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Marco Baroncini‘s photographs of a Guatemalan prison, Persons No More, are close and disorientating*.
Baroncini explains,
“Sololà, little town on the west side of Guatemala, not far from Atitlan Lake, is not a proper prison; It is an anomalous preventive detention cell: many prisoners, in fact, will never be transferred to a bigger and more equipped jail, but they will remain in the same cell to undergo all the terms of punishment.
“Those condemned for murder may remain for 50 years. The murderer, the drugdealer, the little robber are all crowded together in the same cell of 70 square meters. There is no difference between the crimes committed: they are heaped up together sharing the same situation which doesn’t give any chance to get better or improve.
“They live as they were rats behind the bars, with an only one toilet and shower for all of them, which don’t work properly either, with broken drain pipes. Living in these conditions, it is very easy to became infected, especially on summer time thanks to shoddy food they eat too.
“Beds are not enough for all of them: they often sleep in two or more in the same bed, or some others put the beds together to sleep in four or five, or on the floor. There is not space enough for all of them, inside and in outside the prison, even a tiny space to spend their air time to which everyone should be entitled.
“It is difficult to speak about human rights with regard to Solalà. It is the example of total negation of every sort of right. This inhuman situation of living drove some of the prisoners to write a letter addressed to “Cooperaitalia” “Human Rights” and “Derechos Humanos” reporting the cruel condition of life they are obliged to live in.”
[My bolding]
Baroncini is based in Rome and boasts an impressive portfolio.
*American-English uses disorienting, English-English uses disorientating. How we differ.
Children Playing in the Ruins, Seville, 1933. 6 5/8 x 9 5/8" silver print. Circa, 1947 © Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Taliban Prisoners, Afghanistan, 2001. © Alan Chin
I have it on good authority that Alan Chin is one of the hardest working and spontaneous photojournalists in the business. He also caught this gem of a shot which for me sums up the shell-shock of war. These men may have been fighters, then prisoners, but they were/are also naive protectors of a regional social-order based upon the most closed of religious dogmas.
For all America’s imperialist crimes over the past decade, let’s not forget that the Taliban were brutal abusers of human rights, particularly women’s rights.
Is it not the case that the vast majority of men who fight do so because they are followers and not leaders? Heroism is passe; we are all victims of circumstance, not agents of change.
Image Sources; Chin, Cartier Bresson
I am late on this one, but I thought it so important that it worth a quick post.
Last month, Amy Stein posted Bedlam Exposed. Amy put up some disturbing images by Charlie Lord. He was one of several conscientious objectors who worked at Philadelphia State Hospital, Byberry, PA in lieu of military service.
Listen to Charlie Lord talk about his experience at the Philadelphia State Hospital.
Prison Photography has long determined that there is little difference between prisons and asylums. Asylums have been referred to as sanitariums and as hospitals, but it is necessary to take a quick leap past the label and view the level of care (and security) as well as the agency of those committed.
In photographic evidences we can look to the work of Jenn Ackerman (a prison functioning as a mental health unit) and Eugene Richards (a mental health unit functioning as a prison). These thoughts are just to sow the seeds and the [in]distinctions between prisons and mental health facilities will be something I’ll return to over the coming year.
Ackerman’s Trapped:
http://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/05/jenn-ackerman-trapped-epf-finalist/
http://indepth.jennackerman.com/trapped/feature.html
http://bop.nppa.org/2009/still_photography/winners/?cat=NTP&place=1st
https://prisonphotography.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/jenn-ackerman-trapped-mental-illness-in-americas-prisons/
Richards’ Procession of Them:
http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/03/out-mind-out-sight
http://motherjones.com/photoessays/2009/03/out-mind
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/photography/events/procession_20060201
Every so often commentaries converge as such that I’m compelled to connect the smallish number of dots. I have done it once before here.
So, recently:
SUSAN MEISELAS SPEAKS ON DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY’S ROLE
In ‘Expanding the Circle’, Meiselas talks frankly about the approaches and collaborations necessary to reach a wider audience,
“With whom can I partner – if that seems appropriate – for the work to have an additional life. [It] could be a life of advocacy or a life tied to an issue in a particular way, whether it is targetted at policy makers or to a public. You have to keep documenting at the same time asking those questions. All the while one must continue to document and seek opportunities to create possibilities for engagement.”
