David Simonton contacted me and shared his long term project at the former Polk Youth Center in Raleigh. After thoughtful discussions David and I decided upon a pairing of articles.
In this post, Part One, David talks about the background to the project and his objectives in the work.
I also chose a selection of David’s prints to showcase and offer comment. At the bottom is a thumbnail-pop-out-gallery with all the pictures in one place.
…and, in a few weeks, Part Two will dissect the atypically rich and varied visual-history of the Polk Youth Center.
David Simonton’s Commentary (PP’s Subheaders)
Photographing Disused Architectures of Citizen Management
In the late-1980’s I was one of a number of photographers working on Ellis Island, the former Immigration Station in New York Harbor, documenting the progress of the restoration of the facility (reopened to the public in 1990).
The project was called “The Ellis Island Project: Documentation/Interpretation.” I was living in New Jersey at the time, and traveled to the island to photograph twice a week for nine months. During this period I was also pursuing my personal projects.
Opportunist Photographer
In 1989, I moved to North Carolina
The “Old” Polk Youth Center/Prison, Raleigh which has a long and storied history, closed in 1997 when a modern facility (which the “Old Polk,” most assuredly, was NOT) opened in Butner, NC. The inmates were transferred to Butner in November of that same year.
Living nearby, I could hardly resist the opportunity to photograph there. So before any “No Trespassing” signs were posted, I went and photographed the site. The doors (cell doors, some of them) to many of the buildings were wide open!
“Old” Polk Youth Center – a euphemism if ever there was one – was located on land directly adjacent to the North Carolina Museum of Art in West Raleigh, near the State Fairgrounds.
The prison buildings were razed in 2003. But before that occurred, the prison was essentially abandoned until the land (along with the buildings on it) was transferred to the museum.
Official Photographer
During the mid-nineties, I exhibited my personal, interpretive work from Ellis Island – 90 images – at a gallery in Raleigh. Huston Paschal, a curator at the state art museum, attended the exhibition.
Unaware that I had already photographed there, Huston Paschal invited me to document the site, which was now in the museum’s hands. In late-2000 the invitation was formalized with a commission. I continued working on the project (even after the commission had lapsed) until the buildings came down, the ground leveled and grass planted.
My involvement was always with an empty site, when the prison was closed and inmates transferred. I photographed a long-abandoned facility: empty buildings, empty cellblocks and overgrown grounds.
Simonton: “Art for art’s sake”
As an art photographer (an unfortunate, nearly pretentious-sounding term, even if it’s the category my work falls into), my goal is to make interesting pictures; interesting in-and-of themselves, so that THEY are worth looking at, repeatedly.
What’s depicted is not unimportant, but it’s of secondary importance; this is my approach to my own picture making. The fact that my “subject” was a prison is happenstance – I photograph all kinds of abandoned structures. I also photograph the smalls town North Carolina (day and night) and photograph landscapes. An interesting photograph is always my intent, even when what it depicts is not itself inherently interesting … or beautiful.
Art and Documentary converge.
The Polk project was a “documentary” project, but not in the strict sense of it being wholly objective. My pictures describe the place I saw, and, if not the place I “saw”, then the place I thought and felt.
The project is not a comprehensive cataloging of the site either; rather, the pictures reflect my response to it during the passage of several years. They inform history by showing the place as it was in those waning years, after being – at long last – set aside as a relic; finally to be torn down and planted over and – with still more time – forgotten.
Polk Youth Center was located in a heavily populated area, which was not the case when it was built. Improvements were rarely made because, why spend money on any improvements if the facility was about to be moved or closed? – as were the recurrent promises for decades.
Institutional Narratives
I was not aware of the prison or the prison sites history until after I had completed my work; which may be just as well, since it was difficult enough to find beauty in such a physically “unbeautiful” place.
Had I been mindful of the ugly history of the old Polk Youth Center – riots, rape and other forms of violence in its final years, – I may have had a harder time photographing.
Prison Photography’s Commentary
Simonton’s three years at Polk yielded a varied portfolio. In editing the selection (from 100+ images to these 16) images distinguished themselves for very different reasons. If the lens wasn’t pointed at something crumbling, it was pointing at something overgrown and grown over.
Some images (Steep Steps) are flattened and exposed matter-of-factly, whereas others (Laundry Bin) luxuriate in silvery sheen.
I choose one pairing here of the same view in different season; Simonton took many pairings so to secure the evidence of time in his series. Apparently, the chimney was a signature of Raleigh’s landscape.
It is in the different states of dilapidation that one finds a visual allusions. Simonton’s photograph of the teeth counterpoise the dental ephemera in Edmund Clark’s photography of a functioning geriatric UK prison wing. When given the opportunity, Simonton ties the fragility of the body to the decay of the site.
Other recalls. Simonton’s cavernous grimed up cells, the expired bird, the textural friction between hard concrete and friable life are not too dissimilar to Roger Ballen. The reflected dormitory of cacophonous bed frames is a Moholy-Nagy-informed dark-fantasia march of welded steel.
Only a few of Simonton’s images describe the site as one of incarceration. Few of the normal visual clues are available; no visible bars on windows, no holding cages. This could as easily be a disused YMCA or summer camp.
For Prison Photography, the real interest in Simonton’s work comes when it is positioned in a wider context of the site. David provided me with background info and some press clippings which whetted my appetite. Further research was rewarded with an unusual series of photographic manoeuvers sequentially on this site through its various guises. All of this I will cover in Part Two.
