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The “Prison Movie” belongs to an undefined genre. Everybody has seen a movie that would fall within its flexible parameters of definition, and yet the concept is a little unnerving.
The genre, I believe, is misunderstood and suffers from an overall apathy or misinterpretation of prison realities. ‘Captivity’ – a necessary requisite of prison – has other discomforting associations such as bondage, unequal power relations, psychological violence, abuse & coercion, constant tension, artificial alliances, survival instincts, homosexuality, rape and exploitation to name a few.
Prison movies, because of their (perceived) content are rarely dinner table conversation. To acknowledge a genre is to acknowledge the common problems that arise when one set of humans puts another set of humans in cages.
A prior guest blogger recommended the work of Paul Mason to help me through this quandary. In his excellent introduction to defining the genre, Men, Machines And The Mincer: The Prison Movie, Mason discusses major themes and audience motivations for viewing. Mason sets the tone for discussion with two truisms;
Two dilemmas exist concerning prison movies: first, hardly any research has been undertaken in the area and secondly, there has been little attempt to define the prison movie. Paradoxically, whilst the genre may not be instantly recognisable, there are many prison movies that stick in the memory.
Mason references a multitude of titles including: Brute Force (1947), Riot In Cell Block Eleven (1954), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Cool Hand Luke (1962), Papillon (1973), The Mean Machine (1974), Lock Up (1989), Chained Heat (1992), In The Name Of The Father (1994), Murder In The First (1994), A Man For All Seasons, The Count Of Monte Cristo, There Was A Crooked Man, Silent Scream (1990) We’re No Angels (1955), Breakout (1975), Sleepers (1996), The Hoose Gow (1929), Jailhouse Rock (1957), Porridge (1978), Prison Break (1938), Crashout (1955), Breakout (1975), Midnight Express (1978), McVicar (1980), Scum (1983) Lock Up (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1995), The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner (1962), Numbered Men (1930), The Criminal Code (1931), San Quentin (1937), Men Without Souls (1940), Dead Man Walking (1995), The Shawshank Redemption (1995), I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932), San Quentin (1937), Wedlock (1990), Two Way Stretch (1960), The Ladies They Talk About (1933), Road Gang (1936), Hell’s Highway (1932), Blackwell’s Island (1939), The Pot Carriers (1962), The Big Doll’s House (1971), The Big Bird Cage (1972), Women In Cages (1972).
Mason elaborates:
The term ‘prison movie’ is both a nebulous and problematic one. It is not a term used in everyday discourse like ‘gangster film’, ‘musical’ or ‘western’ is used and yet most of us would describe Midnight Express, Birdman of Alcatraz and Papillon as ‘prison movies’. Only Querry (1973), Nellis & Hale (1981) and Crowther (1989) have written about the prison movie and none of them attempts to define the genre. It is perhaps the difficulty in definition which explains why so little has been written about the prison film despite over three hundred having been made since 1910.
Mason’s paper was written just over 10 years ago now and if I were to bring the debate up to speed, I’d talk about the many independent documentaries and activist films that have sprouted particularly in response the political landscape of American incarceration since the late nineties – Mr. Big, Up the Ridge, Making the River, Prison Town, Gray Days, In Prison My Whole Life and A Hard Straight are just a few examples.
I’d be eager to hear reader’s favourite, memorable or simply known prison movies.
Bringing us full circle to our medium of choice, this discussion leads me to the difficult task of defining the genre of prison photography which I intend to do in the near future …
Guantanamo © Chris Maluszynski/Agence VU
Guantanamo Map http://www.cubafutour.de/Karte%20Guantanamo%20Provinz.jpg
Guantanamo Bay Tents. Courtesy of The Department of Defense Visual Information Center
I am very happy with the way Prison Photography is progressing. I have done interviews with some outstanding photographers and artists. I have offered opinion where I think there’s something to be said. The most satisfying work on the blog is that contributed by guest bloggers, comment-makers and interviewees. Photographers have contacted me and I have been eager to comment upon their work.
But, there is one audience I never anticipated – The Google Image Search Audience. I get many hits for searches on Guantanamo, Guantanamo video, Iraq prison, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib Images of Prisoners, etc, etc – which is strange because these are topics that many people have grappled over with more proficiency and depth than I am likely to.
It is obvious that there is a need for fast access to images of America’s sites of torture and incarceration, namely Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. I certainly don’t wish to fuse the two institutional histories so I shall deal only with Guantanamo Bay.
Louie Palu
Walrus Magazine. 8 of Palu’s photographs and accompanying article.
The Atlantic. 6 of Palu’s photographs.
