"You know, down to the second, when you're gonna die"

Almost everyone I know is aware of my objection to the death penalty, mandatory or otherwise, but I have almost never written anything about it. Mainly because I find it difficult to articulate my objections strongly enough. A lot of the objections are far too easily distilled into intellectual arguments, which I find deeply unsatisfactory and lacking the humanity that is all too similar to the proponents of capital punishment. 

But Toshi Kazama has changed that, and I thank him for it. I was invited to his photo presentation by Kirsten, on behalf of We Believe In Second Chances, an activist group campaigning against the death penalty in Singapore. As a photographer, my interest in this presentation was two-fold: to see the work of an experienced photographer, and to listen to his stories of death row inmates, some of whom are as young as 16 when they were sentenced.

The remarkable thing about his photographs of these men and women on death row is how stunningly ordinary they looked. They look nothing like the monsters that they are portrayed to be, and it challenges all your presumptions that these heinous crimes must have been committed by sociopaths incapable of being reformed, by hardcore criminals who will pillage and burn and destroy anything and everything in their path if they are not apprehended and executed.

Even Toshi himself conceded that he had those same thoughts before he met his first death row inmate, a 16-year-old boy by the name of Michael Shawn Barnes. After all, Toshi was a commercial photographer based in New York, and like most of us, has little to no contact with anyone facing the death penalty. But everything since then has changed for Toshi.

Whenever I bring up issues of humane treatment, I've been met with a torrent of "think about the victims and their families". No doubt, a logical argument. Which is where Toshi Kazama's message is at its strongest — he is the survivor of an attempted murder 8 years ago, a meaningless, senseless crime for which the perpetrator has yet to be apprehended, and has left him deaf in one ear, lacking a sense of balance, and having to avoid getting water into his brain because parts of his ear canal remain perforated. After being told by his doctors that he will not survive, this is in no small part a miracle.

"Being a victim, everyday is a struggle. But imagining that you’re a victim and being a victim is a completely different thing." And how true that is. We try to imagine ourselves being a victim and wondering if we would want justice pursued to the very end, or as one of the inmates wondering how we can go on with the proverbial guillotine hanging over our necks. But none of that works; we cannot really empathise. That brings me to the one point that remains in my head after this presentation, as Toshi spoke about his continuing work with both the families of victims and those of the inmates, he said 

We will all die, someday, but we can carry on living because none of us know when that day will arrive. But these inmates know when they will die, down to the day, the hour, the second. 

Is this, then, the justice that we want? To deprive another person of life, of his ability to pursue happiness, of their methods and will to live, counting down the rest of their days with no recourse? And why do we support such bloodlust when we lack the guts to pull the trigger ourselves? If we do not want to take another life, why do we allow the state to do so in our name? 

Another thing Toshi said was this:

A society that focuses on punishment and harsh laws would never have incentives to find out ways to prevent such crimes from being committed....we can study these cases, and focus on prevention.

And that is true as well, but it all appears that we are so easily led down the path of bloodletting, which is such a base instinct, that we would kill in the name of justice without a second thought. Prevention is a harder task, and reactionary anger is always easier. But no one said the right course is the easy one, and that is something most of us, in our desire to see punishment, constantly forget.

As a photograher, what struck me most was his compassion for his subjects. He truly felt for them, and made emotional connections with them as he photographed them. There are many portraits out there that leaves me cold, but Toshi Kazama's photographs was the exact opposite. They burned themselves into my consciousness, and it is rare to see photographs like that. So even if you're ambivalent or against repealing the death penalty, his work is worth exploring.

In the end, what I took away from the presentation, besides the haunting photographs and stories, was how Toshi Kazama is only a man, but one who is passionately committed to the cause, even telling an attendant that he should help his country instead of him and repeal the death penalty.

Still, Toshi Kazama remains a photographer at heart. For when I took out my M6 to make a photo of him, he identified the camera straight away with a smile and said "I use an M4 myself", and talked about getting an M9-P. There was a twinkle in his eyes when he talked about it. And in that moment, we had a connection, no matter how fleeting, and I look forward to finally developing that roll of film with his portrait. I'll even send him a print. It's the least he deserves.

For those interested, I'd also point you to Kirsten's and Lynn's articles on the presentation. My rustiness at writing is showing, and both Kirsten and Lynn articulate better than I can on this issue.