When Ara Oshagan was invited to shoot b-roll for a documentary film in the Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall, he didn’t hesitate.
“I had lunch with Leslie [Neale, the filmmaker] on Monday, and on Tuesday I was inside with my camera,” says Oshagan. The film was Juvies.
As an Armenian emigre living in Los Angeles, Oshagan was aware of California’s bloated prison and jail systems, but had not thought about how he’d operate as a photographer within them. Previously, his approach was to spend years on his documentary projects often wandering and discovering. In Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall, time was not a luxury … and neither was space. “I had to keep the film crew out the frame.”
Over the 3 years of the project, Oshagan identified shortcomings in the ability of his photographs alone to describe the experience of the children. His solution? To pair images with poetry and prose of the six children he followed.
When the kids got bumped up into the adult system he followed them there too. “I wanted this work to be about this passage. The adult system is a complete change in culture,” says Oshagan. “The whole culture will take advantage of the younger kids coming in.”
Oshagan witnessed teenagers he knew as small boys, bulk-up in their first six months in the adult system. They told him how the first thing they learnt was how to make weapons to protect themselves.
What surprised both he and his subjects was the length of sentences children are routinely given. And, after they move up through the system, their chances of a secure, violent-free life diminish.
The real kicker? Oshagan concludes his own kids are not too dissimilar to those he photographed in lock up. It’s not too difficult to imagine one poor decision and a life taken over by years of incarceration.
Why does this matter? Well, not only are sentence-lengths for juveniles growing, in recent years many states (40 in total) have introduced laws to allow the trial of juveniles as adults.
How is our society poised for the conversation on the culpability of under-18s and our shared capacity to manage and then forgive?
To help the conversation, Oshagan is to shortly publish the photobook A Poor Imitation of Death. The title comes from one of the kids’ description of imprisonment.
LISTEN TO OUR CONVERSATION AT THE PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY PODBEAN PAGE
All images © Ara Oshagan
Prison Photography 
15 comments
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December 9, 2011 at 6:10 pm
John Wedgwood Golden
Any photographs taken behind prison walls are productive in communicating prison life to the streets. However, a true documentary photographer never asks for permission. You always “shoot first”, and “talk later”. There have been many “film crews” penetrating prison society. Yet much of the real truth is lost in all the censorship “bullshit”. Why would any prison Administration, allow a documentary photographer to shoot subjects that show the administration in a bad light?
December 9, 2011 at 9:13 pm
petebrook
John
I agree with you that no authority, prison affiliated or nor, has the incentive to disallow or censor coverage. This is one of the key difficulties of photography and all media when they encounter total institutions such as prisons.
December 10, 2011 at 3:33 pm
LaureenMillarHolt
I write to people in prison & know that a number of young men & women in the prisons I write to have some lengthy sentences that they received as “adults” when they were as young as 15, such as a young woman incarcerated in NC who was sentenced to two consecutive 20-year sentences in 1991, when she was 15. She’s now 35, has completed her 1st-20 year sentence & is now starting on her 2nd. I’m not liberal or “soft” on crime–what she did was horrible, but keeping her in prison for 40 years, beginning @ age 15, to me is unconscionable. There’s no consideration @ all that teenagers act impetuously, don’t consider the consequences of their behavior in advance, & can do things in a mere moment or so, that can cost them their freedom for a LONG time. An adult has 0 excuse, but teenagers DO. I really believe that this young woman has “done” her “time.” Had she been @ least 25 when she committed this crime, I’d probably not object to her sentence–but she was a KID when she did this (but tried & sentenced as an adult, which she was NOT) 20 years of her life is enough–she’s “paid” her “debt” to society, in my book.
December 10, 2011 at 5:34 pm
John Wedgwood Golden
Hello Pete: This is John Wedgwood Golden. Author of Once Upon A Time At San Quentin. I believe the most important prison topic is homicides, of both staff and inmates. Yet this is hardly ever addressed! Lets take the case of Officer Jayme Biendl. She was murdered on 1-29-11. An inmate strangled her to death in the prison Chapel in Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington state. The state of Washington violated Jayme’s 14th Amendment rights resulting in her death. By denying both staff and inmates protective gun rail coverage, various states all over America are responsible for hundreds of prison homicides. Why don’t you start investigating this???
December 12, 2011 at 1:46 pm
LaureenMillarHolt
I’m not sure that murder inside prison of employees & inmates is an issue needing discussion. Golden doesn’t say why he thinks it is. How many murders are committed w/in prison walls/fences every year, & is it staff or inmates who are bearing the brunt of this? What about prison guards who kill inmates–is it a matter 100% of the time that the guard was acting in self-defense, or is it intentional homicide/murder when a guard kills an inmate? Seems to me that when a guard puts on his/her uniform & goes to work s/he should realize that the people s/he is dealing w/are there for a reason, & some reasons are a lot worse than others.
December 15, 2011 at 7:25 pm
Dona Junta
Right now I am in a juvenile and delinquincy class so, it is real sad how many of these youths end up locked up, doing life and what not. There is so much dsysfunction that they deal with growing up, no joke…Anyhow the photos where capitvating and the words where pretty raw…good stuff.