Private galleries. Palu’s Photoshelter profile offers three separate galleries, but they’re password protected. Contact the photographer directly.
NPR Interview. Palu offered insight into his experience and impressions of Guantanamo.
Christopher Sims
Mother Jones. 15 images of daily life outside of the prison complex.
Civilian Arts Project. 25 images of a bizarrely serene Guantanamo Naval Base.
BBC, The Other Side of Guantanamo. Article about Sims’ series.
Daylight Magazine. 4 minute audio of Sims’ experiences on project.
Chris Maluszynski
Agence VU/Moment. Twenty-six images exhibited. Likely more on file at the agency.
Cesar Vera
Guantanamo Prison. 18 Black & White images. 3 Colour.
Joint Task Force (JTF)
Many of the photographs shown in the press over the last few years were taken by members of the Navy’s own Joint Task Force. When press photographers visited the JTF vetted all images before release.
Boston Globe. 30 Hi-Res images.
Repeat of above selection. 20 Hi-Res images selected.
JTF Photo Galleries. 22 months (July 2007 – May 2009). Hundreds of images. Official photography.
Miami Herald
Description of the 8 different camps at Guantanamo
Explanation of the Legal contexts: Key defendants, the judges, the defense and prosecution counsel.
Cursory look at Art influenced by Guantanamo
Magnum
Bruce Gilden. Guantanamo Bay. Enemy Combatant Camps, 2003
Paolo Pellegrin. Guantanamo Detainees, 2006
Stuart Franklin’s work Cuba, 2003, included images from Guantanamo and you’ll need to search the Magnum website for images.
McClatchy
An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.
Intro. Text and 11 minute video.
Photos. Detainees held at Guantanamo Bay
Photos. Faces of Guantanamo Detainees. Part one.
Photos. Faces of Guantanamo Detainees. Part two.
Photos. Detainees held in Afghanistan.
Eyeballing
Comprehensive overview of base using Google Maps, official photographs. Details structures, uses and topography of naval base.
Camp America, Camp Delta, Camp V and Administrative & Court building.
Camp X-ray and construction of later detention camps.
Associated Press
Images of facilities and interiors of various detention blocks and camps.
Stars & Stripes “The Independent News Source for the U.S. Military Community”
Work at Guantanamo
Education at Guantanamo
Recreation at Guantanamo
Artistic Turns
David Hicks. Virtual Guantanamo Cell
Penny Byrne. Porcelain Guantanamo Detainee Figurines
Gregor Schneider. 21 Cells, Bondi Beach, Australia
Legofesto. Guantanamo reconfigured with Lego men and Lego pieces and Wired Interview
Flickr – Protest Images
Amnesty International. Guantanamo Protests
Various Photographers. 100 Days to Close Guantanamo and End Torture.
James M. Thorne. Protest images.
Miscellaneous Media
Prisoners of War. 2004 article by the San Francisco Gray Panthers with images of US airforce transporting detainees and early 2003 images of Camp X-Ray.
BBC. Life in a Guantanamo Cell
Rendition. Photographer Unknown
© Cesar Vera
Guantanamo Bay Navel Base with a New Commander-in-Chief. Photographer Unknown. http://www.obamalouverture.com/f39/guantanamo-bay-switch-bush-photo-obama.html
The standard issue of clothing, sleeping mat, food, sandles, canteen, soap, and buckets for detainees of Camp X-Ray is pictured in Camp X-Ray at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2002. © Tomas van Houtryve/AP Photo
CUBA. Guantanamo Bay. 2003. Soldiers wait for their meals before a prayer breakfast at Camp America. Photo: Bruce Gilden/Magnum
Penny Byrne Guantanamo Bay Souvenirs 2007, vintage figurines, metal chains, epoxy resin, plastic, re-touching medium, powder pigments, 14 x 32 x 10 cm.
Photo: Jon McClean. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonmclean/410055117/
IF YOU HAVE ANY RESOURCES TO SUGGEST,
PLEASE CONTACT ME AND I’LL ADD THEM TO THIS LIST.
I started Wednesday Words last week to throw out some brief and wise writings on prisons. I’ve got Winston Churchill, Charles Darrow and David Ramsbottom lying in wait. But they must all hold fire because I am taking the podium this week.
I have just unsubscribed from Getty’s Photoblog. Having it filter through my reader next to thoughtful and (in most cases) non-commercial blogs it became plainly obvious Getty are pandering to their audience. The result is a bland regurgitation of celebrity imagery. I guess this is what their audience wants. GettyBlog is watery gruel compared to the rest of the blogophotobiosphere.
My conclusion: Getty is effectively held captive by their audience.
