David Birkin
Title: Profiles
Year: 2012
Media: Photographic transparency (slide film)
Size: 20.3 x 25.4 cm
About the work: “Profiles” addresses the relationship between spectacle and loss in photojournalism. Sidestepping the representational remit of conventional war photography, it reflects on the visibility of civilian casualties of the Iraq War and the paucity of such images. The process involved inserting identification numbers from the Iraqi civilian casualty database into photographic software to generate a chromatic 'value' for each person. These colours were than exposed onto 8x10 inch transparencies and displayed on discarded X-ray light boxes from British and American hospitals. The individual's name, age, occupation, and cause of death are contained within the JPEG filename and inscribed along the film’s edge.
Bio: David Birkin is an artist, writer, and Senior Lecturer in Photography at University of the Arts London where he co-founded Visible Justice, a transdisciplinary research hub for photographers, filmmakers, artists, activists, and lawyers working at the intersection of visual culture and social justice. Combining archival film and photographic practices with large scale performances in public space, much of Birkin's work centres on state violence and the ideological apparatus of imperial power: its mythology, iconography, language, and legal frameworks. Birkin holds a BA from Oxford University, an MA from the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL), and was a fellow of the Art & Law Program in New York and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He is currently completing a PhD on histories of aerial violence in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths.
Title: Midnight Blue
Year: 2017
Media: Cyanotype
Size: 20.3 x 25.4 cm
About the work: Prussian Blue, the synthetic pigment that gives cyanotypes their distinctive hue, is a chemical by-product of hydrogen cyanide or ‘prussic acid’ — a residue of which was found on the walls of the Nazi gas chambers at Majdanek. The same poison gas was used for many years on Death Row in the United States. In 1987, a BBC documentary titled “Fourteen Days in May” recorded the final two weeks in the life of Edward Earl Johnson, a young African American man who, at age 18, was framed for murder after being forced to sign a confession by two white police officers. “Midnight Blue” is a series of cyanotypes exposed from negatives taken at the Mississippi State Penitentiary where Johnson was incarcerated and executed. As metaphorical blueprints of a system of racial oppression, these photochemical traces are a reminder of the fact that only two countries have ever used cyanide as a systematic way of killing their own people: Nazi Germany and the United States. The work takes its title from the art supply company Crayola, which changed the name of its Prussian Blue crayon to Midnight Blue after teachers complained that German military history was an inappropriate reference for American schoolchildren. A minute past midnight is the traditional time set for executions in the U.S.