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Fifteen years ago, the world understood the significance of some 800,000 Tutsis murdered by their Hutu countrymen. They called it the Rwandan Genocide, a name that was weighted with the horror and helplessness of both victim and those on the outside looking in. This bloody period, lasting one hundred days, has taken its place amongst history’s other savage episodes, but as is true of all such moments it is the survivors who must make normalcy from the chaos and carnage. How this is done can be as painful as the calamity itself. Rwanda’s Genocide has given rise to an entire generation of orphans tormented by their country’s horrifying blood let. They Once Were Children is the visual exploration of these orphans: Rwanda’s living victims who represent the country’s halted future.

I aim to photograph this scarred generation in the midst of a life literally severed from its past.