USA/FILE: Brooklyn artist Henry Hargreaves recreates the last meals of famous death row inmates

Record ID: 585302

  • Title: USA/FILE: Brooklyn artist Henry Hargreaves recreates the last meals of famous death row inmates
  • Date: 26th July 2012
  • Summary: HARGREAVES LOOKING AT MONITOR WITH LAST MEAL OF JOHN WAYNE GACY
  • Embargoed: 10th August 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Crime,Arts
  • Reuters ID: LVAD6B23J7AV7KLPQH3AS43JNJY
  • Story Text: In the United States, 33 states allow capital punishment as a legal sentence, and most of these states honor last-meal requests.
    Brooklyn artist Henry Hargreaves, 33, recreated in a series of photographs the last meal wishes of famous death row inmates such as the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and serial killer and rapist John Wayne Gacy.
    On Wednesday (July 25) Hargreaves was working on his final shoot for the series in his Brooklyn studio recreating the last meal of Teresa Lewis who was convicted of orchestrating the murders of her husband and stepson and died by lethal injection in the state of Virginia in 2010. She was the first woman to die by lethal injection in the state of Virginia.
    Her last meal wish consisted of fried chicken, boiled peas and apple pie, which Hargreaves found "quintessentially American."
    Hargreaves said that he got interested in the subject last year when Texas banned the last meal tradition. After doing some research he was fascinated by his own reaction.
    "It just really kind of struck me that for one second, these people became people in my mind opposed to just statistics and monsters and what have you," the New Zealand-born artist told Reuters.
    "It was like - you've got to see a little glimpse at their personality by what food they were selecting. And I thought it was really interesting concept and I thought it could be visually something interesting to try and photograph," he added.
    The series of 10 photographs titled "No Seconds" was shot mostly in Hargreaves' apartment. For the project he chose inmates who he thought had interesting last meal wishes, such as Ronnie Lee Gardner, who was executed by a firing squad in 2010 in Utah for the 1985 courthouse shooting of attorney Michael Burdell during an escape attempt. Gardner had been in court to face a charge of murdering a bartender.
    His last meal wish included a Lobster tail, steak, vanilla ice cream, apple pie and the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.
    By choosing certain utensils and props Hargreaves explained that he tried to capture the first person experience in his photographs.
    "I wanted to shoot the meals from the perspective of the prisoner the moment before they basically pick up the utensils and start. Their point of view the second before they have their final meal," he said.
    Angel Nievez Diaz, who was executed by a lethal injection in 2006 for shooting and killing the manager of a strip club in 1979, didn't want anything.
    McVeigh, executed in Indiana in 2001, ordered mint chocolate chip ice cream.
    In Florida in 1989, Ted Bundy had steak, eggs, hash browns and coffee, according to the Last Meals Project, an online archive of famous inmates' last meals, which was the "traditional" last meal.
    Hargreaves explained that he hoped that his work would spark a conversation, or at least prompt people to think about the death penalty.
    "I am not trying to preach whether I think it's right or wrong, this practice I am not trying make people necessary feel sympathy for these people. I'm just trying, hopefully someone will think for a moment and consider these things," he said.
    The collection of photographs will be on show in September at the Herter Art Gallery of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
    Hargreaves said that he would only make one print of the series that he would donate as it "felt wrong to make money out of this project."
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