exacerbated by international representations of `Africa' as a place of violence, illness and death. In Les Blessures du silence, a collection of photographs and testimonial interviews from Rwanda, Alain Kazinierakis and Yolande Mukagasana challenge this pervasive foregrounding of injury by focusing instead on the ongoing emotional suffering of the individual. This article will examine how Kazinierakis's photography interacts with Mukagasana's interviews to provide an unusual contribution to the literature memorialising genocide.