SARAH BALL
'ACCUSED : PART 1'

In the 19th Century the social sciences of anthropology, ethnology and sociology all gained legitimacy. Photography was used to document such studies and seen to embody the new authority of empiricism.

Police photographic archives record the faces of the ‘accused’. Used to evidence the pathology of crime and criminals, photography was thought to connect outward physical appearance and inner character traits. In essence it was believed good people ‘looked good’ and morally bad people ‘looked ugly’. They searched for; “The harmony of moral beauty and physical beauty… the science of discovering the relation between the exterior and interior – between the visible surface and the invisible spirit it covers…” Johann Kasper Lavater. (Essays on Physiognomy: Designed to Promote the Knowledge and Love of Mankind. Vol 1. London. John Murray 1789)...

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Photographic images however are not objective statements of fact. They are subjective representations of the truth interpreted by the camera, the viewer and now, the painter.

The work in this exhibition is sourced primarily from police criminal archives – I am interested in the act of translation; from the apparent certainty of the photographic record to the malleable quality of paint, my work calls into question history, memory and story.

Sarah Ball 2012