Re-editing the photographs, separating the lynched from the lynch mob, is my act of transforming them, to make them neither objects of celebration nor condemnation, to make the viewer neither victim nor participant. Manually reproducing these photographs has been my way of taking possession of these anonymous objects, defusing the potential threat, dismantling the mechanism of terror, and rendering them more human.
“August 1915”
“August 1915” - detail
“August 1915” - detail
“August 3, 1920” - 2007
graphite on paper
“August 3, 1920” - detail
“July 19, 1935” - 2007
graphite on paper,73x55
“July 19, 1935” - detail
August 7, 1930.jpg
August 7, 1930 - detail.jpg
I began my drawing series based on James Allen’s “Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America” to reject the roles I found myself in when viewing the images; at first, vicariously the victim, then, a spectator guilty because of my ineffectual presence. In the act of just looking, I also became a witness to the exhibition of a human being's destruction, no different than any other spectator. Like the other participant's affirmation and justification of the inhuman act that had occurred, I also became accomplice to the crime.
I asked myself: How could I avoid the irreversible effects of the photograph? How could I conversely act upon the photograph?
One of 12 banners leading up from the
Metro-North Train Station to Main Street
in Beacon, New York.
a gift to the city of Beacon from -
with assistance from
and major muscle from
City of Beacon Public Works
