Consider these two bodies of work, both dealing with a similar photographic territory - namely, the 'return' to a crime-scene. Consider how both photographers conceptualize, approach and treat their topic.
Taryn Simons “The Innocents” documents the stories of individuals who served time in prison for violent crimes they did not commit. 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 many of them 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.
Taryn Simons “The Innocents” documents the stories of individuals who served time in prison for violent crimes they did not commit. 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 many of them 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.
Angela Strassheim's project Evidence hybridizes aspects of criminology and photography into an eerie, often visually savage body of work. Through a long and painstaking research process, Strassheim (a former forensic photographer) mapped out the exact locations where violent, often horrific (domestic) crimes were perpetrated. She convinced new owners and tenants, some unaware of the violent history of their residences, to revisit the unnoticed, unseen past. Strassheim captures the tracing of a final struggle or violent moment, revealing the silent yet omniscient memory of everyday living spaces. The physical result of her work is a series of luscious, large black and white prints, which attract the viewer like stills from a film noir with their eerie seduction and mysterious quality.
Both works can be found on the artists' websites:
http://angelastrassheim.com/
