There are some places that are life defining. The streets of Brooklyn in the 60’s & 70’s defined Marc Asnin. He was formed in a Goodfellas world where every family had a wise guy and his was Uncle Charlie. Asnin explains odds were you either became a gangster or a cop and what they both had in common was being great storytellers. Asnin chose the middle ground and became a different kind of storyteller.
His subjects are people with broken dreams and disappointments who have the resiliency to find slivers of happiness in their oppressed existence. Asnin’s images are unapologetic yet empathetic. Asnin recognizes the central role of the written word in telling these stories. It is a collaboration of sorts: their words and Asnin’s images.
We witness this in his book Uncle Charlie, an ultra-personal diary. The book uses imagery and written word to portray a dark chronicle of misplaced hero worship and heroic survival. Asnin's photographic style is determinedly old fashioned, a fly-on-the-wall. Asnin chronicles the descent of one man into a prolonged purgatory of his own making through intense images. Wisely, he allows Uncle Charlie to recount his own tale in a series of remembrances that are often vivid and always revealing.
Asnin is still wondering who he is in Uncle Charlie's life. Did his mother give Charlie his only friend in the world? Why did Charlie choose to share his life with Asnin? Some of these questions may not have an answer. Asnin thinks the book has given his uncle the dignity to tell his own story in his own words. To be ignored in life and eventually forgotten in death is a terrible thing and this account allows Charlie to finally step up onto an imaginary stage before an anonymous audience and be heard. In exchange, the world also gets the chance to look back in through the window that Charlie sits by everyday and see what's on the other side.
Asnin's new work is a book titled Final Words. He has curated the final words of 573 prisoners executed by the state of Texas to create this publication. We see on the facing pages of the book the institution's mugshot’s representation of the condemned prisoners. These mugshots aim to turn them into a thing. The final words of the men and women that have been put to death are an eloquent, thoughtful and emotional rebuttal that proves the humanity in them.
By curating these Final Words, Asnin hopes to help open a dialogue around the death penalty and mass incarceration in the United States.
He believes these words will help to expose the cyclical history of oppression in the United States. They will help us as a people not to forget that prisoners are still human. Some prisoners are innocent, some are guilty however they are still a part of the human condition. The state calls them monsters, animals, and butchers; nonetheless these men and women are made of the same thoughts, blood, feelings and dignity as all of us.
These final words beg the questions of who is seen, who is heard, who is remembered and who is intentionally forgotten? Forgetting is never a passive consequence of time, but rather the act of forgetting is purposeful. Each conversation about capital punishment needs to reinforce that dehumanization is unacceptable.
In 2014 Sherman Teichman, director of The Institute for Global Leadership in conjunction with Professor Erin Kelly of the Department of Philosophy at Tufts University presented a symposium. The symposium was about confronting the Death Penalty. Asnin joined a distinguished panel that included Sister Helen Prejean,,Professor Erin KellyProfessor Joseph Peniel, David J. Harris,Professor Larence Ralph, John Artis, Kathy Spillman. Asnin reminded the audience that many in our society forget that prisoners are still a part of our world, and are part of humanity. Their last words express it to perfection. Stop your activity, leave your apprehension and your prejudices, and read the “monsters”words….you will be surprised.
Looking back over the past forty years Asnin has created reportage imagery that leading magazines around the world used to tell stories. These works were published throughout the world in; Stern, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, The Independent Sunday Magazine, GEO, D Magazine and Life.His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe and is in several permanent collections, including the National Museum of American Art, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of the City of New York, the Portland Museum of Art, Queensborough Community College, and the Zimmerli Art Museum. His documentary photography has received numerous awards, most notably the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, the Mother Jones Fund for Documentary Photography Grant, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
Asnin believes his works have always been guided by the words his grandmother instilled in him: “never forget where you come from”.