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The FRANCE24-Radio France International Web Documentary Award has been won by “Prison Valley”, created by French journalists David Dufresne and Philippe Brault. (@davduf, @prisonvalley)
I am excited about this because I’d got behind Prison Valley when it was first launched.
That post drew efforts of correction and sentiment of complaint from Canon City’s chamber of commerce along with a response from the film makers.
Prison Valley was a controversial production in that it displeased the folk it portrayed. From what I can understand the small town Americans felt as if they’d been hoodwinked and did not think a dystopic frame would be put on the whole thing.
But there we go.
The format and interactivity is the type of use that many think the web has been slow to deliver. It’s pioneer.
Innovative Interactivity has an interview with the makers about the concept and design process:
“At the beginning of Prison Valley, we only though about doing an audio slideshow (Portfolio). At the end, it will be a web documentary, a documentary, a book, an iPhone application and even an exhibition this May in Paris.”
Two photographers featured in the awards at Visa pour l’Image Perpignan for their work in Haiti. One of them photographed the aftermath of Fabienne Cherisma’s shooting.
DAMON
From Lens Blog:
“Damon Winter, a New York Times staff photographer, won the Visa d’Or news award for his photographs of Haiti. “Prayers in the Dark,” Jan. 15, 2010; “Where Is the Help?” Jan. 17, 2010; “Prison Break,” Jan. 19, 2010; and “Vignettes,” Feb. 3, 2010.”
Church Service, Haiti. © Damon Winter/The New York Times
Damon deserves the award. He succeeded where almost all other photojournalists failed and that was to dispatch thoughtful, emotionally affected work. He avoided some, not all, but some of the tropes of disaster photography.
Whether it was his or the New York Times’ decision to get him on the phone I don’t know, but the mix of audio and images was heartfelt. Michele McNally, director of photography at the Times backs this up.
Damon’s coverage of the broken Haiti prison was a story I followed (here, here and here). I interviewed Damon last year and I am sure he’ll take the honor with all the humility it demands.
Damon Winter was not witness to Fabienne’s death or its aftermath.
FABIENNE & FREDERIC
As many of you may know, I spent a lot of time looking at one particular incident in Haiti – the death of Fabienne Cherisma and the photographic activity about it.
Fabienne’s Father, Osama, and Fabienne’s sister mourn over the dead body of Fabienne Cherisma. Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 19th, 2010
Frederic Sautereau, who was one of the last of the fifteen photographers I identified at Fabienne’s side.
Sautereau won the Visa d’Or daily press award for his work in Gaza for the French newspaper La Croix. He was also nominated this year for the Visa d’Or news award for his photos of Haiti after the earthquake.
In his Haiti portfolio, Sautereau has 7 or 8 images from around the time of Fabienne’s death. I am quite ambivalent about the work. Some of the images are as bloody as the ones I’ve chosen not to show previously on this blog.
ME
I must be wary of solipsism here. This isn’t about me. I want to convince you it shouldn’t be about Winter or Sautereau either. I want to bend your arm behind your back and tell you its all about Fabienne.
But, really, don’t I only care because I noted the story in January? And, despite all my efforts, I feel like I explained the circumstances of her death without actually improving her lot (in terms of justice) nor the lot of her family (in terms of healing or moving on or however you might measure that).
I guess I would just like to have handed out hard-copies of my inquiry and a CD of images to the Perpignan judges so that at least the possibility for remembrance could have carried with the awards.
Carandiru, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil – 2003 © Pedro Lobo
Four South American penitentiaries feature in Pedro Lobo‘s series Espacos Aprisionados/ Imprisoned Spaces; Itaguy, Bon Pastor and Bela Vista prisons in Medellin, Columbia and the infamous Brazilian prison Carandiru in Sao Paulo.
Pedro Lobo has posted an edit of prison images on his website (27 images). A larger selection can be found at Lobo’s Photoshelter gallery (86 images). Selected works are also posted to Lightstalkers (13 of 30).
I think his images from Carandiru – which he shot shortly after its 2002 closure and demolition – are the most cohesive as a group, and it is a selection of those I include here.
Carandiru, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil – 2003 © Pedro Lobo
Lobo adopts a common approach to prison interiors as he does to the vernacular architecture of slums and to adapted religious spaces. Lobo is interested in the strain between the inhabitants control over the space, and the control of the space over its inhabitant. Read in the details, it is – strangely – a very compelling tension.
Lobo: Brazilian inmates call their cells “barracos” (barracks, tents, shacks) the same word used for their houses in the “favelas”, where most of them come from. As in my previous work, I tried to show their efforts to make their living quarters as dignified as their meager resources allowed for.
In this prison, inmates were allowed intimate visits twice a month and made all efforts to clean and decorate their cells prior to these encounters. The art work on walls and doors are reflections of order and chaos – creativity in adversity – and revealing of their desire for freedom, material residues of the only allowed forms of self-expression. It is sad to know that all vanished when the buildings were demolished.
These images reflect the responsibility with which I use my work. They are not about crime, or criminals, poverty, or misery, but about human beings who found, or placed, themselves in extremely adverse situations and decided not to give up the struggle for a dignified existence. (Source)
Carandiru, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil – 2003 © Pedro Lobo
In some cases the interiors are bare and contemplative; images 2 and 3 could be the cells of religious devotees. In other cases (image 1) the intrigue is in the particulars. Look closer. What’s behind the curtain?
Especially because Carandiru no longer stands (it has, like so many former prisons, become a museum) Lobo’s pictures should be treasured. Don’t be surprised if these images reemerge, possibly in the form of a book, and probably tied into his wider body of work.
