Oxfam’s Kate Pattison introduces Rankin’s stunning new exhibition, which showcases an intimate series of photographs capturing village life in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
I can’t wait to see how the public react to the giant glowing pods that will appear outside the National Theatre in London on Thursday night for the launch of From Congo with Love.
It was an interesting design challenge to try to create an exhibition that would be different enough to intrigue the digital-savvy South Bank audience while simultaneously creating a quiet space where the audience could lose themselves among the hundreds of photos and emotive music created by the subjects of the exhibition themselves – the people of Sange in eastern DRC.
The solution we came up with was to split the exhibition between two worlds. The South Bank pod contains the interactive Rankin Machine, which encourages the public to have their Rankin-style portrait taken and become part of the exhibition. The Congo pod aims to transport the audience to Sange, the village in eastern Congo where Rankin ran his photography workshops. Rankin’s giant portraits of the people he met during the workshops unify both pods, projecting an incredible energy across the South Bank.
An enormous and very personal family album
My favourite part of the exhibition is the Congo pod. Walking in reminds me of how I felt when Rankin’s bleary-eyed assistants showed us the first contact sheets after a long night processing hundreds of films by hand. None of us were prepared for the quality of the images they had taken. Rankin was practically jumping out of his seat. There was so much to see in each picture and there were hundreds and hundreds of them. The more we saw, the more powerful they became. Together, they built a real sense of the community and everyday lives of the people of Sange, which even the best documentary photographer would never have been able to achieve. I felt privileged but also a little voyeuristic – like I was looking through an enormous and very personal family album.
There are two images in the Congo pod that I truly love, both were taken by Muvida – a wonderful grandmother, who prior to meeting Rankin, had never even held a camera.
One is of her nephews doing their hair in the mirror before school. It is taken from behind without either boy noticing. It is perfectly famed and captures a tender moment of brotherly love. The other captures a lovely feeling of complete surprise as a tiny girl runs into a doorway, pulls back the curtain and is snapped.
Heartbreaking
Although both images portray a feeling of love and lightness, Muvida’s story is heartbreaking. Like two million other innocent people in Eastern Congo, Muvida was forced to flee her home when the militia turned her village into a war zone. After several days of walking, Muvida and her heavily pregnant daughter Byamungu arrived in Sange. They had to leave their husbands in the forest because they had both been injured in the fighting and could no longer walk. The woman headed for Sange because they knew there was a hospital there and the baby was about to arrive.
A child called Chance
I met Muvida a week after her granddaughter was born. Her daughter had died in childbirth. There had been complications and she had to have a caesarean. In Congo that means a 50-50 chance of survival. Muvida explained that her daughter had died as soon as the baby was saved, and that she didn’t even get a chance to see her child. She also told me that she had to borrow £6 to pay for her daughter’s funeral. Muvida was the first to hold the baby. She called her Chance and told me that she would love her as her own.
Rankin’s giant portrait of Muvida and Chance will shine out into the London skyline tomorrow night and I’ll be thinking of them, living in their tiny animal shed in Sange and hoping that they are okay.
View Rankin’s photos online and get details of the exhibition