{"id":12703,"date":"2018-06-07T12:14:33","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T12:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reprieve.org.uk\/?post_type=update&p=12703"},"modified":"2020-08-20T08:07:54","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T08:07:54","slug":"midnight-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reprieve.org\/uk\/2018\/06\/07\/midnight-blue\/","title":{"rendered":"David Birkin,\u00a0MIDNIGHT BLUE, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prussian Blue, the synthetic pigment that gives cyanotypes their distinctive hue, is a chemical by-product of hydrogen cyanide or \u2018prussic acid\u2019 \u2014 a residue of which was found on the walls of the Nazi gas chambers at Majdanek. The same poison gas was used for many years on Death Row in the United States.<\/p>\n

In 1987, a BBC documentary titled Fourteen Days in May<\/em> recorded the final two weeks in the life of Edward Earl Johnson, a young African American man who, at age 18, was wrongly convicted of murder after being forced to sign a confession by two white police officers.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, later founded the human rights organisation Reprieve with the film\u2019s director, Paul Hamann.<\/p>\n

WATCH – Fourteen Days in May full documentary available free online<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Midnight Blue is a series of cyanotypes, or \u2018sun prints\u2019, exposed from negatives that Hamann took 30 years ago at the Mississippi State Penitentiary where Johnson was incarcerated and executed.<\/p>\n

As metaphorical blueprints of a system of racial oppression, these photochemical traces are a reminder of the fact that only two countries have ever used cyanide as a systematic way of killing their own people: Nazi Germany and the United States.<\/p>\n

The work takes its title from the art supply company Crayola, which changed the name of its Prussian Blue crayon to Midnight Blue after teachers complained that German military history was an inappropriate reference for American schoolchildren. A minute past midnight is the traditional time set for executions in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Original negatives by Paul Hamann. Cyanotype prints by David Birkin<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n