Meiselas is a curator for the Moving Walls project. The exhibition features work by former Open Society fellows and prison photographers Joseph Rodriguez, Steve Liss and Andrew Lichtenstein.
It is fair to say that the Open Society’s Documentary Photography Project has a propensity for prison photography projects. The 17th round of Moving Walls fellows has just been announced, and of the seven recipients, two document the lives of the incarcerated.
Lori Waselchuk for her work at Angola’s prison hospice and Ara Oshagan for his coverage of juvenile detention in California.
© Lori Waselchuk
© Ara Oshagan
One last note on cages. Meiselas’ selection includes images from Eugene Richard’s Procession of Them produced as a book in 2008, see spreads here and listen to Richards speak on the project as part of Columbia University’s “Photography as Advocacy?” series (2006).
One task of prison photographers is to emote the isolation and hardness of incarceration. It is a difficult task. Richards, while not looking at prisons per se is a master of conveying the barbarity of the cage and the helplessness of the caged. And besides, in today’s discourses that prefer not to distinguish institutional forms, the mental health asylums of Richard’s work are prisons.
Macoleta, Steinmetz, prison weapon & prison tool typologies
James Pomerantz highlighted the work of Antonio Vega Macotela who began investigating the concept of time as that controlled by outside forces and ended up clocking over 500 hours in the Santa Martha Acatitla Jail, Mexico. Read the essay, it’s an eye-opener!
© Antonio Vega Macotela
This reminded me of Marc Steinmetz‘s work from Germany from a few years ago, which I mentioned last year.
© Marc Steinmetz
PRISONER DATABASES AND MOST-WANTED GALLERIES
iheartphotograph highlighted the institutional mugshots presented online by the Florida Department of Corrections.
This is the first example I am aware of that a state DoC has provided a publicly accessible online search of full profiles and photographs of housed inmates.
No details are excluded; vital stats, aliases, crime, date of crime, body marks, date of release.
I suppose this is the voyeuristic bridge between DOC internal databases and the ever-refreshing scrolling “news” galleries of persons recently booked. The adoption of police mugshots as “news” also came out of Florida, so there is obviously research to be done there into Florida’s culture and visual rhetoric of criminal justice.
In both these cases, the public is being drawn in – by a limited amount of information – to the mechanics of regional sheriffdom.
Most wanted lists, such as that in California that just got a flashy website overhaul, carry some logic in that they inform a public about a potential menace at large. I expect there’d be a public outcry if this service was removed. Accepting that logic, though, it is curious as to why criminal justice agencies would provide mugshots of booked and detained persons.
All told, the availability of state prisoners’ photo IDs makes sense if you consider such databases as deliberate tactic. The databases become other arms in the apparatus of the panopticon; the visage of the prisoner is policed online by the gaze of unlimited number of people, as readily as it is policed by the prison guards’ gaze within the walls.
While mugshots have commonly been released at intervals to the media, particularly of infamous prisoners, never before has a photo-database of society’s transgressors been so accessible and searchable by the public.
We have become nodes in a network of observation and discipline.
The net has widened, and this previously exclusive net is now consolidating with the internet …
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., jailed in Birmingham, Alabama for protesting injustice.
Because I just read this, I wince a little as I repost thoughts via the indubitable Jim, but time is of a premium today. Please excuse me.
Martin vs. Barack
Why is it some American’s “mythologize and sanitize” MLK – a man that called for a national guaranteed income – but as quickly abase and demonize Obama who, by the way, is a pithy moderate by comparison?
In other words, why is the socialist agenda of one leader ignored and – worse still – why is a socialist agenda fabricated and super-imposed on another?
Oh, and also, actual functioning democratic socialism (even in its sputtering form under New Labour) is a pretty good ticket.
Men rummage through the remains at the Haitian National Penitentiary that stands burnt and empty after a 7.0 magnitude quake rocked Port-au-Prince, in this United Nations handout photo taken and released on January 14. Photo Credit: United Nations, Reuters.
