Thursday, September 13, 2007

Exhibit Review: Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Forgotten War

By Erin Rice

Through September 29, the Bath House Cultural Center in the White Rock Lake area of Dallas presents the moving photography exhibit, Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Forgotten War.

Despite being the bloodiest conflict since World War II, with anywhere from 3.5 to 4 million deaths since the start of fighting in 1996, the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one of the least known and publicized conflicts in the modern era. Seeing their opportunity to shed light on the atrocities and suffering taking place in the region, five world-renowned photographers from the VII Photo Agency visited DRC with Doctors Without Borders. Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Joachim Ladefoged, and James Nachtwey spent four months between May and August of 2005 documenting their experiences through photography.

While fighting in the region has lessened a bit since the 2006 elections (the first of their kind since 1960 in the war-torn country, formerly known as Zaire) the number of deaths have not gone down and violence to women is still rampant, according to Yakin Erturk, special rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council on violence against women. Disease, malnutrition, and faulty systems of governance, so far as protecting the vast population of internally displaced persons, keep the situation in DRC grave.

Much of the exhibit focuses on photography taken in the clinics set up by Doctors Without Borders. Spanning both black and white stills and full color, in addition to a variety of candid and semi-posed shots, the images depict the impact of the war on the people of the DRC. Several of the images are difficult to take, particularly those showing children suffering from any number of maladies. But I pose to anyone who plans on seeing the exhibit to take some time to look into the eyes of the people in the images. Despite the horrific conditions in which they live, and while some of them have very little left in the world, you can still feel the dignity emanating from their gazes. There is a remarkable power in these people for whom the rest of the world know little to nothing about.

Photos taken outside the clinics range from shots of street workers hanging around what appear to be brothels to photos of the landscape of the Congo. The landscape photos seem a little out of place until you read one of the accompanying placard explanations. As the placard reads, the DRC region in Africa has much potential given a wealth of natural resources and access to rivers and lakes in addition to a stretch of Atlantic Coastline. Warring in the region, however, and faulty governing have yielded this area useless. One chilling quote explains that the DRC is an area for which the future has come and gone.

The Forgotten War is a beautiful collection of photos with the singular mission at heart to expose people viewing them to a world we otherwise might never see in the media. Free to the public and located conveniently by White Rock Lake, it's as good of an excuse as any to drop in for an educational experience after biking or picnic-ing around the lake. I will say this of my experience there: I walked out struck that, though moved, how strangely unsurprised I was by the photos presented. As far as my expectations of what I would see of the DRC and its people, this is exactly what I was prepared for, which was quite possibly the saddest realization of the day.

Additional information about the war in the DRC was obtained from Human Rights Watch and Wikipedia.

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