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Bryan Formhals has delivered some festive cheer for Raw File and I. Picked as one of his Top 15 Photography Websites of 2010.
We’ve still a long way to go in terms of consistent output, but Formhals is on the money about working with quality editors. Keith Axline has been a rock.
Formhals:
“Raw File exploded onto my radar when they brought in Pete Brook as a writer. It’s a perfect example of how a mainstream magazine can tap into the talent of someone who knows their way around the blogosphere. The posts aren’t as frequent as I would prefer, but they’re always carefully selected and well written. You can tell Pete is working with good editors who are helping him refine his message. As much as I believe in independent blogs, there’s no getting around the fact that great editing elevates content. I’ll address this in a future post, but I think you’ll see more mainstream publications tapping into the blogosphere to find talented bloggers to run their photography blogs.”
Bryan confesses the “link-bait” title to his piece, but his selection is in fact very thoughtful and though out. Each pick is a departure point for discussion on a specific emerging, dying or morphing aspect of photo talk, sharing and criticism on the web. A melange of choices. Check it out.
In the interests of disclosure, I listed Formhals in Raw File’s Favourite Photobloggers article.
The LA Weekly has been following a story that questions the purpose and notion of “justice” in America. Zealous charges brought by the L.A. County District Attorney have destroyed Jeremy Marks’ life:
The first thing to understand is that Jeremy Marks touched no one during his “attempted lynching” of LAUSD campus police officer Erin Robles.
The second is that Marks’ weapon was the camera in his cell phone.
The third is that Officer Robles’ own actions helped turn an exceedingly minor wrongdoing — a student smoking at a bus stop — into a state prison case.
Marks, 18, has been sitting in Peter Pitchess Detention Center, a tough adult jail, since May 10. Bail was set at $155,000, which his working-class parents can’t pay.
The altercation was not pleasant and Robles and Marks (both fueled by adrenaline, I propose) are guilty of arrogance. But such involved inescapable legal proceedings? The juggernaut of procedure has pummeled common sense on this one.
Found via Discarted, who asks, “How does a situation where a campus police officer reprimands a high school kid for smoking escalate into a felony charge and a possible seven-year jail sentence for another?”
Cell for prisoners sentenced to death (by hanging), Acre/Israel, 2004. © Harri Palviranta
Harri Pälviranta‘s Prison Sheets portfolio includes work from prisons in St. Petersburg, Russia; Tartu, Estonia; Vilnius, Lithuenia; Berlin, Germany; Hämeenlinna, Finland; Jerusalem and Acre, Israel; and Gjirokastra, Albania. The series was undertaken between 1999 and 2005.
There are two common characteristics of the prisons – a) they incarcerated political prisoners and b) they were sites of torture for ideological ends.
Pälviranta’s laminated digital C-prints mounted on aluminium and photographed with 4×5 color negative film are not to my taste (although I do like the Kieferesque mood of the image above) but Pälviranta makes an important point about prison museums:
Because I don’t have an experience-based knowledge of these places, I understand these museum prisons as travel attractions, memorials or discursive constructions. […] Prisons are never passive or meaningless, even though they are empty. The violating practices these places were built on are not absent in our times. […] As architectural constructions they are combination of sacred and evil.
That is to say that prison museums are places for meditation and pathways to activism. As reflexive spaces, prison museums allow us the perspective to see the human rights abuses of today by focusing on the crimes of the past. Today, we’re fed “mitigating” (political) factors for the physical abuse of GWOT prisoners in our custody, but torture is torture. Time doesn’t change that.
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Previously on PP: Simulation and Memory: Prison Museums
Carl Court / AFP – Getty Images; Dan Kitwood / Getty Images; Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images
These photos of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arriving at Westminster Magistrates Court inside a prison van with red windows reminded me of Ben Graville’s past work, which I wrote about here.
Graville’s In & Out The Old Bailey caused some controversy drawing accusations of exploitation. Do we feel Assange is being exploited here? I don’t really think so. Assange is well aware of media praxis and photographer protocols for winning that shot. By his direct eye contact, it would seem he’s putting on a show for these photographers? Or maybe it’s just the edit?
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE RED?
You could run hog wild with reading the colour here, but I won’t. I’ll just mention, witch-hunts, the Hunt for Red October, Red Letter Day, the commies, the Reds, blood on “their” hands, whoever they are, the Scarlet Pimpernel, drive by night tactics, sex by surprise, red light districts and the red ink of Top Secret papers. All collapsing on top of this portrait of a man, still widely misrepresented.
