This exhibit brings together the longstanding collaboration between anthropologist Laurence Ralph, co-director of the Center on Transnational Policing, and photographer Carlos Javier Ortiz whose visual storytelling critically explores the themes of criminal justice, urban violence, and systemic inequality.
Biographies
Carlos Javier Ortiz is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans directing, cinematography, photography, and visual storytelling. Grounded in a humanist perspective, his practice explores urban life, structural inequality, and social justice through intimate narratives and compelling imagery. Influenced by social realism, Ortiz uses his work to foster empathy and provoke critical engagement with contemporary socio-political issues.
His photography and films have been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Worcester Art Museum, the Library of Congress, and the International Museum of Photography and Film. His visuals notably accompanied Ta-Nehisi Coates' groundbreaking essay “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic.
Ortiz is a Guggenheim Fellow (2016) and a National Geographic Explorer (2021). Based in Chicago, he teaches documentary filmmaking at Columbia College and serves on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, at Columbia College. demonstrating his deep commitment to craft, education, and community.
Laurence Ralph is a professor, writer, and filmmaker. His work explores how police abuse, mass incarceration, and the drug trade make injury and premature death seem natural for people of color. His first book, Renegade Dreams (University of Chicago Press, 2014), received the C. Wright Mills Award and the J.I. Staley Prize. His second book, The Torture Letters (University of Chicago Press, 2020), explores a decades-long scandal in which hundreds of Black men were tortured in police custody. The Torture Letters is also the name of his award-winning, animated short film, which is featured in The New York Times Op-Doc series. Laurence’s latest book, Sito: An American Teenager and the City that Failed Him, was released in 2024 by Grand Central Publishing. Laurence’s work has been featured in The Paris Review, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Chicago Review of Books, Boston Review and Literary Hub, to name a few.
Laurence has held tenured appointments in the African & African American studies and anthropology departments at Harvard. Ralph has been awarded many fellowships for his work, some of which include the Guggenheim and Carnegie Fellowships, as well as grants from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation, and the National Research Council of the National Academies. He is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.
Please note that registration does not guarantee admission to the event. Entry is subject to venue capacity and other conditions. Thank you for your understanding.