Expanding Lives/The Kovler Center for Victims of Torture

I received a grant from the Illinois Arts Council to compare two very different ways of facing the camera. The young women in the Expanding Lives program came from Niger and were studying in the U.S. They faced the camera directly. The clients of the Kovler Center could not, for both personal and legal reasons. I felt that the women from Niger's portrait was incomplete without some cultural reference, so images of traditional cloth were incorporated. The torture survivors' faces could not be shown, but I wanted to add artifacts or additional images to expand the narrative.