The Innocents documents the
stories of individuals who served time in prison for violent crimes they did
not commit.
At issue is the question of
photography's function as a credible eyewitness and arbiter of justice.
The primary cause of wrongful conviction is
mistaken identification.
A victim or eyewitness identifies
a suspected perpetrator through law enforcement's use of photographs and
lineups.
This procedure relies on the
assumption of precise visual memory. But, 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 transformed
innocent citizens into criminals.
Photographs assisted officers in obtaining
eyewitness identifications and aided prosecutors in securing convictions.
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.
All of these locations hold
contradictory meanings for the subjects.
The scene of arrest marks the
starting point of a reality based in fiction.
The scene of the crime is at once
arbitrary and crucial: this place, to which they have never been, changed their
lives forever.
In these photographs Simon confronts
photography's ability to blur truth and fiction-an ambiguity that can have
severe, even lethal consequences
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