The Innocents, a Book of Portraits and Interviews

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‘The Innocents,’ a Book of Portraits and Interviews Along With a Photography Exhibit Featuring Individuals Who Were Wrongfully Convicted of Heinous Crimes

At Issue Is the Question of Photography’s Function As a Credible Eyewitness and Arbiter of Justice

The harrowing ordeal faced by dozens of people convicted of heinous crimes they did not commit is the subject of a compelling new book and exhibition now open in New York City.

Taryn Simon’s exhibition, “The Innocents,” is a collection of 20 color mural prints and a documentary about those wrongfully convicted. It can be seen at P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center, a MoMA affiliate museum through August.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of the book “The Innocents,” containing additional portraits along with interviews by Simon and a commentary by civil rights attorneys Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project (published by Umbrage Editions, 2003).

Of photography’s importance to our judicial system, Simon says, “The high stakes of the criminal justice system underscore the importance of a photographic image’s history and context. This project stresses the cost of ignoring the limitations of photography and minimizing the context in which photographic images are presented. Nowhere are the material effects of ignoring a photograph’s context as profound as in the misidentification that leads to the imprisonment or execution of an innocent person.”

Simon traveled across the United States photographing and interviewing individuals who were convicted of heinous crimes they did not commit. The primary cause of wrongful conviction is mistaken identification through photographs and lineups. Through exposure to composite sketches, mugshots, Polaroids, and lineups, eyewitness memory can change. In the history of these cases, photography offered the criminal justice system a tool that assisted officers in obtaining eyewitness identifications, aided prosecutors in securing convictions and transformed innocent citizens into criminals.

Simon photographed these men at sites that had particular significance to their illegitimate conviction: the scene of misidentification, the scene of arrest, the scene of the crime or the scene of the alibi. In these photographs Simon confronts photography’s ability to blur truth and fiction — an ambiguity that can have severe, even lethal consequences.

The exhibition and release of the book “The Innocents” also coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is responsible for most of the post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States today, many of which are included in the exhibition and accompanying book. On the ten-year anniversary of its founding, the Project continues to free the innocent, striving to transform criminal justice into a more equitable and reliable system. The failings of the criminal justice system and the use of the death penalty in this country are currently under scrutiny and an important topic of public debate. The images and voices of “The Innocents” mark this historic turning point in America.

Web site: http://www.umbragebooks.com/

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