Customer Reviews

Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide

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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.

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

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