The Innocents

Provisions Library is an amazing library in Washington, D.C., near Dupont Circle. I can't believe that it (a) took me so long to make my first visit there, and (2) don't go there on a more regular basis.

One trip to Provisions I did make, however, was to see Taryn Simon's photograph exhibition, "The Innocents: Headshots."

You can read more about the exhibit here, and read about the Innocence Project here.

It was a really powerful exhibit--not only because of the people's stories of being wrongfully accussed and incarcerated that it displayed, but also because of the medium of photography that Taryn Simon chose to tell these people's stories. (Dare I say portrait photography? I'm a total novice, so the photos may not adhere to the traditional standards of what gets counted as portrait photography, but that's how they read to me.)

In any case, the height at which they were mounted, the lighting used to illuminate them, the clarity and depth of the eyes of Simon's subjects was haunting. Their stories were haunting. In a way that I hope that others who visited the exhibit left thinking about the cruelties and injustices of the prison industrial complex we've built here in the U.S. How couldn't you feel otherwise when faced, literally, with story after story after story of these people's incarceration despite the ultimate revealation of their innocence.

Sure, folks make mistakes, including lawyers and judges, and police officers, etc...but there are mistakes and then there are systematized, institutional forces of racism and classism that disproportionately victimize working class men of color.

At the same time...one of the things that I left "The Innocents" haunted by in a way that I'm not sure the exhibt intended was that I was haunted by the many unresolved cases of sexual assault and rape that remained, in the background as it were. Because, you see, the subjects of Simon's photographs were predominantly men (I think I remember one photograph of a woman, and read of a mention of another such photograph) who had been wrongly accused of committing sexual assault and rape against women.

It is of utmost importance to note these people's innocence, and the ways in which despite their innocence they were incarcerated, some serving several years before new evidence emerged revealing their innocence. Yet at the same time, I don't want to diminish the experiences of sexual abuse these women faced. They too had crimes perpetrated against them. Although their expereinces are of a different nature, because their aggressors weren't state agents, it seems to me the hierarchical mentality that allows the crimes against those in the "Innocence Project" are present in the sexual crimes against these women. Don't get me wrong, the experiences of these two sets of "innocents" aren't the same, or even analogous--they're interconnected and overlapping. We must find a strategy that addresses all these issues, and doesn't leave any who are "innocent" behind.

V-Day, until the violence stops--against us all!