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.