A Bloomington psychotherapist is trying to show the devastation of war through her photos of impoverished people in refugee camps near Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Since 2022, Rwandan-backed rebels have displaced more than 2 million people in eastern Congo. The M23 rebel group captured Goma, the largest city in the region, a couple weeks ago. They killed about 3,000 people in the most recent fighting.
Laurie Bergner of Bloomington visited the region in late 2023. She visited two Internally Displaced Peoples [IDP] camps.
“Basically, Rwanda exported their civil war between the Hutus and the Tutsis to Congo. That’s why it’s so violent now,” said Bergner, who took photos of people in the camp as well as images elsewhere in Congo.
“It was heartbreaking, but it was also fascinating to me to see what people go through,” she said.
The McLean County Arts Center has an exhibit of Bergner’s work on display through Feb. 21.
Bergner hired a translator who helped her talk with the refugees. One camp was right outside Goma near a school.
“But these IDP people couldn’t go to school because they didn’t have the money for paper and pens and uniforms. They just hung out there. They had canvass tents with nothing, absolutely nothing. NGOs [non-governmental organizations] provide water. They’re scrounging for food and firewood,” said Bergner.
Bergner said she felt odd about taking photos in the camps using her big camera.
“Like, would it feel to them like I was taking pictures of people in the zoo in a different kind of way?” said Bergner, who used an iPhone instead. She said they did not mind and wanted to talk. They asked for help.
“Which is just heartbreaking, because, of course, I really can't. All I can do is spread their story,” said Bergner.
One photo is of a refugee boy looking through the window into the school — literally on the outside looking in.
“And the expression on him, how he's standing, you can see that he's so envious and so much wants to be there. And he he's just looking at these kids that are in school,” said Bergner. “Another one is a close up of a woman. Her expression is just misery. It's just misery. This woman, who was 60 years old, had gone to eight different IDP camps since the early or mid-90s, when the violence got bad. She's a rape victim, as almost all the women are.”
Bergner said the militias rape. The Army rapes. There’s raping inside the camp. The image of the woman, she said, captures that helpless-hopeless feeling.
She hopes people looking at the photos will be able to recognize or feel that what goes on around the world is real, and it happens to real people.
“It brings it home that this is what's going on in our world. I think that's just essential. We're part of a world,” said Bergner. “It tells us that people struggle, and they fight, and they do the best they can to survive. We need as a world to care about this.”
Since M23 captured Goma, Bergner said she has heard from two of the people she met. One was her guide, a reporter for Reuters. Another was a young man who was with a bicycle racing club in Goma that takes kids from the streets and helps them bike.
“It's awful… They've let prisoners out of prison to run the streets," said Bergner. "They are killing. If they find someone that has robbed, or they say has robbed, they shoot them in the streets in front of people. One of them said his sister saw someone shot right in front of her on the street, and it was horrifying. And they're all really scared that Rwanda is going to take over Congo.”
