Boyzone Mexico D.F. / Boyzone Thailand

2011

series of color printing on photo paper

variable dimensions

3 editions + 1 artist proof

” During a stay of several months in Mexico, I bought every day the local newspapers published in the city of Mexico City. Before it, I had also collected the Thai local newspapers.These newspapers draw up daily an inventory of the urban fears : murders, kidnappings, drug cartels. I was interested in the way are represented the frail beings which concentrate these fears: the 13-year-old gangsters, so guilty as the victims of a system of segregation, injustice and poverty. The photos of the small gangsters are realized by the police, then sold to newspapers, either taken by present journalists at the time of the arrest. Prisoners look fixedly at the objective. The face is sometimes tumefied, their body is often revealed, displayed to the voyeurism of a public fascinated by their beauty and their violence. These images reveal how the whole society likes to contemplate its own violence. I want to give these photographs the double status of relics and icons. I want to fix, with dignity and respect, the face of these being who were delivered towards all by the press, then immediately forgotten, swallowed by the judicial system, disappeared in the black hole of prisons.” (Clarisse Hahn)