Source
The Port-au-Prince slum Cite Soleil was renowned for extreme violence and as stronghold for gang activity. Recently, activities there had calmed – as Reuters notes, “The pacification of Cite Soleil had been one of President Rene Preval’s few undisputed achievements since taking office in 2006, until the quake devastated Port-au-Prince.”
The National Penitentiary served to incapacitate the capital’s violent gang members and leaders. Between 3,000 and 4,000 former-inmates are now on the streets. The remains and records amid the rubble of the Ministry of Justice have been torched destroying the information needed to track down the former prison population. Law and order are fragile now, but still, violent incidents are few.
Undoubtedly, fear reigns. From the Guardian:
Haiti’s National Penitentiary became an essential apparatus in Preval’s abatement of gang command in Port-au-Prince’s poorer neighbourhoods. In 2004, it is alleged prison administration put down a non-violent protest with lethal force. President Rene Preval’s office argued that they used acceptable force in the interest of self-defense.
But the problem’s in Haiti’s prisons existed long before Preval’s insertion into power in 2004 and even before Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s third stint as president (2001 – 2004).
In 1997, Donna DeCesare won the Alicia Patterson Fellowship and, in 2000, used the opportunity to examine the links between criminal activity, US deportees and gang structure in Haiti.
From looking at her essay I can only presume Preval’s strategic battle with the gangs compounded problems of overcrowding. DeCesare’s essay touches necessarily upon issues of poverty, services, police shortcomings and judicial corruption … all the while following the fortunes of Touchè Caman, U.S. deportee and organizer for Chans Altenativ, an organisation to help Haitian deportees.
Brilliant journalism, but of course ten years old.
More immediately are the concerns of safety and health for Haitians in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas.
At the Haitian National Penitentiary, Touchè Caman does outreach for Chans Altenativ.looking for deportees among the inmates. “I never thought I’d be going back into a prison after the last time,” he tells me laughing. “It’s a lot different on the other side of the bars. Maybe Chans Altenativ can help a few of them when they get out.” © Donna DeCesare
At Forte Nacional, where children, women and youths are incarcerated, more than 40 youths share the same cell. There are no school classes or trade workshops here. Most of these boys are 16 years old. A few are younger. Some claim membership in Base Big Up and other gangs. One thing is certain, without training or rehabilitative programs of any kind to offer alternatives to street life, many of these boys will find their way into criminal gangs when they are released, even if they weren’t already involved. © Donna DeCesare
2Double (day dooblay), a 21 year old rap kreyol artist, records a track in the Koze Kreyol studio in Port au Prince, Haiti, on July 18th, 2008. The rapper has had some recent success and local recognition but continues to live in the notorious Cite Soliel slum with his mother and 3 year old son. He says he hopes to use his music to get his family to a better environment. © David Zentz/Aurora Photos
Just two weeks ago 100Eyes launched a new issue Gade, Haiti. Who at that time would have knwon that the world’s attention would sear down upon that previously abused, cliched far away nation?
Today Andy Levin put out the following call:
“Shoot for 100Eyes: Gade, Haiti!
The situation in Haiti has brought a tremendous many talented photographers to Haiti, with many more on the way. We would like to find a way to broaden the picture of Haiti that is currently in the news, by combining work with the disaster area with work from the rest of the nation.
If you are going to Haiti and will be there in February, I am asking photographers to spread out around the country and to spend day or two photographing something other than the earthquake ravaged area, to be included in a special issue of 100Eyes on Haiti.
I am hopeful that photographers can use the same resourcefulness in getting around Haiti as they have in getting to the disaster area … and I know that there are many stories to be told beyond what we are currently seeing, many struggles that happen on a daily basis. There is beauty, there is laughter as well.
We believe that the effort made by photographers in doing this would more than make up for the relative small resources going into the project, by helping to create a broader picture of Haitian life, and to put the horrific, and important, images that are currently being taken in Port au Prince in context.
As part of the project we will be having Haitian children and students take pictures to show the events through their own eyes, an effort that was planned before the tragedy. In addition we ask that each photographer try and bring a compact digital camera and find a Haitian child to work with in whatever area of the country that you are working in.
