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U.S. | 'I comfort death row inmates in their final moments - the execution room is like a house of horrors'

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Reverend Jeff Hood, 40, wants to help condemned inmates 'feel human again' and vows to continue his efforts to befriend murderers in spite of death threats against his family A reverend who has made it his mission to comfort death row inmates in their final days has revealed the '"moral torture" his endeavor entails. Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, 40, lives with his wife and five children in Little Rock, Arkansas. But away from his normal home life, he can suddenly find himself holding the shoulder of a murderer inside an execution chamber, moments away from the end of their life. 

Big picture: Death Row Prisoners’ Last Meals

Victor Feguer, hanged in 1963 in Iowa,
ordered a single olive with the
stone in as his final, symbolic meal.
From archetypal junk food including pizzas and ice-cream to the gourmet delights of lobster, clams and shrimps, there's an eerie context to these last supper.

These meals resemble unhealthy school dinners – pizza, nuggets, ice-cream, Pepsi – or photographs in a glossy magazine. It’s only when you learn they are the last suppers of prisoners on death row that they take on a morbid significance.

Helen Thompson’s photographs, and other images from the Sony World Photography Awards, are at the Embankment Galleries, Somerset House, London WC2 until 20 May.

Click here to read the full article and access the online photo gallery

Photographs: Helen Thompson. Words: Hannah Booth

Source: The Guardian, Friday 27 April 2012

>> Recommended visit: Click here to visit Kate MacDonald's online exihibition "Last Meals".

Related articles:
Sep 23, 2011
Texas inmates who are set to be executed will no longer get their choice of last meals, a change prison officials made Thursday after a prominent state senator became miffed over an expansive request from a man ...
Jul 22, 2011
Originally conceived to participate in the Texas Moratorium Network's exhibit Justice For All? Artists Reflect on the Death Penalty, the first painting of the series, Last Meal: Ruben Cantu, has been shown at galleries in Austin ...
Apr 02, 2012
... of 16 photos taken by U.S.-based photographer Toshi Kazama, featuring pictures of death-row inmates in the United States and Taiwan, execution sites, execution devices like the electric chair and a prisoner's last meal.

Mar 26, 2012
Green was teaching art at the University of Oklahoma in 1999, when she read an article in her local paper about an Oklahoma inmate's execution and became intrigued about the details of a last meal that were included.

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