Blood Bonds

Lecturis, Eindhoven, 2025

160 pages | 35€

A man and woman sit on a wooden bench. She puts his hand on his, but her gaze trails off-frame. They are Marianna and Marc, who both live in the same village in the Karongi district of Rwanda. This is the cover of Jan Banning and Dick Wittenberg’s new book Blood Bonds: Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda. Later on, we will learn that Marianna lost her entire extended family in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and that Marc was involved in the murder of her sister. Turning back to her hand on his and to her gaze somewhere else, one wonders – could she ever forgive?

At the heart of Blood Bonds is the question of whether real reconciliation can follow the darkest moments of humanity. To answer this question in Rwanda would mean hope for many other places, as the specific unspeakable horrors of this genocide in 1994 leave forgiveness as unimaginable. Jan Banning’s photographs and journalist Dick Wittenberg’s interviews, writing, and reporting, form together a broad-spanning dossier of mutual life after devastation. 

The photographs in Blood Bonds are portraits of survivors and perpetrators, pairs who through community-based sociotherapy, have, to one degree or another, reconciled. They are neighbors who have seemingly repaired trust in the aftermath of one of humanity’s darkest chapters. The photographs themselves are powerful, in their lighting and composition, but even more striking is the act itself, of survivor and perpetrator posing together. It knocks the wind out of you.

The question of forgiveness informs the framing of the portraits. In nearly all of the photographs, Banning positions his camera in a manner that centers the subjects, which, given the book’s format, means that the gutter separates pairs into two opposite pages. A shared frame on individual pages – this illustrates the central contradiction of the book: that reconciliation does exist and that some things are unforgivable. None represent this contradiction photographically quite like the image of Solange and Elie. Solange, the 23-year-old daughter of the man who killed Elie’s family, was born after the genocide, while Elie survived it at only ten years old. In the photograph, Solange stands behind a sitting Elie. She holds on to her cardigan, fingers at her chest, as though exposing for the camera what she holds in her heart. She stands behind Elie, but not exactly, as their faces are separated onto opposing sides of the gutter. And at the same time, Solange’s face is reflected in the gloss of the opposite page, creating a ghostly second image right above Elie. She is simultaneously with him and in opposition, reconciled and apart.

The only two images in Blood Bonds that are not portraits of pairs are the first two in the book, separated from each other by only a few pages. The second one is the only image in the book not of people at all: piles and piles of clothes, fabrics of different colors, covered by a reddish-brown tone, like blood coppered by time. This image of fabrics rather than of people stands for those who did not survive the genocide, the ones whose testimonies we will never hear. On the other hand, the first image in the book focuses on life. On one half of the frame, young kids look into the camera; the only people in the whole book not identified as Tutsi or Hutu, but as Rwandan. Simultaneously they represent the age of some the survivors during the genocide, and, as well, a hope for the future. On the other side of the frame, printed on the opposite page, is a path. To where it leads, we don’t know.

While Banning’s photographs are able to capture incredible moments which speak to longer journeys, they highlight as well the imperfections of the photographic document. The camera can speak only certain truths: in this instance, that pairs of survivors and perpetrators were in the same room together. By knowing the methodology of the project, thanks to Wittenberg’s writing, we know as well that they chose to be there and to position themselves as they saw fit. What the camera cannot reveal is their internal worlds. We will never be able to know whether real reconciliation was achieved, but the book is enough to give us hope – which in these times is necessary.

– Review by Dana Melaver

Dana Melaver is a writer and artist. Her work is rooted in the belief that everything is interesting, and often acts as a bridge among art, thought, and the sciences. Dana’s most recent projects include an experimental documentary about sustainable aquaculture, and an ode to the mischievous qualities of light.