Apparently, Getty Blog’s readership wants about 60 or 70% of Getty’s narrative to be about young, famous women and their clothing choices. Well, I don’t.
This minor alteration to my daily visual feed came a day after I read Confessions of a Former Online Producer, a candid piece by Jake Ellison;
During my last year at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in its last year as a newspaper, I published online thousands of pictures of half-starved, mostly naked women – celebrities and fashion models. I even became so deranged as to argue vehemently in the newsroom that those photos were necessary because we were a dying industry and people wanted to look at those women, so get on board.
The Seattle PostGlobe is an all volunteer, blog-reporting venture made up of many former Seattle Post Intelligencer journalists. The P-I went under a couple of months ago and the PostGlobe is simultaeneously a service to the now one paper Emerald City, a boredom evasion technique, experiment in new-journalism and an acknowledged unsustainable economic model. For all those reasons I love it, support it and endorse it.
I’d tweet its stories more often but the PostGlobe’s URLs are 142 characters long!
Note: This one’s off topic, but I’ll be coming back with prison related visual critique sooner than you can say “Jack Lemon”.
The Computer History museum in Mountain View, California. Credit: David Glover
How do museums and galleries use online media to promote themselves?
I have been required to think about “The Museum” and it’s engagement with public and web2.0 audiences recently. If you look about you’ll find really good uses and catastrophic uses of web2.0 by museums and galleries alike. I don’t want to beat up on small galleries for their ill-advised, tweeting non-personas nor criticise lackadaisical irregular blog posting; both of these activities are for the intern. I’d really complain if I thought someone was getting paid to stumble through blog posts and ideas after a full day educating outreach audiences.
I do think the MoMA and San Francisco MoMA are fair game though.
Let’s start with the good.
MoMA: A delicate, understated film-short, with good production values. Some might argue it’s over sentimental and panders to arty self obsessions, but the MoMA is the beacon of an art world, art market and art-as-brand that has Western obsessions about the object at its core. I’ll allow it to veil this truth and remould it as individual yearning.
Click on the image below to view the video at The Contact Sheet blog.
Still from MoMA's promotional video "I See"
And now, to the bad.
SFMoMA: Apparently inspired by the White House launch of Obama coverage on Flickr, the San Francisco MoMA launched its own stalking eye upon director Neal Benezra. They call it Director Cam.
Benezra at press preview, being interviewed by Don Sanchez for ABC7, in the SFMoMA rooftop sculpture garden.
Now, I am all for transparency, informality, familiarity and all that, and, to be fair, SFMoMA has done this reasonably well with its other Flickr sets (although I’d prefer less high-society party coverage and more high-school outreach coverage).
However, Director Cam just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t want to see the privileged folk of the museum-world lording over its institutions, I want to see public audiences getting knee deep in collections & archives and mixing it up a bit. I want to see Flickr used as a means to entice people into the museum not as a mirror for already existing (and exclusive) engagements.
Neal talking with Exhibitions Design Manager / Chief Preparator Kent Roberts. With Chuck Schwab, chairman of the board of trustees (center) and Catherine Kuuskraa (right). In the background on the left wall you can just slightly see the new bridge commission, by Rosana Castrillo-Diaz.
BLDGBLOG (via Twitter) this week called for an alternative narrative of the built environment.
As I understood this, it is a theoretical proposal that would include interviews and testimonies of electricians, security guards and the fixers that keep the nuts and bolts in place while arty self-obsessed types flit about amid well-maintained frameworks.
After the white-collar fraudulent dismantling of the city, there is no better time to call for an alternative version of urbanity. A blue-collar city narrative.
With these thoughts looming, it is not Benezra that interests me, rather Kent Roberts, Exhibitions Design Manager and Chief Preparator at SFMoMA. Bring on ‘Museum Preparator Cam’!
All of this throws up more unanswered questions about the role of new media in the operations of museums and galleries. Fortunately, I recently discovered Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 blog which provides some riposte.
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Images. Computer History Museum by David Glover. As well as his Computer History Museum Set, you should check out his Byte Back Set.
Of all the accounts, of all the testimonies, of all the confused interactions, bumbling application of draconian laws – THIS ONE takes the biscuit.
Hammersmith Police Station. Photo Credit: George. http://picasaweb.google.com/george.sapnatech/GeorgeeeeUKTrip04#5124127843534510386
Edward Denison was photographing the Hammersmith Police Station for a book about McMorran & Whitby, one in a series about post-war British architects jointed supported by the Royal Institute of British Architects, The Twentieth Century Society and English Heritage. Denison knew the law:
The laws of this free and democratic country permit members of the public to photograph any building, as long as the photographer is standing on a public right of way when taking the photograph. I know this because a very professional and courteous member of the City of London Police explained it to me when I was photographing its headquarters at 37 Wood Street (completed in 1966) and the extension to the Central Criminal Courts on Old Bailey (completed in 1972), both designed by the architectural firm McMorran & Whitby.