December 16, 2011 at 3:17 pm
John Wedgwood Golden
Hello Pete Brook: This is John Wedgwood Golden. I commented on LaureenMillarHolt’s last entry. But it is not here! Am I being censored???
December 16, 2011 at 3:23 pm
petebrook
No, I’ve approved all comments you’ve sent in.
December 16, 2011 at 3:27 pm
petebrook
John. There are many violent aspects of prisons that need closer examination. So many in fact, that it could take a team of thousands many decades to get to the bottom of all incidents. My primary job is to look at photography, not the prison system generally. One of the other reasons I didn’t write about Jaime Biendl’s murder was because I was a volunteer in a program at Washington State Reformatory and the tragedy was very shocking and difficult to digest; in some ways, I didn’t think I am equipped as a writer to do the case justice.
December 17, 2011 at 5:42 pm
John Wedgwood Golden
Hello Pete: I appreciate your quick reply to my comment. Perhaps I am a little paranoid? You can understand why with my background in San Quentin. I agree with you more than you will ever know, pertaining to all the various forms of injustice within the American Penal system. Please try to understand why I must focus on prison homicide. I believe that murder, is the lowest common denominator within prison society. By addressing or debating this single prison issue, we on the streets, can solve all incarceration issues. About Officer Jayme Biendl? She is the latest poster girl , for what is wrong with our penal system. I will keep fighting for her because no body else is! Just like all the staff and inmates that I knew who were murdered many years ago in San Quentin. If you were employed as a Zoo keeper for example: And you were in charge of the deadly poisonous snakes. Then one day a King Cobra escaped from your custody and attacked and killed a tourist. Who could be held responsible? You, the Zoo Administration? or the Snake? The ” Snake” is absolutely not at fault here! This leaves the Prison Officer or the prison Administration to blame for the homicides of all staff and inmates in prisons. Because dangerous snakes like dangerous inmates ” kill people” this is what they do! I also appreciate your honesty pertaining to commenting on Officer Biendl’s case. As for me? I have a real problem with stopping to write about prison homicides. But Pete: there is great hope for us here! You need to scrutinize my prison photographic work Once Upon A Time At San Quentin. http://www.blurb.com/books/2526697
December 17, 2011 at 6:00 pm
John Wedgwood Golden
LaureenMillarHolt: I estimate for every Correctional Officer murdered in prison there is at least twenty inmates murdered in prison. Most people on the streets understand that life in prison is very scary. Why do you think that is?
December 17, 2011 at 7:05 pm
John Wedgwood Golden
Ara Oshagan: This is John Wedgwood Golden: Author of Once Upon A Time At San Quentin. I am reading and mentally processing your photographs of Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall. I find your writings, to be more reviling of incarceration culture, than your photographs. Please keep in mind that I am looking at your work threw a San Quentin lens of long ago. I see 13 photos here! which ones are candid? and not candid? You see Ara: I believe once a lens is exposed, both staff and inmates begin to play TV rolls. But then how else could you have shot anything with your camera since you are being scrutinized by your captive subjects. You have to shoot when and what you can. These young wanna be hard ass inmates are just that. They are being educated into our criminal culture. Most of the inmates in Golden’s day came from Juvenile Halls.
December 19, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Ara Oshagan
Hi John. Thanks for your posts. A truly candid photo is a near impossibility. Once can begin to approach it when there is ample time, with a long process of immersion and mutual acceptance and familiarity. It can also happen in an instant, an unguarded instant. But these situations rarely occur in prisons or juvenile halls. By the very nature of the situation inmates are in, they allow for very very few unguarded moments. And as a photographer you have very little time to take photos. This I found to be the most difficult part of photographing in prison and this is why I needed to formulate a different approach. For my work, adding the authorship of the youth I was photographing through their own words, was that formulation. The issues are so complex and deep that I feel single-dimensional photography is typically not sufficient to tell this story. Also, I am not sure that a “candid” photo is a necessity. A photo is a representation of a “truth” seen by a photographer. It makes no claim whatsoever to being a “truth” or being anything near objective reality. It is a representation of that reality and the play-acting done by whoever is in front of the lens is that reality. it is part and parcel of that representation. Even if it is a purely “candid” moment, it is still a representation of that moment. You cannot escape the subjectivity of every photograph, the process. That does not mean there is no objective reality–that photographs show some of the horrors of life in prison. They do. They definitely do. But they are the photographer’s experience of that reality that get translated into photos. I think it is very important to keep that in mind when looking at photos. In a very real sense and I agree with you on this John, I feel the texts that I combine with my photos give a much deeper sense of incarcerated life. For me, that is because they are authored by the youth themselves.
December 19, 2011 at 7:03 pm
Ara Oshagan
Also, John, I would like to see more of your photos from San Quentin. The blurb preview was rather short.
February 12, 2013 at 12:48 am
Between Filming, Leslie Neale Photographs the Downtime and Tedium of Prison Life « Prison Photography
[…] a side note, I first heard of Neale’s filmmaking when I interviewed photographer Ara Oshagan. He shot B-roll on set in Californian juvenile lock-ups during the production of Neale’s […]