HEART IN THE WOUND:
Sexual Abuse from the Catholic Church to Civil Society

“Heart in the Wound” combines journalism and art in order to create a public sphere around the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Using the intimate and specific perspective of black and white documentary photographs, the work aspires to bring us to the broader, common issues of sexual violation and abuse of power.

WATCH THE FILM
Click above to watch the 20 minute film or a 5 minute preview. This material may be triggering, please take care of yourself.

The film premiered in 2009 at the Boston International Film Festival and was shown in the Utah Arts Fear No Film Festival. The still photographs are in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In choosing the work as runner-up for the Honickman First Book Prize, Maria Morris Hambourg, curator in charge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Photographs, admired the work “because of the seriousness and difficulty of her subject, which is of its very nature shameful and invisible. Her imaginative and foresightful treatment of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy is distinguished by an incisive choice of incident and succinct and graphic framing. Over a long period Kessler tracked not only newsworthy events and public demonstrations, but also private vistas of personal vulnerability, cowardice, anger, and relief to paint a complex picture of the long-term individual and collective consequence of these abominable crimes.”