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Tijuana — Young men sit on the 3-foot-wide floor of a holding cell in the old Tijuana jail. © Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times
Don Bartletti provided photos for Richard Marosi’s story “Notorious Tijuana jail to be just a dark memory.”
From the LA Times: “A cacophony of shouts and clanging metal. The overpowering stench of vomit and urine. This is the Tijuana jail, nicknamed “La Ocho” because it is on Eighth Street. The lockup, known for decades to hard-partying hordes of Americans and locals, is closing.”
My guess would be anyone who suffered a night or more in this hole will be glad no-one else has to endure the same?
© Sebastian Friedman
A reader got in touch recently to point me in the direction of Sebastian Friedman’s work Segurismos. Friedman deals with self-imposed imprisonment of individuals and families brought on by their personal wealth above and beyond the norms of their “host” society.
Sure there are elements of humor to the work, but also a great misfortunes. When I have visited countries with economic inequality and histories of instability, I wonder if I’d put myself behind bars too. (I have stayed in what could only be described as “compounds” in both Cochabamba and La Paz in Bolivia). I conclude, in a similar position of wealth, I would probably lock myself up too.
I imagine that the peculiar stresses of living behind “voluntary” bars become normative after an amount of time, especially if one considers in how many cities across the globe in which these simplistic security measures are put in place?
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Thomas Locke Hobbs (who offered the tip for this post) has been featuring some interesting work from South America on his blog recently, notably Felipe Russo, Cyrille Weiner, Marcos Lopez, and Pietro Paolini.
Inmates are taught how to grow mushrooms. The bottles contain fungus which is left to sprout in a dark and damp bamboo hut. Prisoners classed as a low security risk are entitled to participate in rehabilitation schemes. Prisoners can learn new skills and earn some money to smooth the transition back into society once released from prison. © Charles Fox
Often one presumes the prisons of a country have been put in place by the ruling party, coalition, dictator or whatever power base dominates.
Rarely does it occur that prisons and criminal justice systems could be established not by political forces per se, but by aid or reconstruction efforts.
(It’s worth noting, part of the responsibility of the allied occupiers in Afghanistan was to construct humane prisons that catered separately for men. women and children, which I have written about before).*
In Cambodia, $1 million dollars of the Australian government’s aid agency AusAid went toward the construction of Kandal Provincial Prison. It opened in 2006 and was designed to set the standard for humane incarceration in Cambodia. Sadly, overcrowding remains.
Photojournalist Charles Fox visited Kandal and I was interested in his images of culturally-appropriate rehabilitation. Seems to me that curd factories and mushroom cultivation are Cambodia’s equivalent to the US’ prison industries that press license plates and manufacture the executive suites for state attorney offices.
Fox:
“Kandal Provincial Prison houses 885 inmates including 38 women and 68 minors. Prisoners sleep in one of eight large buildings. The buildings are open dorm rooms, there are no cells at Kandal Provincial Prison. Prisoners classed as a low security risk are entitled to participate in rehabilitation schemes. Prisoners can learn new skills and earn some money to smooth the transition back into society once released from prison.
Overcrowding is a big concern across Cambodia’s prisons. Kandal Provincial Prison is no exception and is currently operating at around twice its capacity. The Cambodian Government has announced plans to build a new prison in Phnom Kravanh district to house an additional 2500 inmates to ease overcrowding.”
*No organisation is apolitical. All govt, non-govt, religious and social justice organisations are invested in politics – they just don’t sit in parliament or power-broker offices.