Prisoner Advocate Elaine Brown on Georgia Prison Strike: “Repression Breeds Resistance”
Elaine Brown appeared on Democracy Now! today. Amy Goodman described the strike as the biggest in American History.
Brown alleged an inmate paid $800 to a prison guard for a cell phone.
Goodman suggested the term cell-phone has realised its true meaning.
‘CELL’ PHONES
Also, for the New York Times, in Inmates in Georgia Prisons Use Contraband Phones to Coordinate Protest, Sarah Wheaton describes how ‘prison protest has entered the wireless age’ and how gang, religious and race divisions were put aside to organise the strike.
Note: The Georgia DoC say they have locked-down the prisons. Not true. The inmates locked themselves down, refusing to leave their cells.
Biggest Prison Strike in American History
Prison strikes are a rarity these days, with prison populations fragmented, disciplined, docile, estranged from society and stripped of tools for political mobilisation.
There’s a growing number of reports coming out of Georgia, where the strike is now into its fourth day. You should read the excellent Prison Law Blog for a summary of communications and developments – Georgia Prisoners Strike for Better Conditions.
As Sara points out:
“Relative to the state’s population, it has an outsize reach. In Georgia, 1 in 13 adults is either in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole — the highest rate of correctional control in the country. (Nationwide that figure is 1 in 31.) According to the Sentencing Project, over 4% of Georgia adults and almost 10% of African-Americans cannot vote due to felony disenfranchisement laws.”
The strike is based on reasonable demands; notably, demands applicable to issues in many state prison systems:
· A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK: In violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the DOC demands prisoners work for free.
· EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES: For the great majority of prisoners, the DOC denies all opportunities for education beyond the GED, despite the benefit to both prisoners and society.
· DECENT HEALTH CARE: In violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, the DOC denies adequate medical care to prisoners, charges excessive fees for the most minimal care and is responsible for extraordinary pain and suffering.
· AN END TO CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS: In further violation of the 8th Amendment, the DOC is responsible for cruel prisoner punishments for minor infractions of rules.
· DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS: Georgia prisoners are confined in over-crowded, substandard conditions, with little heat in winter and oppressive heat in summer.
· NUTRITIONAL MEALS: Vegetables and fruit are in short supply in DOC facilities while starches and fatty foods are plentiful.
· VOCATIONAL AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES: The DOC has stripped its facilities of all opportunities for skills training, self-improvement and proper exercise.
· ACCESS TO FAMILIES: The DOC has disconnected thousands of prisoners from their families by imposing excessive telephone charges and innumerable barriers to visitation.
· JUST PAROLE DECISIONS: The Parole Board capriciously and regularly denies parole to the majority of prisoners despite evidence of eligibility.
Lots of lists of photobooks cropping up for different reasons.
PHONAR
To close out the remarkable efforts of Jonathan Worth’s experimental open-sourced, web-based, free Photography and Narrative (#PHONAR) course offered through Coventry University, the #PHONAR course closed with a bevvy of recommended readings.
The following photographers, writers, teachers and journalists made picks:
Alec Soth; Andy Adams; Cory Doctorow; Daniel Meadows; David Campbell; Edmund Clark; Fred Ritchin; Geoff Dyer; Gilles Peress; Grant Scott; Harry Hardie; Jeff Brouws; Joel Meyerowitz; John Edwin Mason; Jonathan Shaw; Jonathan Worth; Ken Schles; Larissa Leclair; Ludwig Haskins; Matt Johnston; Michael Hallett; Miki Johnson; Mikko Takkunen; Nathalie Belayche; Peter Dench; Pete Brook; Sean O’Hagan; Simon Roberts; Stephen Mayes; Steve Pyke; Todd Hido
As a contributor, I picked out three titles. Predictably, each dealt with photography in sites of incarceration:
Too Much Time – Jane Evelyn Atwood
Chris Verene‘s Family was a later addition.
It was a privilege to be asked to guest lecture on this pioneering educational model. Thanks to Jonathan, Matt Johnston @mjohnstonmedia (Chief Engineer) and students for their encouragement and engagement.
WAYNE FORD
The #PHONAR list was spurred by Wayne Ford’s Photobooks and Narrative list.
