Amy Elkins

  • Looking at Masculinity
    • Looking at Masculinity
    • Wallflower II
    • Danseur
    • Elegant Violence
    • Lucas
    • Wallflower
  • Looking at Incarceration
    • Looking at Incarceration
    • Black is the Day, Black is the Night
    • Black is the Day, Black is the Night Book
    • Parting Words
    • The Golden State
    • Per(Sister): Incarcerated Women of Louisiana
    • The Sunshine State
  • Looking at Family Archives
    • Looking at Family Archives
    • A Place Where We Are In The Sun
  • Anxious Pleasures
    • Anxious Pleasures
    • Anxious Pleasures
    • Anxious Pleasures Book
  • About
  • Installations
  • News
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Partings Words

2009-Present


Parting Words is a visual archive created out of mug shots and testimony readily available through public record of the 560+ people executed in Texas prisons since 1976, the year the ban on capital punishment was overturned. Using an algorithm, I converted each mug shot into looping excerpts from last utterances ranging from confessions to hymns, protest to sorrows and fears. Parting Words is a work in progress, growing in size with the growing numbers of those executed in Texas, a state responsible for over 37% of all executions in the United States, which is more than the totals of Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri, Georgia and Alabama combined.

Copyright © 2005-2022 Amy Elkins .  All rights reserved.

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