A Cat and A Crisis

South Sudan – A Country of Light and Shadow

Photography by Rhea Catada

South Sudan is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. An estimated 65 percent of women and girls experience physical, sexual or gender-based violence in their lifetime. And yet, some of the strongest women I have ever met, I met here. I met women who survived war and displacement, and women’s rights activists who fought, loudly and stubbornly, for other women in a country where doing so could come at a terrible cost.

I also learned much of my feminism from them. Before South Sudan, I thought I was already a feminist, but much of what I understood about feminism had come from reading white women. It was a feminism that, looking back, was rather tepid. The women I met in South Sudan taught me something fiercer: a feminism born not from theory but from having to fight for your body, your rights, your place in public life, and sometimes simply the right to stay alive. These are some of the people and places I photographed while I was there.

Photographed between 2017 and 2020.