Throughout their award-winning careers, visual artist and filmmaker
Titus Kaphar and poet, memoirist, and attorney Reginald Dwayne Betts
have shed light on the violences of incarceration and the underexplored
contradictions of American history. In Redaction, they unite their
different mediums to expose the ways the legal system exploits and
erases the poor and incarcerated from public consciousness.
First exhibited at MoMA PS1, the fifty "Redaction" prints layer Kaphar's
etched portraits of incarcerated individuals with Betts's poetry, which
uses the legal strategy of redaction to craft verse out of legal
documents. Three prints are broken apart into their distinct layers,
illuminating how the pair manipulated traditional engraving, printing,
poetic, and redaction processes to reveal what is often concealed. This
beautifully designed volume also includes additional artwork, poetry,
and an introduction by MoMA associate director Sarah Suzuki. The result
is an astonishing, powerful exploration of history, incarceration, and
race in America.