Eye opening photo exhibit at the Halsey Institute

Aimed to shed light on two troubled African nations, the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at Charleston College is currently showing the works of Jonathan Torgovnik in Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape and Heather McClintock in The Innocents: Casualties of the Civil War in Northern Uganda.

The exhibit serves as an example of the College’s campus-wide commitment to the discussion of international issues, and is designed to highlight humanitarian crises in Rwanda and Uganda.

Intended Consequences delves into the difficult subject matter of Rwandan women who were subjected to massive violence perpetrated by members of the Hutu militia groups known as the Interhamwe during the 1994 genocide. In 2006, Jonathan Torgovnik traveled to East Africa to report on a story for Newsweek. While in Rwanda, he was moved to work on a personal project about women who were victims of violent crimes with children born of rape. Comprised of twenty-five stunning portraits of the women and their children with their testimonies, the exhibit explores intensely personal challenges and conflicted feelings about such horrific acts. This traveling exhibition was organized by the Aperture Foundation in New York.

Co-curated by the Halsey’s Mark Sloan and Lizz Biswell, The Innocents investigates the ongoing civil war and strife of the Acholi Tribe of northern Uganda. Beginning in 2005, Heather McClintock lived in northern Uganda for just under a year. She began weaving the very tenuous threads of a new way of life, which led to travel throughout the northern part of the country. Her work explores the civil war that took place for over twenty years in the north and claimed women and children as its primary victims. Today, hundreds of thousands of Ugandans still subsist in squalid camps in the north, while the genocide severely weakened cultural traditions. After years of struggle northern Uganda may no longer be officially at war, but neither is it psychologically at peace.

Jonathan Torgovnik was born in Israel and received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. His photographs are exhibited widely and used in numerous publications. He has is a contract photographer for Newsweek magazine, and is on the faculty of the International Center of Photography School, New York. In 2007, Torgovnik won the National Portrait Gallery’s Photographic Portrait Prize for an image from Intended Consequences. He also co-founded Foundation Rwanda, a non-profit organization that supports secondary school education for Rwandan children born of rape and addresses the mental health needs of the mothers.

Heather McClintock, originally from Vermont, received her B.A. from New England College in New Hampshire. She started documenting the Acholi tribe of Northern Uganda in 2006. Her Uganda portfolio has garnered several awards and recognitions, including most recently being selected for the prestigious Eddie Adam’s Barnstorm XXI Workshop in 2008. She has also received numerous other awards.

The Hasley Institute of Contemporary Art is located at 161 Calhoun St in Charleston and is open Monday – Saturday, 11 am – 4pm. Intended Consequences and The Innocents are on view through March 13, 2010.