Chapter 3: Images of Before: Personal Archives and the Kigali Genocide Memorial

Abstract

This chapter explores some of Rwanda’s numerous genocide memorials and the related debates about the politicization of commemorative practices in the country. In particular, it focuses on the Kigali Genocide Memorial and the way in which it employs the private, personal and family photographic archives (images taken before the genocide) in one of its exhibits. The chapter examines how the images are both reduced and enriched by the context of their exhibition. It investigates their dual memorial and evidentiary functions as personal mementos and museum exhibits and engages with what they can tell us about the relationship between photography and death, time, collective memory, aesthetics and the act of looking. The specificity of the memorial and museum context is considered alongside the unique, dialogical memorial and evidentiary fluidity offered by the photographs.