Depending on the amount of work received we may have needs for volunteer editors and coordinators as well. For those more interested in a structured environment I am going be extending the 100Eyes Workshop in Haiti through the end of the month and possibly beyond.
For details on this please contact me through our workshop page for Haiti, here.”
If I was a photographer I’d be anxiously looking for an avenue to broaden the media coverage away from only disaster consumption. This seems like the best opportunity; Structured, purposeful and community based.
We have seen the terrifying images, now let’s get past them to action. If you’ve got money give it, if you’ve got a camera get involved.
DAVID ZENTZ
I picked the image above out from the selection at 100 Eyes. David Zentz has done two series on Haiti, Saut D’eau and 2Double.
David’s work at Verve, 100Eyes and Aurora Photos. David also has a blog, Your Moment of Zentz.
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UPDATED: SARAH SHOURD WAS RELEASED FROM EVIN PRISON ON 14TH SEPTEMBER, 2010. SHANE BAUER WAS RELEASED ON SEPTEMBER 21ST, 2011
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Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal are imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. They are not spies; they are principled activists, valued journalists and now political pawns.
I’d like to summarise their situation and then focus on Bauer’s ongoing work in Sudan.
HIKING, CROSSING, LANGUISHING
Earlier this week I met Shon Meckfessel, one-time Cake band-member, occasional anarchist, and long-time writer for literary, political periodicals.
Shon has been known most recently as the fourth member of the hiking party on the Iraqi Kurdistan/Iran border. Shon is not in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison because he – due to illness – delayed the start of his hike by 24 hours.
The day after his three friends Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal had set out, Shon got on a bus headed to the same trail-head with the intention of catching up. While on the bus, he received a call from Shane telling him that the three of them had just been detained by Iranian border patrol. That was on the 31st July, 2009.
Most US mainstream media coverage has been neutral presentation of the known facts, sometimes peppered with confusion and incredulity. It has focused on the absurdity of the situation instead of the integrity of the writing, teaching and activism of the three members of the party.
Outside of the media, there has been organised support. There has also been the minority view – the predictably offensive right-wing nut-jobs.
To answer briefly the questions of how and why a party of Americans were hiking near the Iranian border, Iraqi Kurdistan has been peaceful for nearly twenty years since the close of the first Gulf war.
Shane, Sarah and Joshua were all seasoned travellers and they had been advised that the mountains and waterfalls of Ahmad Awah in the North East were well worth a visit. Shon and his friends travelled to As Sulaymaniyah together. When they took the two hour bus ride from the city they thought it headed northwest, not eastward. No locals they spoke to mentioned the proximity of the Iranian border.
Shon, Shane, Sarah and Joshua stayed in As Sulaymaniyah (bottom left) for a night. The bus ride they thought went north west in fact headed east to Ahmad Awah (top right).
As Sulaymaniyah and Ahmad Awah are in Kurdistan, North Eastern Iraq. The areas marked Kordestan and Kermanshah are in Iran.
Iraq and Iran border and territories.
For a long time – aside of an early factual statement (August 6th) – Shon stayed out of the media spotlight and let the Department of State run its diplomatic channels. However, his friends remain imprisoned. Recently, media coverage of the story has declined (Diane Sawyer’s direct questions to a prevaricating Ahmadinejad the exception). On November 2nd, Shon wrote an open letter to Iranian President Ahmadinejad:
I had hoped that the misunderstanding would be resolved quickly. Three months have now passed, and I cannot imagine what more the Iranian authorities might have to learn about my friends or what they were doing in the area. … Mr. President, by continuing to deprive Shane, Sarah, and Josh of their liberty, Iran is working against some of the very causes it supports. Each of these three has a long and public record of contesting injustice in the world and addressing some of the inequities between rich and poor which you have spoken about through their humanitarian work in their own country and overseas.
Shon goes on to describe their various work and causes. Read the letter in full. Also on November 2nd, Shon appeared on Democracy Now! to reassert his position that the Iranian authorities can have no illusions as to their characters.
On November 9th, the three were charged with espionage.
Of the three, Shane Bauer has written and published the most. Most recently his article, Sheikh Down (Mother Jones) described how the ‘Pentagon bought stability in Iraq by funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to the country’s next generation of strongmen’.
