At the end of 2015, photographer Diana Matar began to search the United States for places where the police had killed civilians. She makes detailed maps in her studio and compiles information on every fatal case of police brutality in the previous two years. Diana Matar then spent two years traveling the roads and photographing most of the 2,200 sites where these murders took place. “I work in a certain history of photography that goes back to the places where things happened – a genre that usually focuses on acts of war or injustice – I use it however to record the constant phenomenon of police violence. that is contaminating America. »
Working in this genre of landscape and documentary photography, My America is a peaceful but icy critique of contemporary America. By photographing over 300 locations where police officers killed American citizens, Diana Matar established a timely yet critical photographic language regarding police brutality, her photographs consistently highlighting the decline of the country’s social structure.
Although her photographs are of a rather classic style, she only uses an iPhone. As she explains: “We wouldn’t know anything regarding police killings without smartphones. People started using them to document injustices and share them on the web. I thought it was important to use the same technology when making these still images. »
This is not the first time that Matar has produced an important series relating to places of violence. In her previous work, Evidence 2014, which was presented at the Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Institut du Monde Arabe, and six other international institutions, Diana Matar devoted a few years to focusing on landscapes. and the extra-judicial detention buildings, kidnappings and murders carried out by the Gaddafi regime in Libya. In response to her father-in-law’s disappearance under these circumstances, Matar documented the spaces where these violations were perpetrated once morest an entire nation.
Diana Matar’s work in America is deeply imbued with this research which highlights the structural issues influencing the high number of police killings. It emphasizes a history of racial injustice, lack of education and preparation, and one of the lowest levels of policing per capita in the world. But Diana Matar intends to deliver much more than statistics: “For me, each image of My America represents not only an act of violence but also the loss of an individual – an individual with a family. This is why I am not afraid to use a certain beauty in these descriptions, a concept which tends to controversy in the representation of violence. »
For the Museum of Photography in Charleroi, Diana Matar made a selection of 99 photographs out of a set of 300 images. The scale of the project reflects the scale of the problem, but requires remembering each person who was killed. The title of each photograph includes only the name, dates of birth and death, and the city where the person was killed. The places Matar photographs match the addresses she got from police reports. However, she clarifies that her images are not crime scenes.
The level of death from police brutality in America is unique among developed countries. Matar questions the reasons that have brought America to this point, each photograph, representing a death, at a specific moment.
A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Diana Matar has received the Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award for Fine Art, the International Fund for Documentary Photography; an Individual Artist Grant from the Arts Council of England twice; and was nominated for the Prix Pictet in 2010, 2015 and 2016. Her works are in public and private collections and have been exhibited in numerous institutions, including the Tate Modern in London; the National Museum of Singapore; the Folkswang Museum, Essen; and the Arab World Institute, Paris. His monograph, Evidence, published by Schilt Publishing Amsterdam in 2014, was critically acclaimed and chosen by New York Times Photography critic Teju Cole as one of the two best photography books of the year.
Photography Museum of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation
Avenue Paul Pastur 11, 6032 Charleroi, Belgium
