The Arrested Image: Identity through the Lens of Law Enforcement, takes a close look at the portraits produced by police vision. By turning the gaze back onto how forms of law enforcement see and portray, it poses urgent questions regarding the relationship between identity and notions of truth, liberty, privacy, and justice in the face of rapidly advancing law enforcement technology.
From 19th century daguerreotype mugshots to today’s biometric databases, law enforcement techniques evolved in tandem with technologies used to represent identity. Despite the presumed objectivity of photography and its technological replacements, asymmetries between representation and reality proliferated along the way. Through archival material and artwork by 16 contemporary artists, The Arrested Image demonstrates the extent to which policing produces images that shape conceptions of identity and are often misshaped by the techniques that produced them.
The exhibition approaches “police” as both a noun and a verb: the organized bureaus, departments, and patrols that enforce order as well as the cultural practices through which order is more vaporously enforced. With a similarly broad consideration of photography as the root of a visual media lineage that includes video, postcards, 3D printing, and facial detection algorithms, it situates photographic portraiture and policing on parallel paths to capture, classify, and interpret personhood.
June 21 – November 2, 2025
SUNY New Paltz 1 Hawk Drive, New Paltz, NY 12561
Wednesday - Sunday: 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Monday - Tuesday: CLOSED
August Hours: Open Saturdays and Sundays only