Shon notes, “As a fluent speaker of Arabic, Shane has focused on injustices in the Arab world, in Iraq and Palestine in particular. The Christian Science Monitor published Shane’s January 7th interview with Musa Abu Marzook, the only English-language interview with a Hamas leader during Israel’s attack on Gaza.”
SHANE BAUER’S DARFUR PHOTOGRAPHY
I could have as easily featured the publicly available works of Josh or Sarah; each of the three illustrate their non-spy credentials through their past writings and journalism. That said, neither Josh or Sarah are involved in photojournalism or multimedia journalism as Shane is.
As Shane’s AP editor said in the clip atop this post, there are not many twenty somethings in Darfur freelancing and living with Sudanese rebels.
I have picked out five images from Shane’s Darfur series, but he also has produced two multimedia pieces One Day with the S.L.A. and Darfur: Rebellion from the Margins. In both stills and video he is trying to offer a context for the rebels bearing arms. The equation is simple: without a fight they would have “been run into the desert, where there is no water and left to die”.
Rebels from the SLA-Unity faction sit stranded in the countryside. North Darfur, 2007. © Shane Bauer
In the heat of the summer, SLA rebels swim near their base after a long night of rain. Deisa, North Darfur, Sudan, 2007. © Shane Bauer
A UN helicopter takes off after delivering medical supplies to a small clinic that was looted by the Janjaweed. Many Darfuris are demanding a UN peacekeeping force to replace the beleagured African Union mission, but for now the UN is limited short stopovers to deliver small boxes of supplies to villagers. Bir Maza, 2007. © Shane Bauer
Village elders meet in North Darfur. Many civilians remain in the countryside, either because they cannot afford to travel to a refugee camp or because they refuse to leave their homes, 2007. © Shane Bauer
Women collect water in goatskins at a well in Farawia, North Darfur. With no water facilities and many wells poisoned or destroyed by the Sudanese government and its janjaweed militias, people have to travel long distances to find water. 2006. © Shane Bauer
The stills and video are a privileged view of existence for the Sudanese Liberation Army and the civilians they protect, but it is also a view that has dated. Shane continues to work on a feature length film about these same civilians, the S.L.A. and their continued struggle. Time ticks on.
Given that Shane is an accomplished photographer, I was a little surprised that his cause hasn’t been forwarded much in photographic circles, or more specifically the photoblogosphere. Jack Kurtz picked up on the story and posted it to Lightstalkers but it got no takers. Shane is a member.
Tewfic liked Shane’s Darfur multimedia but missed the story of his and his friends capture … as many of us did.
And, of course, we only anticipate Shane’s release in the context of all three’s release.
HELP HERE, HELP THERE
Perhaps, especially when the photographic community are mobilising to help in Haiti, we should also be aware of ongoing problems elsewhere?
The family have set up the Free The Hikers website, and also Facebook and a Twitter. We can start there with our actions.
BIOGRAPHIES
Shane Bauer received 1st place for independent audio slideshow features in the 2008 NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism contest. In 2007, he was a national finalist for photojournalism in the Harry Chapin Media Awards as well as a national finalist for feature photography for the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2007 Mark of Excellence Awards. He also received the Lyon Prize in photography that year. (Source)
Sarah Shourd, 31, is an English teacher in Damascus and is learning Arabic. She previously taught as part of the Iraqi Student Project, a program which gives Iraqi students living in Damascus the skills to continue their education in US schools. Sarah has written articles on travel and social issues reflecting her time in Syria, Ethiopia, Yemen and Mexico (Escape From Iraq: A Muslim Family Finds Solace in Ramadan, Brave Eyes, Laughing Hearts: My First Encounter with Yemen, Families Shout Their Love Across Minefields in Golan Heights). She attended UC Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lived after graduating until moving to Damascus with Shane. (Source)
Joshua Fattal began undergraduate work at UC Santa Barbara and graduated from UC Berkeley (2004). For three years after college he was invested in the Aprovecho Research Center, a sustainable living project in Oregon. In 2009, Josh was on a years travel partly independently and partly as a teaching assistant for the International Honours Program ‘Health and Community’ semester. (Source)
Prison Photography 