\u201cThe continuing human tragedy of Congo is not a statistic. It is a continuing human tragedy\u2026\u201d remarks John Le Carr\u00e9 in the foreword to this book. His words contain the indignation of a man who despairs at the state of humanity that allows the history of Congo to unfold unchallenged as the West looks on. \u201cWe must never turn away our gaze,\u201d he implores. With this collection of photographs, made over more than five years, Marcus Bleasdale directs us to look. <\/p>\n
It is an emotionally demanding task to read the introductory words and turn to the images that follow. Unimaginable. Horrific. Brutal. Do these words convey my reaction to the images and the book as whole? Or do they better serve to describe my \u2013 and our \u2013 collective failure to do something about the scenes the photographs show? Bleasdale and Le Carr\u00e9 point out there are moments of sanity and hope provided, on the one hand, by organisations such as MSF and Human Rights Watch who strive to make a difference, and on the other hand most importantly, by the people of Congo themselves who maintain through all their experiences a \u201csecret gaiety of spirit and a love of life\u201d. In Bleasdale\u2019s first book on Congo, One Hundred Years of Darkness, 2002, I had the impression of a man who was travelling to discover a land and explore a history handed down to him in the stories he had been told. In The Rape of a Nation<\/em> I see that this same man no longer travels Congo to explore and answer his own questions, he photographs it to lay bare the discovery of our complicity in the evil he has found and pose questions to us.<\/p>\n The layout of the book plays to this intention with its unrelenting depiction of exploitation, the gold and diamond miners; of grief, at one of many funerals for a child; and of displacement, most poignantly realised in a chillingly pretty view of the flower gardens of Aveba where we are told women were rounded up and raped by the military in 2006. Le Carr\u00e9\u2019s and Bleasdale\u2019s are not the only voices that echo throughout this humble tome. Interspersed amongst the pages are testimonies of the Congolese. Printed on delicate tabs of paper that punctuate the harshness of the black and white photography are the words of Henri, Olive, R\u00e9gine, Tanzira, Madame Lisi, and Innocent to name a few. Fathers, mothers, children, their words are short but their stories are almost too huge to take on board. These words bring us back from any imaginary space we may have wandered off to while merely looking at the photographs. Through their stories we learn that \u201cthe enemies attacked our village\u201d, \u201cthe Mayi-Mayi kept us a slaves\u201d, Together Bleasdale\u2019s photography and these recounted stories are so powerful in their symbiosis that this book seems able to actually shout \u201cRead me\u201d. It would be too easy to rationalise this book with simplistic analysis of the photography that seems at times to embody a World Press Photo style of image making\u2013 the low-slung Kalashnikov; a half-cut head in the frame\u2019s foreground \u2013 but aesthetic deconstruction does little justice to the work or myself. This collection of images and words, ink on paper, is in so many ways a powerful statement on the unrivalled effectiveness of photojournalism. Powerful photography collides with insightful words to construct an enduring narrative that exists both in the present as an act of witnessing and in the future as a valuable document.<\/p>\n As Le Carr\u00e9 says: \u201cTo observe pain only through the prism of the boardroom and the computer screen is to sever the vital artery between compassion and action\u201d. Thanks to Bleasdale and his publisher\u2019s gentle, but unflinching, approach to making books it is presented here with force and purpose. Jon Levy <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span>
\u201cI don\u2019t even know how I learned to kill\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n
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