The Innocents
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 11:31AM A piece aired yesterday on NPR that I found particularly interesting. What Happens if Justice Fails was a story about innocent men and women who were incarcerated for serious crimes that they did not commit. In the last 23 years over 2000 people have been exonerated and released as a result of new evidence (often DNA), changing witness testimony, admissions from those who actually committed the crime, etc.
It is a chilling thought - the prospect of loosing a decade or more of one's life as a result of a flawed process or by the word of a well meaning witness. In my mind it was also immediate material for a powerful portrait project ... and of course I was not the only/first person to think so. A quick google search guided me to the work of Taryn Simon and her book The Innocents.
Both the project and the commentary are worth the time. In all of Taryn's work I'm particularly struck by the way that her elegant photos are elevated by her intent as an artist.
"Ronald Jones" by the photographer Taryn Simon from The Innocents, 2002
Reader Comments