He was also conscious of others’ needs for explanation:
Although I am not legally obliged to do so, as a matter of courtesy I always (if possible) seek to explain what I am doing to the occupants of any building I am photographing before I leave. At Hammersmith, I went to the reception located inside the public entrance, to be met by two quizzical officers.
Denison goes on to explain that the officers told him he couldn’t photograph. He told them he could and they acquiesced with the retort “For now.” Shortly before leaving Denison crossed the road to take a picture of an architectural detail. At this point two officers ran down the street, commanding him to cease photographing and then detained him for 45 minutes despite his full credentials, letters of recommendation and helpful explanation of his project and sponsors. Only after word was received that his name wasn’t on the suspected terroist list was he free to leave, albeit with a completed 5090(X) form.
Busted! Credit: Phil Clements. An example of a 5090(X) form. http://www.flickr.com/photos/71492355@N00/3151511295/in/pool-police_form_5090x/
A little irony is that the architect, McMorran, is Denison’s grandfather. Denison already had architectural plans and elevations in his possession. He knew the building better than any officer inside! Denison is as exasperated as the rest of us with a robotic police force that acts upon its role play training and not the evidence at hand in a particular situation:
But do the police really need to be trained to recognise that in the age of the mobile-phone camera (or indeed Google Earth), a man with a camera, a wide-angle lens and a fold-up bicycle openly taking photographs of a police station makes an unlikely suspect?
From reading Denison’s account, it seems he (like many others) needed to experience harassment to fully comprehend the erosion of civil liberties in the UK; to crystalise the meaning and consequences of the Prevention of Terrorism Act upon the average citizen.
Denison ends with a statement that brings home the difference between his innocuous activities and those of the past:
Real terrorists do what the Irish Republican Army did to McMorran & Whitby’s Central Criminal Court on 8 March 1973, only months after it had been opened – detonate a massive car-bomb right outside what John Betjeman called this “splendid fortress of the law”. The building survived intact. Donald McMorran had designed Hammersmith Police Station to withstand aerial bombardment, in anticipation of another kind of war.
Hammersmith Police Station, together with the plans already in Edward Denison's possession
In the past Hammersmith Police Station has veered from proactive engagement to utter neglect of the public. With officers on the street inconsistently enacting ludicrous law, it seems the Metropolitan police force – as a whole – is as schizophrenic.
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For fun, you can view a 5090(X) forms Set at Flickr.
Torn Shorn, Misc. Set. Courtesy of Least Wanted aka Mark Michaelson. http://www.flickr.com/photos/leastwanted/sets/72157605201939008/
Another nod for Blake Andrews. Although not planned, it is welcome, as I think he tries keeps the blogophotosphere fresh, trying new stuff from his hideout in Portland.
Earlier this week I featured Blake’s Brief History of the U.S. Passport Photograph. An artist/collector with hundreds of Passport and ID Photographs, named Least Wanted, followed up with Blake to get the word out on his sprawling collection.
Also earlier this week, I put up a piece about the JUSTICE Art Installation in Bridewell Police Station, London. Coincidentally, one of the artists for the JUSTICE exhibition exhibition was Mark Michaelson, aka Least Wanted. It seems like a small-internet-triangle-of-providence presented itself this morning and it is up to me to draw the hypotenuese …
Head Gear, Misc. Set. Courtesy of Least Wanted aka Mark Michaelson. http://www.flickr.com/photos/leastwanted/sets/72157605201939008/
Least Wanted collects, groups and displays a huge collection of I.D. photos on Flickr. In addition to passport shots, it includes medical photographs, badge I.D. photos and other documentary ephemera. Prison Photography is interested in the majority of the collection: Mugshots.
Least Wanted’s sets are a mad enough curatorial project to keep me going for months. For now, I’ll just echo Blake’s sentiment and point you in the direction of Michaelson’s epic archive.
Austin Old Timer, Misc. Set. Courtesy of Least Wanted aka Mark Michaelson. http://www.flickr.com/photos/leastwanted/sets/72157605201939008/
The three images used in this article were drawn from Least Wanted’s misc. Set
Blake Andrews says, “Together with the mugshot, the passport snapshot was the earliest application of photography as purely personal identifier.” It’s a good read and you should check it out. My favourite observation was the 1920s transition, “Photos were glued instead of stapled.” Also, is that Indiana Jones?…
“One Million Finnish Passports”, 1995. One million replicated Finnish passports, glass, 800 x 800 x 80 cm. Installation view: Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. Artist: Alfredo Jaar, courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.
