A Handbook of Forgiveness & A Handbook of Punishment – Hayal & Hakikat

‘Hayal & Hakikat’ features photographs of 20th-century prisoners taken from the photo albums of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1842–1918), the Ottoman Empire’s last ruler. In the 25th year of his reign, he ordered all murder convicts to be photographed with their hands visible, in preparation for a planned amnesty. The sultan was influenced by a pseudo-scientific claim he had read in a crime novel, that “any criminal with a thumb joint longer than the index finger joint is inclined to murder.” The images therefore include the subjects’ hands for the purpose of classification. This second edition of the book is published in solidarity with Turkish people who stand against authoritarian power today.