Inmates can work in a bean curd factory. The curd is left to dry in the sun and then used to feed both inmates and staff and also sold at market. © Charles Fox
Kandal Provincial Prison houses a garment factory as part of the rehabilitation scheme to give inmates a trade for when they leave prison. The factory has over 150 textile machines which produce plain cotton blend material. The garments are sold back to a Chinese garment factory which provided the machines to the prison. In mates can earn $10 dollars a month working in the factory. © Charles Fox
Inmate feeds fish which are farmed at Kandal Provincial Prison. The fish is used to feed the inmates and staff and also sold at market. © Charles Fox
Love this. Found over at Elodie Drouard‘s twitter page –@elodienelson
Reminds me of A Photo Editor, Rob Haggart‘s twitter background – @aphotoeditor
Some items banned by the Oregon Department of Corrections are understandable, ie, “Weapons or Explosives” and “Escape Device”.
The mail-rooms at all Oregon prisons are instructed to refuse sexually explicit material. Fair enough, you might think (maybe not?) but it is the definitions they provide that make me chuckle. I quote, “Personal Photographs (i.e. individual print or copy or photograph extracted from another source) in which the subject is nude … or exposes any portion of the female breast below the top of the areola.”
Also banned, “Polaroid type photographs with a chemical substance on the back of the photograph.”
Peter Barry has been documenting the Rest In Peace tags in Baltimore for over ten years:
“In 1999 I started documenting these. I have lived in Baltimore Maryland twice, from 1969 to 1974, and 1985 to present. Statistics of Baltimore Maryland, since 1990, POPULATION DROP: 100,000, HOUSES DEMOLISHED: 50,000+, READING GRADE LEVEL: Low, HIV/AIDS: High, HEROIN ADDICTION: High, and a MURDER RATE of approximately 300 per year. It is this murder rate as manifest through the graffiti “R.I.P.” that I have been documenting since 1999.”
I wanted to post this and try to figure out how this tallies with Daniel Shea’s project Baltimore, which I featured earlier this year.
More on R.I.P. Baltimore here and here.
Joshua Bilton built a project to challenge “the fictions” of prisons in the UK.
Ectopia, a series of portraits place the subject in a dominant environment. Bilton’s skill is in evoking the dominance of space without presenting the prison per se. He’s staying away from the dark holes, cell tiers and bars with which we are usually presented. Bilton describes a more nuanced and inter-relational notion of enclosure.
What is more remarkable was his process. The British Journal of Photography writes:
[Bilton] started Ectopia during his BA at the London College of Communication. He finished it the year after graduation, writing to every prison governor in the UK and getting access to 45 inmates. The governors picked them out, and they varied from age 18 to 40+, and from category A (high risk) to D, but that was OK with Bilton – he felt that if he selected them, he’d be influenced by prison clichés. “In the end, some completely fitted in with my preconceived ideas, others completely broke them,” he says. “That’s the point – there is no type, no simplified idea. There’s no way of accessing what it is, you can only shift the perspective.”
Every prison governor in the UK!
All images © Joshua Bilton. Images via Nova Gallery
© Larry Wolfley
Last month, on a flight from Oakland to Seattle, I sat next to an energetic, punky, wide-eyed young lady. Her view of the world was full of naivete, optimism and anti-capitalism. She lived for music and she talked about the Gilman Club … a lot.
I lived in the SF Bay Area for several years but not being punk, garage, shed or synth-krunk I’d never heard of it. A week later I came across Larry Wolfley‘s photography. As well as photographing at underground shows and East Bay clubs, Wolfley has been a makeshift “house photographer” at the Gilman Club for 12 years.
Wolfley recently did an interview with Maximum Rock and Roll. He has a PhD in English Lit from Berkeley, he taught at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the seventies, abandoned academia, returned to Berkeley, became a carpenter, had a son, took photos, realised he knew nothing, resolved to teach himself photography, and decided street punks on Telegraph Avenue were a good topic. The homeless punks told Wolfley he had to go to the Gilman Club if he were to understand their culture. He’s been shooting punk and music gigs since.
Wolfley is more than twice the age than the majority of the crowd. All the kids know him, his Canon and his black beanie hat.
Just wanted to give a shout out to a local hero whose recognition has been a long time coming. Visit his website.
Prison Photography 