Church, from the project Real Pictures

Chilean-born architect, photographer, filmmaker, and installation artist Alfredo Jaar often tackles traumatizing subjects- refugees, genocide, political violence-and explores them with passionate humanity. His Rwanda Project (1994-2000) was created from his research, conversations, and photographs of the survivors of the massacre in which nearly one million people were killed. Jaar traveled to Rwanda in 1994, shortly after the genocide took place, and spoke with the survivors, taking thousands of photographs.

Real Pictures, commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in 1995, is among the most memorable of Jaar's Rwanda installations. More than 550 photographs enclosed in black linen archival boxes with white text silk-screened fronts were installed in rows or stacked in groups in what the artist called a "cemetery of images." Each box held a single photograph that Jaar took while he was in Rwanda. The image, however, was not revealed to the viewer; instead, it was described in the artist's own words. His refusal to show the photographs, keeping them hidden in their black boxes, created an environment intended to be reflective and meditative. Jaar explained: "I feel we are bombarded by too many images. We don't see them anymore. .!.!. So here, I wanted to work in reverse. I wanted to start with an absence in the hope of provoking a presence."

The AMAM collection includes three boxes from the installation. Two contain unseen photographs documenting the largest refugee camp in the world, at Katale. Inside the third box is another of Jaar's photographs, of the Ntarama Church in Nyamata. It, too, is concealed from view, but the text on the box describes it:

This photograph shows the entrance of the church where 400 Tutsi men, women, and children were massacred during Sunday morning mass. The doorway is strewn with corpses and debris from the people who had sought refuge in the sanctuary of the church. Nothing has been touched, to provide evidence for international human rights inspectors and as a testament to what happened.