Redaction

Redaction brings together a complex set of contents, contexts, and materials. An artist (Titus Kaphar) and his paintings, a poet (Reginald Dwayne Betts) and his poetry, and their collaborative series of screen prints (Redaction) that examines the issue of money bail in the United States, where people who are arrested, but unable to afford bail, remain incarcerated even though they have been neither tried nor convicted. The prints, originally exhibited at MoMA PS1, combine Titus’s etched portraits of incarcerated women and men with Dwayne’s poetry derived from selectively redacted legal documents, typeset in a project-specific “Redaction” font designed by Forest Young with Jeremy Mickel (MCKL Type). “Redaction as a tool of revelation,” as Dwayne describes it. While the book has hardcover elements—cloth, board, foilstamping, head and tail bands, cover overhang—it’s actually flexibound and thus designated “softcover.” For very good reason: in many prisons, hardcover books are still considered contraband.