This was the summer of 2006, and Melanie Blanding, a photographer from Roanoke, was in the Democratic Republic of Congo to take a series of portraits of women scarred by war. The women are victims of violent, often monstrous sexual assaults, and their numbers appear to be growing.
Picture a photographer in Africa to document wartime casualties and you might envision a strapping, grizzled veteran loaded down with cameras. But that’s not Blanding.
Check it out here.