PEDRO LOBO
Pedro Lobo (Rio de Janeiro, 1954) is a Brazilian photographer currently living in Portugal.
He has exhibited his work in Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Colombia and in the United States. He has photographed slums, favelas and prisons. His images of known as Carandiru (later demolished) in Sao Paulo were shown in the exhibition “Imprisoned spaces/Espaços aprisionados” at Blue Sky Gallery, in Portland, Oregon, in 2005.
His first one-man show in Portugal was “Favelas: Architecture of Survival“ at Museu Municipal Prof. Joaquim Vermelho in Estremoz.
He has taken part in other exhibitions such as REtalhar2007 in Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro and “Via BR 040 – Serra Cerrado”, with Miguel Rio Branco, Elder Rocha, etc in Plataforma Contemporânea of the Museu Imperial of Petropolis, in 2004 and 2005.
Pedro Lobo, a Fulbright Scholar, studied photography at the school of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with Elaine O’Neil and Bill Burke and at New York’s International Center of Photography (ICP). From 1978 to 1985 he worked for the Brazilian Landmark Commission (Fundação Pró-Memória) as a photographer and researcher. In 2008, he was awarded the first prize at Tops Festival in China.
I just came across Francesco Rocco‘s Prisons portfolio and it was a punch to the gut.
Cocco portrays the self-afflicted and architectural violence wrought in Italian penitentiaries with visceral power that – even within the genre of prison photography – is rare.
The work was made against the ongoing outcry of suicides in Italian prisons, “Italian prisons are increasingly overcrowded. In eight years, 449 suicides have been counted in Italian jails, out of a total of 1243 deaths behind bars. Is this a way to resolve a social issue? Unfortunately, a neon light isn’t enough to take away a man from darkness and hand back to him his dignity.”
In 2002, Cocco embarked on a long study of men’s and women’s prison conditions in Italy, creating work shown at the Modena, 55th Festa Provinciale de l’Unità, September 2006; and later at Rome, Sala Santa Rita, March 2007.
A video of the exhibition installation with comments from the Modena curators (Italian language) can be watched here or by clicking the image below.
Prisons was published as a book format by Logos, with texts by Adriano Sofri and Renata Ferri.
A well-designed fold out accompaniment to the exhibition (pictured below) was also produced. More here.
ITALIAN PRISONS
Previously on Prison Photography, as regards Italian prisons, I have featured Melania Comoretto‘s portraits of women, Danilo Murru‘s large format architectural studies of Sicilian prisons and Luca Ferrari‘s B&W portraits from Rebbibia prison, Rome.
FRANCESCO COCCO
Francesco Cocco was born in Recanati, Italy in 1960. He began working as a photographer in 1989. Keenly interested in social marginalization and the world of children, he immediately started visiting ‘difficult’ countries, especially in Asia. In Bangladesh, he photographed the living conditions of street kids and documented child labor practices. In Vietnam, just after the borders reopened, he created a photo essay for the exhibition Vietnam Oggi (Modena, Italy, 1993). In Cambodia, working with Emergency, he tackled the dramatic story of landmine victims. In the same country, with the support of the NGO New Humanity, he collected images of child prostitution. In Brazil, he photographed blind people at the Benjamin Constant Institute in Rio de Janeiro and the exploitation of child labor on the island of Marajoa, in the Amazon basin.
Photo: Carl Mydans./Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images. Sep 02, 1944
Read this, then look at these.
On reflecting on history and on his own involvement in WWII as a bombardier, Howard Zinn contended that there is no “good” war. War poisons everyone involved.
Photo: Carl Mydans./Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images. Sep 02, 1944
Ex-warden Rick Lamonda at the site of America’s deadliest prison riot causing reform in 1980. Aqua Fria, NM. 2009
Photographer, Jesse Rieser was inside New Mexico’s decommissioned Federal Prison. From the four images on his site, I can’t work out whats going on. Possibly outtakes from a fashion shoot (see photo Elizabeth) although the picture above looks like it should belong to a confessions “human- interest” story … y’know the type … the sort of tale that only comes out when almost everyone involved is almost dead.
This laconic portrait reflects what I picture Sheriff Ed Tom Bell to look like. Bell is the protagonist and part narrator character in Cormac McCarthey’s No Country For Old Men.
Photo: Chris Mottalini
Quilting as a form of rehabilitation for prisoners may seem unorthodox, even beyond the pale, but really it doesn’t surprise me. It’s been put in place at Jefferson City Correctional Center, Missouri.
I was intrigued impressed by how the practice was described by this UTNE Reader article:
Restorative justice, which focuses on the victims needs, is potentially the sharp-end of a positive trend that deals with the emotional repercussions of crime, beyond simple notions of retribution … and its widespread implementation might just drive down US prison populations.
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Photographer, Chris Mottalini‘s other work can be viewed at http://www.mottalini.com/
Photograph: David Levene
I have been aware of Shaun Attwood‘s blog for a while, but never a regular reader. He’s just released a book about the filthy six years he spent in Arizona prisons.
Attwood, formerly a stockbroker and rave organiser was imprisoned in Arizona for drug dealing and money laundering. He was the first person to blog from inside a US prison. He now campaigns against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County Jail’s human rights abuses.
Erwin James (also a former-prisoner) wrote about Attwood and Joe Arpaio in today’s Guardian:
and
Shaun Attwood blogs at jonsjailjournal.blogspot.com. Hard Time: A Brit in America’s Toughest Jail is published by Mainstream.
Prison Photography 