In 1994, an interim government in Rwanda orchestrated one of the world's worst mass crimes: a 100-day extermination campaign that took half a million lives. At the time, Rwanda's genocide went largely unnoticed by the outside world. Today there is growing interest in the Rwandan experience as many discover the horror that took place and seek to understand how and why violence of this character and magnitude could have happened in our time.Intimate Enemy is a rare entree into the logic, language, and imagery of Rwanda's violence. The book presents perpetrator testimony along with photographs of Rwandans, both perpetrators and survivors. The images and words are raw and unanalyzed; the reader is left to make sense of the killers and their would-be victims. Intimate Enemy challenges our assumptions about the genocide and about those who perpetrated it. It also prods us to consider how to represent and imagine violence on the scale of Rwanda's.
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" Intimate Enemy is primarily composed of duotone photographs of the Hutu murderers of the Tutsi in Rwanda, now serving prison sentences. Photographer Lyons (Another Africa, with Chinua Achebe) shows seemingly "normal" individuals, with little or no malice in their faces. This aspect of everyday ordinariness staggers the mind: these people include teachers, businessmen, a plumber, farmers, an accountant, etc., who committed horrific crimes. Most confessed to killing, and few will be allowed to leave prison. There are images of Tutsi survivors as well. The accompanying text by former Nairobi-based journalist Straus (political science, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) is somber in tone, giving us a historical lesson few will forget. The interviews with these killers are straightforward and direct, lacking hyperbole and sensationalism." Library Journal "The testimony, preceded by only the briefest of explanations, is often chilling, and the photos are poignant in this stirring look at the Rwandan genocide." Booklist "While raw, unanalyzed interviews given by these Rwandans with Scott Straus, an expert on violence in Africa open the book, it's the striking black and white portraits taken by Robert Lyons which are so absorbing...Photography this poignant is a good reminder that a picture really can speak a thousand words. This is a hauntingly beautiful book." Embassy
About the Author
Photographer Robert Lyons is the author of two notable books on Africa. Another Africa is an exploration, with writer Chinua Achebe, of the real Africa behind the stereotypes commonly held by Westerners; Egyptian Time is a collection of photographs of Egypt and its people, accompanied by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz's short story "The Cradle." Scott Straus is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of several books on Africa and violence, including The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda, and is the translator of Jean-Pierre Chretien's The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History. Formerly a Nairobi-based journalist, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his 1996 reporting on the war in Congo.
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4.3 out of 5 stars
3 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
deserves a wider audience
8 Mar 2006
By A. Kapahi
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Not as well known as some of his contemporaries, Robert Lyons deserves a wider audience. Having previously published two other books on Africa, with Intimate Enemy he has published his most mature work. Composed of mostly square format black and white portraits, the book is spare simple and without judgement.. It shows again how the larger forces of history and politics can make the best of people do the worst of things. Not an easy book to look at but well worth having.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Title says it all.
27 Feb 2007
By Robert P. Beveridge
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Robert Lyons and Scott Straus, Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices from the Rwandan Genocide (Zone, 2006)
By now, pretty much every one is aware of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, almost invisible while it was going on but the subject of a great deal of media exposure since. As with all such things, though, there's always another angle from which to approach it. Robert Lyons and Scott Straus find one (two, actually) with Intimate Enemy; show the genocide from the point of view of those who participated (in Lyons' case), or from every point of view there is to be had in Rwanda (in Straus').
After two introductions in which the author and photographer explain their methodologies in collecting the material presented here, we get into the edited transcripts of a number of interviews Lyons did with genocidaires-- those convicted of genocidal behavior who freely confessed to their crimes. Simply put, they're fascinating. Reading them, one has to wonder how much of what's said needs to be taken with how much salt; there's a lot of language that sounds suspiciously like "I was only following orders," but with a dash of "if I hadn't, I'd have been just as dead" added to it. Straus' photographs, presented with no context whatsoever (notes on the photos are presented in a separate section afterwards), are even more intriguing, since he juxtaposes mass murderers with innocent bystanders, judges, victims' families. (Despite what you read in some of the interviews, you won't be able to tell them apart.)
Thought-provoking. Recommended. *** ½
By now, pretty much every one is aware of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, almost invisible while it was going on but the subject of a great deal of media exposure since. As with all such things, though, there's always another angle from which to approach it. Robert Lyons and Scott Straus find one (two, actually) with Intimate Enemy; show the genocide from the point of view of those who participated (in Lyons' case), or from every point of view there is to be had in Rwanda (in Straus').
After two introductions in which the author and photographer explain their methodologies in collecting the material presented here, we get into the edited transcripts of a number of interviews Lyons did with genocidaires-- those convicted of genocidal behavior who freely confessed to their crimes. Simply put, they're fascinating. Reading them, one has to wonder how much of what's said needs to be taken with how much salt; there's a lot of language that sounds suspiciously like "I was only following orders," but with a dash of "if I hadn't, I'd have been just as dead" added to it. Straus' photographs, presented with no context whatsoever (notes on the photos are presented in a separate section afterwards), are even more intriguing, since he juxtaposes mass murderers with innocent bystanders, judges, victims' families. (Despite what you read in some of the interviews, you won't be able to tell them apart.)
Thought-provoking. Recommended. *** ½
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intimate Enemy, Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide
28 Aug 2006
By Bill Arnold
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
This very illuminating book shows us, through the descriptions of participants, what it was like during the Rwanda genocide. Photographic portraits made later show us other participants. Together they make a picture of yet another holocaust.
The analysis of political scientist Scott Straus and the photographs of Robert Lyons exemplify the belief that objectivity is the key to understanding human affairs, social science. With it there is the hope that dispassionate, systematic analysis, like in the physical sciences, will provide understanding of and divergence from the destructive courses of the past. Straus uses the random sample; Lyons the straight-on shot. By striping away context, there is the promise that essences will be revealed. If Straus and Lyons had been able to observe the killings, instead of asking questions third hand, instead of photographing after the fact, would we better understand why people kill people? Terrorist videos with their fixed focus views are the closest we have to being present at horror. Yet when that wildly passionate, unprofessional radio announcer at the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 says "This is terrible', we understand. But what kind of understanding is that?
Bill Arnold BA political science, MFA photography
The analysis of political scientist Scott Straus and the photographs of Robert Lyons exemplify the belief that objectivity is the key to understanding human affairs, social science. With it there is the hope that dispassionate, systematic analysis, like in the physical sciences, will provide understanding of and divergence from the destructive courses of the past. Straus uses the random sample; Lyons the straight-on shot. By striping away context, there is the promise that essences will be revealed. If Straus and Lyons had been able to observe the killings, instead of asking questions third hand, instead of photographing after the fact, would we better understand why people kill people? Terrorist videos with their fixed focus views are the closest we have to being present at horror. Yet when that wildly passionate, unprofessional radio announcer at the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 says "This is terrible', we understand. But what kind of understanding is that?
Bill Arnold BA political science, MFA photography
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