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A volunteer from Simelela, an organization dealing with sexual violence, uses a doll to teach children about inappropriate touching and sexual abuse, at a pre-school in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township February 17, 2010. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly
Rape is a very unpleasant topic to address. Many rape victims never discuss an assault and as such opportunities to recover may dwindle with time. One assumes adults are at least equipped to deal with the emotional trauma of discussion and therapy.
What of a child victim? Child rape, an unconscionable act, not only subjects innocents to violent assault but takes advantage of the child’s (probable) lack of perspective to the sadism to which they fall victim.
Finbar O’Reilly reported today on the child rape epidemic of South Africa.
“South Africa has the highest rate of rape in the world, including child and baby rape, with one person estimated to be raped every 26 seconds, according to aid groups and local organizations.”
It is noteworthy that O’Reilly’s dispatch hit the wires the same day artist Zanele Muholi condemned Lulu Xingwana, a South African government minister, for condemning the morality of Muholi’s exhibition.*
Muholi understood Xingwana’s objection as typical of South African society in which sex and sexuality are not discussed and yet sexual violence is prevalent.
Muholi’s images are tender, intelligent. That they’d compel a government minister to publicly disassociate herself is a sign of how taboo issues of sexual empowerment are in South Africa. Muholi’s images are not problematic; if anything, they are an essential part of the solution to opening up collective awareness and ownership of one’s own body.
* I posted earlier today on Zanele Muholi’s work.
Constitution Hill is a former prison that used to hold political prisoners during apartheid, including both Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.
Now the prison, a repurposed art space, faces a new controversy. Lulu Xingwana, a South African government minister, walked away from her official speaking engagement because she considered the images of lesbians immoral and “against nation-building”.
Zanele Muholi, an award-winning activist and artist has expressed her disappointment.
As the Guardian reports:
This is an understandable position.
The Guardina summarises:
It is within this context of ongoing violence toward women, that I think Muholi’s pitched her response to Xingwana perfectly,
“There is nothing pornographic. We live in a space where rape is a common thing, so there is nothing we can hide from our children. Those pictures are based on experience and issues. Where else can we express ourselves if not in our democratic country? Children need to know about these things. A lot of people have no understanding of sexual orientation, people are suffering in silence.”
I am a huge fan of the Flickr Commons Project.
I have published on The Hidden Gems of Flickr Commons for Wired‘s photography blog Raw File.
For their documents of (early) 20th century fishing & skiing; industry & leisure; mountains and deserts of the Pacific Northwest, my favourite institutions are The Oregon State University and the Commons’ newest member, The University of Washington!
I have always been taken by the photographic sets out of the London School of Economics. The LSE archive has great emphasis on its department faculty; administrative staff; extra-curricula activities; student events; laboratory tableaux; campus vistas; college anniversaries; and guests of the famed school. It’s an archive with a likable and unpretentious institutional identity.
The LSE Library set contains dozens of portraits of the library scientists and staff.
Prison populations around the world have much in common. They are virtually always dominated by poor, uneducated, unemployed young men, often from minority groups. Indigenous groups are also over-represented. For example, in New Zealand 45% of inmates are Maori, although they comprise only 14% of the national population (Stern 1998:32-33). In Australia, aborigines are more than nine times more likely to be arrested, more than six times more likely to be imprisoned, and 23 times more likely to be imprisoned as juveniles (Broadhurst 1997: 410).
In the US, African Americans form 12.7% of the population but make up 48.2% of adults in prison. Hispanics constitute 11.1% of the national population but form 18.6% of the prison population. Native Americans are less than 1.0% of the population, but 4.0% of adults in this group are incarcerated. This holds true for Canada, where indigenous women make up only 3% of females in the country, but comprise 29% of the female prison population.
Prison Photography 