Comstock, NY State Prison. © Stephen Tourlentes
Tom Griggs, the man at the helm at Fototazo has just published an interview with Stephen Tourlentes.
Aware of two earlier interviews with Tourlentes by Jess T. Dugan and myself, Griggs proposed he stitch information from those together with new questions and answers to fill the gaps and bring the reader up to date. The result is a very comprehensive, crowdsourced Q&A about Tourlentes’ photography and politics.
“[We must] find better ways to deal with poverty, education and human rights. The prison system in the US has grown at the expense of funding education, public health and investing long term in sustainable community initiatives that combat crime.”
“In my view we have an extremely complicated history in the US. Contradictions abound. Along with brilliant success and economic power we have built a prison system that holds 24% of the world prison population even though the US represents only 5% of the worlds population. In a country that holds it’s constitutional freedoms so dear we are the best in the world at locking people up.”
FOTOTAZO
Fototazo is a new philanthropic venture on the block. It raises funds to purchase equipment for young, emerging photographers from economically disadvantaged backgrounds from around the globe.
Fototazo will snag your interest with in-depth interviews and portfolios of new work by selected contemporary photographers. Hopefully, you’ll reciprocate with some spare change for the grants, the monies of which go to those building careers in photography and whose development is limited by an inability to purchase necessary equipment.
Prison Photography 
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