Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

href="https://dergreif-online.de/www/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/11.jpg"> For my last post I thought I would end with some thoughts about my next body of work. I’m carrying on with my ideas around perceptions and narratives, trying a new route to explore these. A few months ago, I was called to do Jury Service, which I have to say, filled me with dread. I’m not very good with blood and as a result, steer well clear of horror films and the likes. I was convinced I was going to be assigned to a gory, drawn out murder case and would have the spend the rest of my days in counselling to recover from it. The reality when looking back on this is fairly amusing, but needless to say, at the time, my imagination got away from me and I was sure this was my fate. Jury service as a whole, is fairly tedious. Ample amounts of hanging around, tea breaks and Jeremy Kyle on repeat. I was actually assigned to a case, to which I had mixed feelings - I wanted out of the waiting room but I felt anxious about what the case might entail. Luckily for me, I had a fairly tame case, a bust up on a night out, fairly standard stuff and nothing you wouldn’t see for yourself if you happened to find yourself in the wrong place at the end of the night. The interesting part came in the CCTV footage. The positioning of the fight in relation to the camera meant that the head of a lamppost was obstructing the view precisely at the point at which the fight got serious. What we as a Jury, were there to decide, was who was to blame. We were presented with some pretty solid evidence. One man missing a tooth, another man with a cut in his hand which included a large fragment of tooth - not his own. I was pretty sure at this point that we could wrap it up. But it wasn’t that simple. As we couldn’t see this happen, we had to conclude, or be persuaded by the prosecution, that this DID happen. There were arguments presented of self defence. Perhaps the tooth lodged in the man’s hand was there because he hit his opponent in the mouth, but maybe he did that because he was hit first? Once all the facts were presented, we gathered to deliberate. Having heard from all the witnesses on their accounts of the night’s events, it was still fairly clear that it hadn’t been in self defence. But yet we couldn’t be sure. We watched that CCTV footage again and again, to see if there was something, anything that could help clarify what had gone on behind that lamppost. But there was nothing. And because of that we had to conclude that he wasn’t guilty. Or he was guilty but we couldn’t prove it and the defence hadn’t done enough to prove anything either. So he was let off on the basis that we could not be sure, beyond reasonable doubt that he had committed the assault. The process was a real eyeopener. The outcome was fairly unsatisfying and although I could see the logic, it didn’t seem to me to be completely truthful. At the time, I was starting work on another project, but I became obsessed with this notion of what we think vs what we know in particular relation to the justice system. In the same way that I used Meteorites and Space to discuss ideas, here suddenly was another way to interpret those very same ideas but in a completely different format. This new work is still in it’s early stages currently.