Lorena Turner

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rwanda’s history is marked by decades of ethnic related tension that culminated in the 1994 genocide in which over 1,000,000 Tutsis were killed in 100 days. In recent years a lot of photographic work on Rwanda has been done with a focus on the horrors and fallout of the genocide. I went to Rwanda with the intent of being a part of that group, but left with a completely different thought about the story that should be told.

In this project, children who were born after the genocide were interviewed about their relationship to their families, community and nation. Portraits were made of them holding drawings they completed depicting themselves doing something with an elder (presumably someone who experienced the genocide in some capacity). As an offshoot of that project, children who were not interviewed wanted to be photographed and stepped in front of the brightly colored backdrops I brought. This allowed for the children to be both visually and conceptually separated from the landscape of Rwanda.

Lorena Turner teaches photography in the Communication Department at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California. Her work is shown nationally and internationally in venues as diverse as the United Nations, the Arc Light Theater in Hollywood, and the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art.  She has a BA from the University of Massachusetts, an MFA from the University of Oregon, and studied sociology at the New School for Social Research. She lives in Los Angeles and New York City.