With the killing of Amadou Diallo as his primary point of departure, photographer Steven John Irby reimagines the traditional candlelight vigil by subverting its intended meaning of marking where a life has been lost and honored by loved ones. Irby enlists a visual motif around death and repurposes these candles in order to penetrate the invisible wall that protects certain privileged communities from the reality of state-sanctioned police violence. The imagery included in this photo essay seeks to disrupt the silence in White communities surrounding the killing of Black people by relinquishing Black victimhood and offering instead a plea for police accountability. The 41 candles represent the 41 bullets NYPD officers fired at Diallo in the early hours of February 4, 1999. Additionally, Irby’s use of ‘wanted’ style flyers showing Officers Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss asks viewers to remember who was behind each of those bullets. The photographs, both mundane and quotidian, are brought together to present an indictment against these officers and illuminate the shielded communities that served as accomplices to their violence.
Although half of the people shot and killed by police are White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans.
You don’t sleep much. It’s an ongoing nightmare… [It’s] almost like I’m sleeping with one eye shut and the other eye open.
Why wasn't the scenario turned around?… [Amadou] was the one standing on his doorstep, watching four men in jeans, sneakers and hooded sweat shirts leap out of their red car, heading straight for him. They were the ones who acted unpredictably.
Case Overview
Forty-one shots rang out. Nineteen shots struck their target. In the early morning of February 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo was walking home in New York City. Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss — four plainclothes NYPD officers from the now disbanded Street Crime Unit — thought Mr. Diallo looked suspicious and was potentially a rape suspect. They reported that Mr. Diallo was pointing a gun at them as they approached him. Amadou Diallo, 23-years-old, was riddled with bullets in the doorway of his apartment building on Wheeler Avenue in the Soundview neighborhood of the Bronx. He did not have a weapon. Only a wallet and a beeper.