Rwandan portrait on UK art shortlist

LONDON – A photograph of a Rwandan woman who was raped during the 1994 Genocide has been nominated for the UK National Portrait Gallery’s Photographic Portrait Prize. The image by Jonathan Torgovnik is one of four pictures - all of women - in the running for the £12,000 award. Torgovnik, a former Israeli army photographer, traveled to Rwanda twice after covering a story about Africa’s HIV epidemic for Newsweek magazine. He photographed 20 women and children in all for a series called Intended Consequences: Mothers of Genocide, Children of Rape. “It was the most horrific thing I’d ever heard,” he said. “The trauma these women went through was beyond anything I could imagine.” The rape victim was two months pregnant when the massacre started. She was repeatedly raped during and after her pregnancy and, after giving birth, became pregnant again as a result of one of the attacks. South African-born Michelle Sank is in the running for a picture of a girl at a German centre for troubled teenagers. David Stewart and Julieta Sans complete the shortlist. The best 60 of the 6,900 entries will go on show next month. Among the other nominees, Stewart, from Lancaster, is shortlisted for a portrait of his teenage daughter Alice. And Argentina-born Sans, 28, will compete with a photo of her friend Lucila. BBC