Eberhard Riedel Speaking in Santa Fe, NM, and Seattle, WA

Eberhard Riedel is busy traveling, speaking, and presenting workshops about his Cameras without Borders: Photography for Healing and Peace work in Africa. On February 24-25, 2012, Riedel will be speaking at the C.G. Jung Institute of Santa Fe and on March 9-10, 2012, for the C.G. Jung Society of Seattle. You are cordially invited to attend. In Seattle photographers pay discounted membership admission.

In these presentations Riedel addresses the challenges inherent in self-empowering and providing psychosocial support to large numbers of individuals and communities that suffer the traumatic consequences of war, violence and marginalization. For the past six years he has worked with such communities in Uganda, Congo, Kenya, and South Sudan in collaboration with African people working to address the psychological sequelae of war and tribal violence. As a psychologist he blends digital photography and old healing methods developing a systems approach to treatment of psychological trauma. As a photographer he attends to cultural interfaces and strives to not only document and advocate but also set into motion a process whereby survivors tend their psychological injuries and communities interrupt the cycle of violence.

Eberhard Riedel will discuss how his project originated (Santa Fe – Friday Lecture) and how fieldwork in crisis areas in Africa challenges both photographer and psychologist to find adequate expression and concepts for dealing with the new realities of our time (Santa Fe – Saturday Workshop; Seattle – Friday Lecture & Saturday Workshop). Cameras without Borders is a Blue Earth project.

 

 

A Letter from Eastern Congo

I recently returned from seven weeks of fieldwork in South-Kivu Province in Eastern Congo, which borders Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. Since I started my Cameras without Borders: Photography for Healing and Peace project in Africa I had looked for an opportunity to work in the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This chance presented itself when I met Pastor Aembe, President of the Great Lakes Foundation, who invited me to Eastern Congo to contribute to their group’s peace building efforts. We met in November 2010 while I lectured at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, as part of a three-months project in Uganda and Kenya.

Since the beginning of the Rwandan genocide in the early 1990s the neighboring parts of Congo have been in constant turmoil and states of war with terrible consequences for the local population and environment. Travel and photography permits are required, and a continual monitoring of the security situation is necessary while working in rural areas of South-Kivu Province. I was fortunate to have the unwavering assistance of members and associates of the Great Lakes Foundation located in Bukavu, the Provincial Capital of South-Kivu. The Great Lakes Foundation was started by a group of local professionals who have dedicated their lives to peace building efforts in their region.

Though travel in eastern Congo was physically and emotionally difficult, I returned home feeling not only deeply effected by the experiences but also sensed that a page had turned in my professional life – both as a photographer and psychoanalyst. The physical and emotional trauma of the people in the Province is quite overwhelming; the abuses are ongoing and epidemic. As a psychologist I was able to: (i) provide psychological support to some victims of sexual abuse and ex-child soldiers; (ii) work with their families and communities around rejection of sexually traumatized women and issues of reintegration of ex-child soldiers; (iii) refer fifteen of the most seriously injured women to Panzi Gynecological Hospital in Bukavu; and (iv) train local volunteers and professionals.

As a photographer I had two distinct goals: (i) To visually translate emotional experiences into portraiture in order to communicate the multiple psychosocial issues that plague the people of Eastern Congo and neighboring Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. Out of safety concerns I did most portrait work in private spaces and limited my people-in-environment documentary efforts. (ii) My other goal was to teach photography to individuals who have suffered trauma and are marginalized and to encourage them to tell their stories through images. This process follows an old tradition of building bridges to artistic layers of the psyche to help people rediscover their voice.

Specifically, I conducted Cameras without Borders workshops with three groups of women who had been sexually victimized and three groups of ex-child soldiers. After printing three or four photographs for each participant I typically start the conversation asking, “What are the stories these pictures are telling you?” In the resulting group process most participants spoke quite eloquently from their hearts, which in turn encouraged local professionals to look at group therapy as a healing modality.

Photographic work with victims of war and violence requires reflection on boundary issues - does the work help or exploit the victim? My goal is to help interrupt the cycle of violence. To achieve this I believe we must tend to the physical and emotional wounds of victims of trauma. In Eastern Congo the issue is to help stop a perverse war against the indigenous population and the environment. Collaborating with local people, such as members of the Great Lakes Foundation, who, yearning for peace, engage both in grassroots work and efforts to transform the political and legal culture of the region, provides many opportunities to effect change.

When I meet with people in the villages I frequently ask, “What kind of assistance would be most helpful to you at this time?” Overwhelmingly the first concern is health services. Of the tens of thousands of victims of sexual violence in the rural areas of South-Kivu Province the vast majority go for months or years without access to treatment for their internal injuries and infections, and scores die. The next most frequent assistance requested is help from the international community to remove the quasi-nomadic foreign militia criminals from the bush. The psychosocial consequences of this epidemic are vast: Villagers live under constant threat; women fear returning to their fields where many attacks happen; men feel unable to protect their families, so they feel disempowered and often leave; young rape victims are shunned from marriage; and families lack the funds to send their children to school. The mayor of one village said to me, “Peace starts at the local level with education.” But my observation is that trauma is being transmitted to the next generation and, I fear, this will fuel the next cycle of violence. This is the topic of another Letter from Eastern Congo.

Posted August 4, 2011
Eberhard Riedel, Photographer and Psychoanalyst
"Cameras without Borders: Photography for Healing and Peace" is a Blue-Earth Project.