by Ed Kashi
June 5 – July 12, 2015
La Place de la République
Paris, France
Presented by the Open Society Foundations Equality Betrayed is “an open air photo and text exhibit exploring the experience of individuals who are singled out for police stops in France because of the color of their skin or the way they look, with photos by Ed Kashi.”
For those who have never suffered a stop and search check it is regarded as merely an inconvenience for reasons of security and public order. But the controls based on skin color, origin or real or supposed ethnicity of people, rather than their behavior have far greater impact than we imagine. Designation of “second class citizens” suspects because of their appearance; intimate and public humiliation; fears shared by families and whole communities; a loss of confidence in the police, with adverse consequences on security and public order, and more. This social problem threatens social cohesion, national identity, and the effectiveness of police. The exhibition “Equality Betrayed” seeks to extend this question by bringing it out into an open, public setting and creating confrontation with these large scale portrait prints. This exhibition examines these impacts through testimonies of those impacted by arbitrary police searches on a daily basis due to their physical appearance. These individual experiences reflect a much broader reality.
More info here. Read the press release here (in French).
