Full Description
Today's Special by the Brooklyn-based artist and chef Julia Ziegler-Haynes, illustrates the final meals or "special meals," requested by 24 death row inmates on the eve of their execution. Her intention in creating this work is to examine the human condition through the contrast of capital punishment and the forgiving gesture of granting one last request.
Fascinated with the subject of the last meal, Ziegler-Haynes undertook extensive and emotionally exhaustive research through the public records of death row inmates. She then selected meals and painstakingly recreated them, arranging or cooking items exactly to the recorded likings and specifications of each prisoner. A brief detailing of the inmate?s crime and penalty appears toward the end of the book, beside a thumbnail of its corresponding image.
