PERN12-01

I posted an image of Mathieu Pernot‘s earlier this week, but I thought his work was so novel it required a post of its own.

Les Hurleurs (The Howlers) – completed between 2001 and 2004 – is a series of photographs of people screaming to detainees in three prisons – Les Baumettes, Marseilles, France; Avignon Prison, France (which is now luxury apartments); and the Unidad Hospitalaria Penitenciaria D’homes, Barcelona, Spain.

mp6

mp5

Pernot “portraits” are surprising more than anything else and – for me at least – touch upon the diminished possibilities of family and friends when someone close to them gets locked up. The severance, deserved or not, results in desperate and almost pitiful tactics by Pernot’s subjects. Indeed, these images are meant to be seen alongside Pernot’s other series Panopticon which takes a documentary view of structures of the carceral “machine”.

Pernot’s work is intelligent in that it shows both sides of the experience and the deafening silence of his interior prison shots are roundly supported by the unheard vocal efforts of Pernot’s subjects.

View the full set here.

mp1

mp4

mp2

mp7

Advertisement