Alexa Wright

'Suspect' is a 'line up' of three portrait photographs and a spoken narrative, which is activated by sensors as the viewer approaches the portraits. The narrative is edited from an interview with Bobby Cummings (ex-contract killer and gangster), who speaks about his life and killings. In each of the photographs the features of three or four people are combined using Photoshop to create a single seamless identity. The structure of the work encourages the viewer to assume that one of the portraits is of the ‘killer’, and to make judgements about the faces on that basis. Only a small text panel indicates that these are constructed identities. The viewer is left to consider his or her own judgements. 

Commissioned by Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool for FaceOn, April-May 2001.