€35.00
Publisher: Lecturis (Eindhoven, NL), 2025
ISBN 978-94-6226-551-6
160 pages, softcover, 160 mm x 240 mm
18 photographs + texts by Dick Wittenberg + essay by Marjan Slob.
Language: English and Dutch editions
Thirty years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, unthinkable reconciliations have taken place: survivors have forgiven the murderers of their loved ones and, in many cases, even formed friendships with them.
In just 100 days, 800,000 people were killed—a daily toll higher than that of the Holocaust. Perpetrators were often neighbors, wielding machetes, hammers, and other crude weapons. After the genocide, survivors, bearing deep scars, and perpetrators, grappling with guilt, still had to live together in the same communities.
In 2005, NGO CBS Rwanda launched a program, bringing groups of 10-15 former adversaries together. To date, approximately 150,000 participants have taken part in these sessions, where former perpetrators often express remorse and ask for forgiveness. Many share accounts of their genocidal actions and disclose the locations of victims’ remains, allowing for proper burials.
In early 2024, award-winning Dutch photographer Jan Banning and acclaimed writer Dick Wittenberg spent a month photographing and interviewing pairs of former enemies who had reconciled, uncovering stories of both immense suffering and astonishing healing.
The Book
Their book, Blood Bonds: Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda, features 18 double portraits of survivors alongside the perpetrators who inflicted horrific harm on them or their loved ones—yet whom they found the strength to forgive. It will also share their stories and explore the profound significance of this extraordinary testament to humanity.
Additionally, Dutch former ‘Thinker Laureate’ (2023–25) Marjan Slob contributes a 3,000-word philosophical essay on the nature of forgiveness.
Awards for Blood Bonds:
* 2025 ZEKE Award for Systemic Change, First-Place.
https://www.socialdocumentary..
* LensCulture Award (Critics’ Choice), 2024. Jury member Paolo Woods: “Banning’s direct and formal portraits tell us a story difficult to imagine. The reconciliation between the survivors and the murderers in Rwanda, 30 years after the 1994 genocide. The simplicity of the images gives us access to the complexity of the subject forcing us to look and look again trying to guess, without reading the caption who is the victim and who the perpetrator. The work questions us on the deep nature of evil and ultimately on the human nature.”
* “Official Selection” in the International Photography Awards 2024. Jury member Arthur Ollman: “Stories like this have never been more necessary in a nation and planet deeply in need of repair and reconciliation.”
* Aarize special award winner, 1st Place The Shape We’re In. Jury member Arthur Ollman: “Humanity seems to be able to manufacture war, famine, violence of every sort, not to mention plagues and pandemics which are visited far more acutely on the poor. And we create poorer and poorer populations as a very few become embarrassingly, sickeningly wealthy… Victims proliferate, but reconciliation is exceedingly rare. Here is what it looks like. Thanks to one photographer.”
Exhibitions of Blood Bonds:
* Bridge Gallery, Cambridge, MA (US), May 3 – June 7, 2025
* Photoville, New York, NY (US), June 7 – 22, 2025
* Cortona on the Move, Cortona (Italy), July 17 – Nov. 2, 2025
* Museum Hilversum, Hilversum (Netherlands), Dec. 13, 2025 – March 1, 2026
* La Ferme des Tilleuls, Lausanne (Switzerland), Sept. – Dec. 2026
