“I decided to lie and tell them what they wanted to hear” – Raymond Santana, one of the Exonerated Five
Breaking Point is a new photobook by Robin Dahlberg that examines wrongful convictions in the United States by focusing on the interrogation phase of criminal investigations, in which false confessions can emerge as a result of coercive tactics. Published by Kehrer Verlag and comprising approximately 75 photographs, the book directs sustained attention to the conditions and pressures that make such confessions possible.
Made between 2017 and 2025, the tonally restrained black-and-white photographs include portraits of six exonerated individuals alongside atmospheric images of abstract outdoor spaces and still lifes, photographed on film studio sets and in interiors that recall interrogation rooms.
False confessions account for a significant share of wrongful convictions in the United States. Between 1989 and 2024, the National Registry of Exonerations reports that 13 percent of all exonerated individuals were wrongfully convicted following false confessions, with people of color disproportionately affected. Research and case records show that such confessions frequently arise from psychologically coercive interrogations involving isolation, deception, intimidation, and prolonged questioning, practices that the book situates within a longer historical trajectory extending from early recorded instances such as the Salem witch trials to twentieth-century legal reforms that limited physical coercion without eliminating psychological manipulation.
Despite pressure from advocates, these practices remain in use, underscoring how questions of law enforcement overreach and impunity continue to shape the contemporary justice system.
Robin Dahlberg is an award-winning visual artist whose work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the New York Public Library. Trained as an attorney, she spent twenty years in the National Legal Department of the American Civil Liberties Union, designing and leading campaigns to reform the U.S. criminal justice system. Her photography draws on this background to explore identity, place, resilience, and the human impact of systemic injustice.
Robin Dahlberg : Breaking Point
Kehrer Verlag
Texts by Sara C. Appleby and Robin Dahlberg
https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/robin-dahlberg-breaking-point-978-3-96900-222-3