JOHN EDWIN MASON
Following the #PHONAR list, contributor John Edwin Mason extended his selections. Mason’s Photobooks and Narrative: My (Slightly Flawed) Phonar List has an African and African American emphasis.
ALEC SOTH
Tonight, Soth put forward his Top 10+ Photobooks of 2010. As ever, Soth is thorough, thoughtful and generous in response.
JEFF LADD
Jeff at 5B4 has picked out his 15 choices for Best Books of 2010. The comments section is lively and I don’t think being to conceptual (as Jeff is accused of) is a problem, even if it were a fair allegation.
SEAN O’HAGAN
Sean at the Guardian has selected 2010’s best photography books that you should put in someones stocking.
NIALL MCDIARMID
Niall has put together his Photobooks and Magazines of the Year.
European Space Agency simulation module used to study the effects of long term confinement. Photo: Pavel Zelensky/AFP/Getty Images
In June 2010, as part of the Mars 500 research project, the European Space Agency (ESA) put six trainee astronauts into a space flight simulation. In a giant ” tin can” in a Moscow hangar with no sun, no fresh water and no alcohol for 520 days, the psychological tenacity of these six ground-bound astronauts will be under constant scrutiny. Mars 500 is the most ambitious space-simulator research to date. The ESA put away its trainees in similar conditions for 105 days in 2009.
As a spokesman for Mars 500, Dr. Christer Fuglesang, a Swedish astronaut with the human spaceflight directorate of the European Space Agency (ESA) emphasised the usefulness of the study:
“This isn’t a joke. It will give a lot of useful information, not just about Mars but also for Earth […] People are isolated in many places in the world. We have scientists in the south pole for a long time, or in submarines. Then there are all those in jail.”
Fuglesang is right. Solitary confinement is never a joke.
Well-wishers, family and friends watch a video of the miners projected onto a screen erected near the collapsed gold and copper mine near Copiapó, Chile. Photo: Ivan Alvarado / Reuters.
When the Chilean miners were trapped for 69 days experts from NASA were called in as experts on the psychological strains of long term confinement. A call to the management of any one of America’s hundreds Intense Management Units (IMUs) could have been as useful (except for the fact that prisoners are hardly cared for or monitored in the way necessary to improve their psychological state.) On any given day in the United States, 20,000 men, women and children are held in solitary confinement.
I have used this quote before, but it bears repeating:
First, after months or years of complete isolation, many prisoners “begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind—to organize their own lives around activity and purpose. Chronic apathy, lethargy, depression, and despair often result. . . . In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving” (Haney). [They] become essentially catatonic.
Source: Hellhole, The New Yorker, March 30, 2009, by Atul Gawande.
UNFATHOMABLE SCALE
Everyday in American prisons wallow the equivalent of 600 Chilean mining disasters … except prisoners can remain penned in for longer than 69 days.
“The [psychological and cognitive effects of long term isolation] is not something that’s easy to study,” says Craig Haney, psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, “and not something that prison systems are eager to have people look at.” Haney leads academic research on solitary confinement and notes that US prisons didn’t always resort to its current widespread use:
We have an overwhelmingly crowded prison system in which the mandate to rehabilitate and provide activities for prisoners was suspended at the same time as the prison system became overcrowded. Not surprisingly, prison systems faced with this influx of prisoners, and lacking the rewards they once had to manage and control prisoner behavior, turned to the use of punishment. And one big punishment is the threat of long-term solitary confinement. They’ve used it without a lot of forethought to its consequences. That policy needs to be rethought. (Source)
FIRST HAND TESTIMONY
Academics, studies and statistics may hook, inspire and lead some to direct action, but for others the voices of those who’ve suffered in solitary confinement may inform more effectively.
In a prison system that has lost its moral compass, in a system that uses solitary confinement cells as the new asylums, in a country which had made torture its own, it is the voices of the confined to which we should pay most attention.
I would like to recommend an excellent writer, who also happens to be a prisoner. Arthur Longworth was awarded First Place in memoir in the PEN American Center 2010 Prison Writing Contest. Longworth writes about the violence of the Walla Walla Intense Management Unit (IMU) in Washington State. Longworth’s second memoir piece is entitled The Hole.
You can buy The Prison Diary of Arthur Longworth #299180 ($7) by following the directions posted at Changing Lives, Changing Minds.
Prison Photography 