Ximena Borrazás – The Scars of the Conflict

Before going to Tigray Borrazás contacted large media organisations, making an attempt to put a narrative concerning the postwar state of affairs and displaced residents. But she was informed that titles didn’t publish work from warfare zones by freelancers, or {that a} story from Africa was “not relevant enough”. Eventually German newspaper DW backed her, however then, when she printed her pictures on-line, she was accused of mendacity and creating propaganda. Determined to corroborate her collaborators’ tales, she returned to the hospital and requested to {photograph} X-rays of the objects within the ladies’s our bodies; and in doing so, discovered she created one thing extra common or ’related’. 

“An X-ray is something you can’t deny,” she explains. “But when I published these images, in The Guardian and on social media, the response was crazy. So many people from around the world got in touch asking how they could help or donate. I realised it’s because an X-ray is in black-and-white and only reveals the anatomy. It doesn’t show an individual’s skin colour, or how they are dressed, or their religion, so people relate to it differently.”

This realisation inspired Borrazás to take an analogous strategy in Ukraine, which she has now visited seven instances; her work from this battle combines portraits with medical pictures, and even survivors’ personal photographs of their accidents. In Ukraine she has additionally discovered male survivors of sexual violence, whereas in Tigray, if such people exist, they aren’t talking up. Some of the male survivors in Ukraine even wish to present their faces in her pictures, reasoning they now have “nothing to fear”, and that doing so can break the silence and the taboo, and assist others. 

“One of them told me that, when he got his freedom, he went to the hospital and they only had gynaecologists to treat him,” says Borrazás. “There are no professionals for men [trained in treating sexual abuse] because no one even considers that these things can happen. So some of them don’t even have medical records.” 

Borrazás believes all sexual violence survivors deserve justice, and hopes that, along with elevating consciousness, she will be able to accumulate proof and testimonies which may at some point be utilized in courts of legislation. “My aim is to contribute,” she says, “to obtain justice and accountability.” 

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