The Arrested Image: Identity Through the Lens of Law Enforcement

The Arrested Image: Identity through the Lens of Law Enforcement, takes a close look at the portraits produced by police vision. By turning the gaze back onto how forms of law enforcement see and portray, it poses urgent questions regarding the relationship between identity and notions of truth, liberty, privacy, and justice in the face of rapidly advancing law enforcement technology.

From 19th century daguerreotype mugshots to today’s biometric databases, law enforcement techniques evolved in tandem with technologies used to represent identity. Despite the presumed objectivity of photography and its technological replacements, asymmetries between representation and reality proliferated along the way. Through archival material and artwork by 16 contemporary artists, The Arrested Image demonstrates the extent to which policing produces images that shape conceptions of identity and are often misshaped by the techniques that produced them.