On a wall in a back room of the gallery, next to a window, is a photograph of a basketball stuck between the hoop and the backboard, forever up in the air. A game prematurely cut short. Across in the adjoining room is an image of a dressing gown, slippers and shoes, along with a slinky toy, sleepily shed on the way up the stairs to bed. A third photo, on the same wall, depicts a pair of blue and white trainers. Used but well kept. Prada. Someone’s pride and joy, left behind.
These are three of the images taken by the photographer Sarah Booker, under the direction of campaigning relatives, in memory of 17 people who died after coming into contact with the apparatus of the state, whether it be the police, prison service or in care.
The photographs, alongside pieces of prose or poetry written by the relatives, are on show from Friday in an exhibition at the 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning gallery in Brixton, south London, organised by Inquest, a charity that specialises in state-related deaths and their investigation.
Deborah Coles, Inquest’s executive director, said the aim was to remind people of those gaping holes left behind, at a time when police brutality and incompetence, and state failures more generally, are making headlines.
Anna Susianta, 63, chose the image of the basketball resting by the hoop in tribute to her A-level student son Jack, 17, who drowned in the River Lea in east London after jumping into the water as he was chased by police officers in July 2015.
The dozens of officers at the riverside tried to throw Jack a lifebuoy but none got into the water until four minutes after he disappeared below the surface. It was his mother who called the police in the first instance as he had developed drug-induced psychosis after taking MDMA at a music festival.
Susianta, a former headteacher in Hackney, had taken her son to New York a few months before his death where he played basketball with friends on the Upper West Side. “His friends, when he died, they all wrote messages to him on the ball that they played with in New York and they gave it to me,” she said. “It sits on my mantelpiece.”
The second photograph of the slippers on the green-carpeted stairs was the idea of Rosemary Tozer, 74, a former social worker and researcher, in memory of her son Danny, 36, who was autistic and had learning difficulties. He died in a supported living house run by Mencap in 2015.
The family had long been concerned by the standard of care. An inquest did not find neglect, but found the communication between the family, Mencap and City of York council, who commissioned the care, to be unsatisfactory. Danny, who could not talk, had never wanted to go to bed.
“When he finally wanted to go upstairs, he’d walk up and sling his slippers off,” said his mother, smiling. “And the dressing gown would be discarded somewhere else.”
The Prada trainers photograph was the choice of Aji Lewis, 73, a former teacher and lawyer. Her son Seni, 23, died as a result of prolonged restraint by 11 Metropolitan police officers for more than 45 minutes at Bethlem Royal hospital in Beckenham on 31 August 2010.
The case led to Seni’s law, which requires mental healthcare providers to keep records of the use of force, and to train staff in de-escalation techniques to help reduce the use of restraint.
“Everybody knows my son loved his designer clothes but at the same time he was really sensitive, you know,” said Lewis. “We’d go by somebody’s begging and I would give them a pound and it would be: ‘Mum, give them a fiver.’ We had loads of trainers and stuff that we gave away. But I kept this because I knew he loved them.”
Lewis said she had worked with the police since her son’s death and had relatives in the force. But she still worried for her two grandsons. “Every time they leave the house, I pray,” she said. “I don’t know if they’re gonna meet the big gang, the police, or the little gangs with knives.”
The exhibition, Souls Inquest, is at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning in Brixton from 12-28 May
