Private Story
Survivors of Sexual Violence
Silenced by trauma, I found my voice through photography. My long term project, Wildflower, became a visual account of surviving life after trauma. Sharing this project, I learned about the power of images and storytelling. Stories have the power to offer perspectives and bridge gaps leading to hope, connection and healing.
Consequently, I also learned about the different ways we, as a society, still continue to fail survivors. In the US, Americans are sexually assaulted every 68 seconds. One in six women are victims of rape. Three-fourths of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. Only 30% of sexual assaults are reported and less than 0.5% result in incarceration. These statistics illustrate our current culture of victim-blaming and shaming that permits the cycle of sexual violence and the continued silencing of victims. This makes it of utmost importance for us to address how to be effective and meaningful allies.
Since then, I have expanded my work with other survivors of sexual violence. Dear Survivor is a growing visual collection empowering sexual trauma survivors through the expression of their own narratives. This diptych series seeks to highlight survivor experiences, illustrate the prevalence of sexual violence, and question how we can break this cycle. Since the pandemic has halted my progress on this body of work, I have expanded this project to a website, www.DearSurvivor.org. The website hosts different resources beyond the photo series, including a workbook, a sharing space, a podcast, and workshops.
Anja Niedringhaus exemplified courage as an incredible photojournalist who covered many warfronts. Her work showed such humanity and intimacy in the most dangerous of places. Although the work that I do is different, I believe that sexual violence is also a war, a silent war fought in homes and other seemingly safe spaces. I am applying for this award because I would like to show that courage can take on different forms. There is the bravery of risking your life to work reporting from dangerous locations like war photography. But, there is also the bravery of working on intimate stories that have great emotional and psychological demands. I also want to show that there is bravery in simply choosing not to stay silent.
One of the most difficult parts of being a survivor is being socialized to believe that your story is not important. It therefore follows that you are not important. This only adds to the great difficulty survivors face when coming forward to share their stories. I hope that in doing this kind of work and in sharing these kinds of stories, I will help empower survivors, remind them that they are not alone, and show that there is meaningful life after trauma.
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