I’ve been thinking a lot about mugshots recently and how prison photography is one little orbit of many about the deathstar of dark-photography. Other orbits include Weegee, Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel (defining the cross over between documentary and fine art) forensic photography, police blotter, thanatourism, civil war hangings, Salgado’s “Beautiful Deathscapes”, lynching photography, Danny Lyon (the most appropriated of artists) and fetishism to name a few.
All of these, by method or subject, relate to the state, and thus more orbits of homeland and foreign surveillance, torture slideshows, death suites, electric chairs, driving licenses, mafia movies, Jenny Holzer and genocide.
The most everyday instance of a photographic collaboration with the state is the passport photo. No more than that. Just thoughts.
Two stories from the British press this week mimicking to two pressing issues of the American justice system – care provision for mentally ill prison populations & exoneration after wrongful conviction.
First off. As the Beeb reports, The Lord Bradley Report has recommended moving mentally ill inmates out of prisons and into alternative care environments. That’s a significant victory for prison mental health reformers, and for the UK public.
The impressive thing Bradley’s report is that he ties the shortcomings of the prison system to provide appropriate mental-health care to wider problematic practices of policing; highlighting in particular the relatively new anti-social behaviour (ASBO) as inflexible and routinely applied. From the BBC,
It is expected to highlight how ASBO and penalty notices can accelerate the treatment of mentally ill people as criminals. Some estimates suggest 70% of inmates have two or more mental disorders
and
In February, Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures revealed that a record 3,906 offenders with mental disorders were being held in secure hospitals in England and Wales at the end of 2007.
'I miss the prison crowds' ... Sean Hodgson. Photograph: David Levene/Guardian
Secondly, The Guardian ran Sean Hodgson’s story about time served on a 27 year wrongful conviction. It also covered the first three days following release and the circumstances of Hodgson and reporter, Aina Edemariam, meeting. Edemariam picked Hodgson up off the street after he’d been clipped by the wing mirror of a passing taxi.
Sean Hodgson has been dealt a shitty hand. He suffers from a long list of serious health problems, his money has run out so he survives on coffee. He is lonely. On a ‘couple of times he has felt so depressed he has called a crisis line. But it was busy, he says. “So I just went to bed.”‘ He has also been stalked by a tabloid photographer.
In the US, The Innocence Project has led the way using DNA evidence to overturn wrongful convictions. I think Britain lawyers’ eyes were opened by the Innocence Project’s legal endeavours. The UK has been slower in it’s use of DNA testing for old cases. Sean Hodgson has served the second longest term for a wrongful conviction in the history of British law. And after doing that time? Well it was an abrupt transition:
Lifers who admit guilt go through a few years of preparation for their release: they are given parole, are able to work outside the prison, to put housing and income in place; they can retreat to the prison whenever the outside world gets too overwhelming. Those who have never admitted their guilt very rarely get parole, and thus receive none of this. So Hodgson was taken immediately to the housing and benefits offices – where it transpired that someone had stolen his identity and he no longer had a national insurance (social security) number, meaning that officially he did not exist. His MP had to intervene to sort that out.
With his brother he had his first pint and cigarette as a free man. Although they had spoken twice a week throughout his incarceration they hadn’t actually seen each other for over 10 years, because, he says, his brother couldn’t afford to travel to the prison. After their drink, his brother went back to his hotel, and the next morning, home, to work a night shift. And then Hodgson was on his own.
And then in some final insult, Hodgson’s compensation from the government, which will take at least a year and for which he must apply!, will pan out like this:
Then, when compensation is finally paid out, the government, unbelievably, docks room and board, or “saved living expenses” calculated on the basis of what a frugal person might have spent on their own upkeep if they were free. “As if you voluntarily popped into the local prison,” says Young, contemptuously. “Yes, it would have cost them something to live – but you’ve taken their liberty. If you can afford £50bn to bail out a bank you can afford to compensate someone for 27 years in prison.” McManus estimates that Hodgson will pay a minimum of £100,000 for the privilege. The appeal was paid for by legal aid, but it does not cover the process of applying for compensation. And so Hodgson will have to pay legal fees too.
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I know it’s quote heavy. I tried to reduce the articles down to their essentials.
David Levene’s photographic work for the Guardian
Permanent for Sean Hodgson article, ‘Freedom? It’s lonely’
Continued Guardian coverage of Sean Hodgson
Prison Photography 
