Photography has not been good to these men. Their lives were nearly destroyed by mug shots, perp shots or ordinary snapshots. So once their ordeals were over, why in the world did they consent to having their pictures taken by the photographer Taryn Simon and displayed at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center?

"Taryn Simon: The Innocents" is an exhibition of large-scale, color photographs of men convicted of and jailed for crimes they did not commit (rape in most cases) and later (many years later in most cases) exculpated by DNA evidence. For most of the photographs Ms. Simon posed each man at the scene of the arrest, the scene of the crime, the scene of misidentification or the scene of the alibi.

This seems odd. You would think they would do anything to avoid a camera, especially one that links them again with the crimes. The preface of Ms. Simon's book "The Innocents" (Umbrage), which accompanies the exhibition, reports some hair-raising stories of wrongful identification.