Closure & Erasure
The photo of the evacuation plan below touches upon that procedural rigour that has cycled at the site of the former Youth Polk Center. The image at the very bottom (as well as being Simonton’s favourite) is a fine accompaniment to the evacuation plan.
Both images bear evidence of water blistering, bubbling and staining its way through materials. These evocations are “Art for Art’s sake” but they are also poetic closures, historical records and proof that in the absence of human interference erasure sets in rapidly.
David Simonton has been a photographer for 40 years and has been photographing North Carolina for the past 20 years. An adjunct instructor of photography at Peace College in Raleigh, David often chooses to focus on the more rural parts of the state. His series “Photographs from North Carolina” features black-and-white photographs from the 345 North Carolina towns he has visited. He has completed commissions for the North Carolina Museum of Art and the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County. He has had work in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, and his photographs are in the permanent collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art. David was awarded a visual artist fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council in 2001. (via)
View other images at David Simonton’s website. Indyweek have written on his work previously.
Thank you to David Simonton for reaching out. Thanks for the time spent over questions and for your collaboration. Pleasure working with you.
10 comments
Comments feed for this article
June 21, 2009 at 4:27 am
Lee (Tarheel Rambler)
Excellent article on Mr. Simonton’s work to capture the Polk site before it was demolished. He does an excellent job of creating images that tell a story, even though that it not his primary intent. As an amateur photographer, and a resident of Raleigh, I was fascinated by the perspective provided in this piece.
June 21, 2009 at 6:47 am
Gayle Stott Lowry
David’s sensitivity to the nuances of any given place define his photographs. The ethereal light he captured softens the harsh reality of the life that was lived in Polk Youth Center. His dedication to the project and many hours spent in quiet contemplation there have paid off. Thank you, David, for this important documentation! As always, your work is a gift to us all.
July 26, 2009 at 6:21 pm
A Raleigh Art Ramble « Raleigh Rambles
[…] and turned me on to a fantastic blog – Prison Photography, now featured my my blogroll. Their post about David’s photographs of Polk Youth Center before it was razed for the art museum shows […]
March 23, 2011 at 6:03 am
David Simonton – North Carolina | la pura vida
[…] There’s also a lengthy feature on Prison Photography about David’s project on the ‘Polk Youth Center, Raleigh.’ […]
September 25, 2013 at 12:13 pm
jnbrown@email.com
I was a inmate at Polk from 1984 to 1987. The place was a nightmare, my crime was a wake-up to a real horrible nightmare of this place. If you can think of things done to prisoner’s. Well, I seen it happen here. Rape,murder, you name it.
June 23, 2014 at 4:33 am
stan ollis
I spent 14 months at polk from 1979 to 1981, worst days of my life. I learned a lot. I have not been in trouble since. I think reform comes from within. Youth prisions are dangerous.
May 7, 2015 at 12:51 pm
Brett Leigh Dicks’ Images of Vacated Prisons Are Empty Photos … Or Are They? | Prison Photography
[…] It’s always difficult for me to draw meaning from photographs of disused prisons — I’ve challenged Lee Saloutos directly about the utility of his photographs; I am skeptical about the usefulness of Margaret Stratton’s work; and I’m confused by Thomas Roma’s images of Holmesburg Prison. At least in the photographs of David Simonton the closure of the Polk Juvenile Detention Center was recent and, as a local, Simonton could couch the work in a political context. […]
May 22, 2018 at 7:22 pm
Barry S.
Polk Youth Center was a serious place that had some serious people in it, it did some really serious things. I’ve heard personal testimonies of people going to kill people and it come true. I have not myself got over the trauma from being in that place. It was hell on Earth I owe any career that I had doing anything wrong to that instance of being locked up in Polk Youth Center. I had some bad things happen to me there it could have been avoided but whenever even talked about in their heads were just turned. You not only had to fight the prisoners you had to fight the guards one of them one of the rape you and they were going to succeed if they had their way. 1975 I think they must have put the worst of the worst in this place. I’ve never been in trouble before, but I sure felt I would die and never see my family again. I still have trauma from it, so I went back to see if there’s any history about Polk have they finally shut it down or what, to my avail my dream is true, the piece of Hell on Earth is no longer.
I’ve heard testimonies of people going to murder people and it did come true years later I read about it, I wish I could have said something or new to really say anything. Polk Youth Center is a place you just did not want to be it was a constant danger 24/7 sexual abuse was a common thing when you’re youth in prison. Something should have been done a lot of innocent people went to those paths some didn’t return, in the ones that did did not have if any dignity for their selves but fear of the society that sent them there for no fault of their own and even if it was a minor one that was not the punishment to bare.
November 23, 2019 at 12:35 pm
Gary Phillips
Mr Simonton’s photos sure brings back old memories, thanks and good work. I was an inmate from 78 to 80, sure was a different life than i was used to. First day or two had a few that tried to rob me but had to stand my ground and after that no problrms. my big scare was one sunday most everybody got food poisioning, just knew i would be next but never. the pictures of the smokestack and guages brought back memories, i worked in the boiler room, best job in that place. the power pole and transformers i walked by hundereds of times going to the ballfield, lifted weights and walked alot to pass time. stood under the big oak tree many times even have a picture or two from the yard and on visiting day. sure seen lots of fights and some people sure had it roughf. but it does seem like a world away and at that time time was standing still. wish they was a website where us old polk convicts could talk about old times.
February 26, 2021 at 1:07 pm
Darian Lee
I was there in 86.. I have lots of stories… Very bad… Memories I can’t dismiss. Would love to share.