UK: A portrait of depicting the interplay of love and pain on a mother's face wins 2007 Portrait Prize from London's National Portait Gallery

Israeli-born photographer Jonathan Torgovnik won the 12 thousand pound prize his powerful portrait of a victim of rape during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Judging from the photos on display at this new exhibition in London's National Portrait Gallery, the craft of photography is a buoyant state. The 60 pictures hanging here represent a tiny selection of the near 7 thousand submitted for the gallery's fifth annual Photographic Portrait Prize. "We looked through nearly seven thousand images over two days. It was quite an amazing thing because we're all experienced in this business of editing, but there's nothing on the scale of that that prepares you for it," says Evening Standard Photography critic and 2007 judge Sue Steward. The £12,000 prize was won by Israeli-born photographer Jonathan Torgovnik for his powerful portrait of Joseline Ingabire, a victim of rape during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The work, titled 'Joseline Ingabire with her daughter Leah Batamuliza, Rwanda' shows Joseline embracing her second daughter, while her first daughter, Hossiana, is shown in the background, standing in front of the stark, simple structure of their mud-walled home. "It was partly because visually and the colour combinations and the palate of it was really striking so you notice it anyway, but that's true of any National Geographic portrait or those sorts of travelogue kinds of pictures," says Steward. "It was really the expression of the woman's face, the older woman's face and the relationship between her and the girl, there's something intriguing going on. Her and the girl she had her arms around. And also the girl in the back who was sort of standing there away from the two of them. So there was an intense narrative going on. I think that's what did it." A press release issued by the National Portrait Gallery explains the story behind the photo. Torgovnik explains that when the genocide started, Joseline was married and two months pregnant. He says the militia killed her husband in front of her and that she was raped throughout her pregnancy, even at nine months, and again after she gave birth to her husband's daughter. She eventually became pregnant with her second daughter, as well as becoming infected with HIV. The photograph is part of a larger project about women who were raped during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. "I wanted to give a voice to these women who feel that they were completely forgotten by the world," he says. Torgovnik has set up Foundation Rwanda (www.foundationrwanda.org ) to provide funding for the secondary school education of children born from rape during the genocide. The photographer has raised over $180,000 from publishing portraits from the ongoing series, which so far numbers 30 portraits. The Evening Standard's photography critic Sue Steward served as a juror in this year's competition and says there was a common theme among the other submissions which struck her. "There was a great predominance in the selections of the seven thousand, of casual informal portraiture which has become very much a central strand of portrait photography today. It almost is like family snaps," she says, adding "It reflects the fact that everyone has cameras whether it's mobile phone and everyone is taking pictures of each other all of the time. That is the zeitgeist of photography wider than the art photography world." She points to the fact that the National Portrait Gallery exhibition only features one picture taken of in a war as a disappointment. Steward says she was slightly "We're at war in many places around the world and there was one single picture that reflected that and it's here in the show. It's a really beautiful picture. It's like a painting. It's a woman soldier in A "This is a portrait exhibition obviously, but I would have thought that there would be more representatives of that fact at this point in time." The Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition continues at London's National Portrait Gallery until February 24th 2008.

ITN Source | November 14, 2007

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