The website Dangerous Minds picked up my story Prison Yard to Paris Photo LA: How an Art Market Hustle Put a $45K Price-Tag on Prison Polaroids about the rapid inflation of price of a few hundred lost Polaroids.
I am not surprised by the art market capitalising on this subculture within its general thirst for vernacular photographs. I do urge caution though; the people who made and are in these photos are not the ones profiting from their cultural appropriation.
There are two general and conflicting positions on this matter.
The first position, expressed by Dangerous Minds says it’s a good thing for folks who were inside because they can potentially make money.
“Whether the art market is fetishizing African-American gang members or not, the likely result of the exorbitant price for these photos will be to incentivize owners of similar collections to make them public, which is good news …”
Potentially. Maybe.
Even if someone in the photos is impartial and happy to let their image loose on the market, are they likely to have the connections to buyers and the desire to negotiate a deal? My thinking is that the art market benefits those in it and the dealers will be the ones with the luxury of time, network and collateral to leverage most profit from exchanges of collections such as the Los Angeles Gang and Prison Photo Archive.
The second position on all of this, by contrast, at the World’s Best Ever blog post from which Dangerous Minds sourced the story has an alternative view. One comment reads:
“also we paid for them pic someone stole them from poppy or pj and east coast has nothing to do with new york its in la and who gives you guys the right to post or flicks some of us or out and would like to forget about that time in the 80s.”
Who gives you the right? Who gives us the right?
Who polices this stuff? Nobody. Who is responsible for these images being on the market? A uncoordinated group of individuals. Who is responsible for these images being on the Internet? I am. The original Harpers Books listing from which I sourced the images was deleted after sale. I had to use Google cache and Wayback Machine to source the jpegs, after which I gave them a permanent home under an article with good SEO returns. Otherwise, these images would’ve been and gone. But my intervention allowed them to be copied, shared and has made them quite permanent on the web.
What gave me the right to condemn these images to permanence and deny the subjects their right to forget?
Prison Photography 
5 comments
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December 10, 2015 at 1:03 pm
Justin Houk
Provocative post. I wrestle with similar questions. I have been an on- again-off-again street photographer since 2010. My subjects never usually know they have been photographed. I try and use a ‘do no harm but tell the broader story’ rule but sometimes I think that this is just a self justification
December 13, 2015 at 5:45 pm
Stan B.
Appropriate, relevant questions all- and ones that will never be appropriately addressed, if even noticed, in a country that still requires those that have served their time to self incriminate themselves every time they apply on a job application…
December 14, 2015 at 11:38 am
John Golden
Pete, as you know I was an active prison photographer in San Quentin in the 1970s. These prison photographs show me nothing more than people posing in a bunch of cheesecakes! Once more, none of these photos are shot without the prison officials’ total approval! All documentary photographic work in prison must be shot without “state permission”! Why can you never seem to get that through your intelligent head?
October 9, 2017 at 6:15 pm
frontncenter
Man.. I don’t where you do your thing at, but be careful… I know people who will flip the fuck out if they ever caught someone taking pictures of them.. more especially like that.
I’m talking serious off the hinges, blown way out of proportion ass confrontations that could easily escalate to critical without warning.
That’s a severely dangerous game to be playing if you’re in California my man… especially in Los Angeles.
lol. no bueno!
October 9, 2017 at 6:43 pm
frontncenter
My comment pretty much relevant for everybody else too. I probably know quite a few people in the many photos already floating around, and a lot of these guys are probably dead and gone.
But there’s always going to be a handful still around, and some of these people might even have serious problems with their pics floating online.
if it were photos of prissy spoiled ass movie stars, that would be one thing, but that’s not really what you’re dealing with here. These aren’t kind harmless big mouth rich jerks who just pop off at the mouth, or at the most try to sue …
Some of these guys are really with the bisness. Bonafide hoodstars who were banging frontlines in the 80’s.
some have reps for walking up face to face and knocking the meat out of a persons tacos. lol.
it’s like playing Russian roulette.. and would probably be better off it was.
Not saying it will or would happen… just saying that it easily could.