Jerome Project, The

The painter Titus Kaphar made his name as a portraitist of criminal justice with his 2014 show at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the “Jerome Project.” Kaphar had been researching the prison records of his estranged father, Jerome, and discovered scores of other imprisoned men who shared his  father’s name. Working from mugshots, he painted small oil portraits of the Jeromes, their faces haloed by Byzantine gold leaf and partially submerged in tar – evoking the disproportionate representation of black men among America’s incarcerated.