Victim / Suspect

Jean Charles de Menezes at Home

On 22 July 2005 Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at Stockwell tube station on the London underground. he had been mistakenly identified by London's Metropolitan Police as Osman Hussain who at the time was suspected to have been involved in the failed bombing attack in London on July 21, 2005. While no-one involved the killing of de Menezes has been charged, the Metropolitan Police were tried for 'failing to provide for the health, safety and welfare of Jean Charles de Menezes' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes) It was during this trial that a composite image was produced using the left hand side of Hussain's face and the right hand side of de Menezes face. The works you see here are created from the composite image and the original images used to create the composite. All the images have been heavily manipulated to produce the final four portraits.

The Metropolitan Police composite image

The image that the Metropolitan Police created to make de Menezes and Hussain look alike is a manipulation of visual reality. It was created using 3/8 of Hussain's face and 5/8ths of de Menezes face in order for them to appear to be more similar and for over the head shape to resolve itself and not look freakish or distorted. This can only be achieved using the left hand side of Hussain's face with the right hand side of de Menezes face, combining the other sides of the face produce a distorted image. Hussain's skin tone has been considerably lightened to make it look more like that of de Menezes, The tone of de Menezes face has been brightened making it look more generic and flat. When viewed separately they are not particularly similar looking.

Hussian and de Menezes portrait photos

The primary similarity is that they do not have typically western Caucasian features and as such look like the Other, in as much as the other tend to get classified as looking the same. The only notable similarity between de Menezes and Hussain is the rectangular shape of their forehead that is caused by the hairline. When I viewed this image I was struck by the fact the job was incomplete and unsatisfactory. In completing the task initiated by the London Metropolitan police I have created a series of images of a generic Other, in this case I have created two kinds of other's, the silenced other, that I have labeled victim 1 and victim 2 and the obliterated other, whose identity has been obscured and is labeled suspect. These generic Others could become so removed from the specific of self to truly matter. These Others are seemingly unattached and in constant motion. They are not touched by historic laws or structural justice, but rather an other that must be considered and acted upon at the speed of light, without reflection and without mercy. This is the kind of distortion that has appeared within the visual apparatus of the panoptican the mechanism of contemporary power that I have to ask has it not become myopic?

Victim#1

This piece fits into my exploration of effects that are incidental/accidental to those complex organised human systems (political, legal, civic commercial and so on) which exist as part of our supermodern lives. The works are triggered by distortions these mechanisms throw up, rather than the considered intentions of them. Much as a disease manifests itself in a series of sometimes unrelated symptoms, the distortions that trigger the work manifest themselves in a series of states such as dislocation, detachment from time and space, logic interruptions and unexplained paranoia.

Suspect#1

The specific focus in this case is on the accident of paranoia, when we are guided by fear and not reason we tend to operate in peculiar ways. This amplifies residual fears or prejudices we may have begun to regard as latent. The distortions throw up by this state of fear can tend to be in equal parts banal and horrific, their effect on our complex organized human systems is instantaneous and all pervasive particularly when you consider we operate in a globalised media state, which is locked into a state of a perpetual present.

Suspect#2

These works are not as much about the killing of de Menezes on the 22nd of July 2005 but rather about the obliteration of his specific identity two years after his death by those that had already killed him. The act of creating the composite image is an act both banal and horrific. Banal when you consider it was constructed as a piece of evidence in the context of the trial at the Old Bailey, where a piece of evidence once labeled as such and decontextualised is a functional legal device. Horrific when you consider that it amplifies his otherness and suggests that he looks much more like Hussain than he does. In doing this it obliterates the historic or specific identity of de Menezes after he been physically killed. A second attack on an innocent victim.

Victim#2

De Menezes death was the accident of justice. Not the justice that we understand as the process of the legal system, but rather a supermodern instantaneous justice engineered to maintain the appearance of safety in a world mad with fear.

Suspect#3