From ‘Assisted Self-Portraits’ (2002-2005) by Anthony Luvera.
PHOTOGRAPHY’S NOT JUST DEPICTION!
There’s a fascinating discussion to be had at Aperture Gallery this Saturday December 7th. Collaboration – Revisiting the History of Photography curated by Ariella Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, and Susan Meiselas is an effort to draft the first ever timeline of collaborative photographic projects. Items on the timeline have been submitted either by members of the public or uncovered during research by Azoulay, Ewald, Meiselas and grad students from Brown University and RISD.
“The timeline includes close to 100 projects assembled in different clusters,” says the press release. “Each of these projects address a different aspect of collaboration: 1. the intimate “face to face” encounter between photographer and photographed person; 2. collaborations recognized over time; 3. collaboration as the production of alternative and common histories; 4. as a means of creating new potentialities in given political regimes of violence; 5. as a framework for collecting, preserving and studying existing images as a basis for establishing civil archives for unrecognized, endangered or oppressed communities; 6. as a vantage point to reflect on relations of co-laboring that are hidden, denied, compelled, imagined or fake.
Within the gallery space, Ewald and co. will discuss the projects and move images, quotes and archival documents belonging to the projects about the wall “as a large modular desktop.”
The day will create the first iteration of the timeline which will continue to be added to.
“In this project we seek to reconstruct the material, practical and political conditions of collaboration through photography — and of photography — through collaboration,” continues the press release. “We seek ways to foreground – and create – the tension between the collaborative process and the photographic product by reconstructing the participation of others, usually the more *silent* participants. We try to do this through the presentation of a large repertoire of types of collaborations, those which take place at the moment when a photograph is taken, or others that are understood as collaboration only later, when a photograph is reproduced and disseminated, juxtaposed to another, read by others, investigated, explored, preserved, and accumulated in an archive to create a new database.”
I applaud this revisioning of photo-practice; I only wish I was in NYC to join the discussion.
As you know, I celebrate photographers and activists who involve prisoners in the design and production of work. And I’m generally interested in photographers who have long-form discussions with their subjects … to the extent that they are no longer subjects but collaborators instead.
Photographic artists Mark Menjivar, Eliza Gregory, Gemma-Rose Turnbull and Mark Strandquist are just a few socially engaged practitioners/artists who are keen on making connections with people through image-making. They’ve also included me in their recent discussions about community engagement across the medium. I feel there’s a lot of thought currently going into finding practical responses to the old (and boring) dismissals of detached documentary photography, and into finding new methodologies for creating images.
At this point, this post is not much more than a “watch-this-space-post” so just to say, over the coming weeks, it will be interesting to see the first results from the lab. If you’re free Saturday, and in New York, this is a schedule you should pay attention to:
1:00-2:00 – Visit the open-lab + short presentations by Azoulay, Ewald and Meiselas. 2:00-2:45 – Discussion groups, one on each cluster with the participation of one of the research assistant. 2:45-4:00 – Groups’ presenting their thoughts on each grouping. 4:00-4:30 – Coffee! 4:30-6:00 – Open discussion. 6:00 – Reception.
If any of you make it down there and have the chance, please let me know what you think and thought of the day.
A couple of months ago, photographer Cosmin Bumbuț contacted me out of the blue and asked if I’d look over his new book Bumbata. I was aware of Cosmin and his work because of the photography workshop he initiated in Targsor women’s penitentiary in Romania in 2009. However, I was not aware of his long term project documenting life inside a Romanian men’s prison. He made photographs in Aiud Penitentiary between 2005 and 2008.
Bumbata — which is a Romania slang term for “prison” — was awarded the Book Art Object Award at the Romanian National Book Design Awards last month. The book paints a portrait of hard life in prison with variation, colour and curiosity. It is a stunning object; thoughtfully designed and brimming with crisp, images full of intimacy, unexpected interactions and (it sounds strange to say) disarming hope. Bumbata is one of my books of the year. You all should get a copy.
During Romania’s Communist era, Aiud Penitentiary was as a site of subjugation and abuse against political prisoners. Since Romania joined the European Union, conditions in Romanian prisons have improved greatly but the country’s overall prison population is growing.
Scroll down for a Q&A with Bumbuț.
Prison Photography (PP): Congratulations on the book. How did it develop? Did you release any of the images online or have them published in print before the book?
Cosmin Bumbuț (CB): Some of the portraits of prisoners that I shot in 2005 were published in the Romanian edition of Elle Man in 2006. In the same year, I won at the International Photography Awards with these portraits. I have not published the photographs online until now because I wanted to complete the final selection and find the flow of the story. I had 15,000 images and difficulties editing them. I did not like the flow of the pictures from the layout drafts I was working on. The book looked like a classic photo album, but I wanted more. I stopped shooting at Aiud in 2008 but it wasn’t until 2011 that I was satisfied with a selection.
During my last visit at Aiud, I found a file labeled ‘Literary Works of Prisoners’ in the office of the Social Reintegration staff. I read some works on the spot and took pictures of the rest thinking I might use them. I also photographed the prison magazine called Light From The Dark, which at that time was handwritten and stapled in one hard copy.
While I was editing the photos for the 1000th time, I read a text which made me think that prisoners’ texts might be binder for my photos. After this point, it was much simpler. I finished the layout quickly using InDesign which I learned in order to be able to make the design for my own book – the project was really important for me, so I wanted to make the book on my own.
PP: How did the book realise it’s final form?
CB: I printed three copies at Blurb, just so I could film them and try to raise the money for printing through a crowdfunding campaign. After I successfully completed the crowdfunding campaign I realized that I underestimated the printing costs.
CB: Two weeks before the completion of the crowdfunding campaign, I had the idea to make a hole in the cover, a hole that leads to the idea of the eye (sight) of a cell door. I remade the whole layout of the book because of this and I started looking for a printing house that could make this cover. Eventually, I managed this with the help of Atelier Fabrik – great people who never once said “It can’t be done.” The last minute changes of the layout and print cost more money which I paid for from my own pocket.
PP: How do you describe the book to people who have not opened it?
CB: Inside the prison walls, people laugh, play, sing, watch TV, read or write. Prisoners rebuild new homes inside and have created a micro-society with its own rules and functions. Bumbata reveals an intimate perspective of this micro-society. There are libraries, art and theater but many photos are in cells or on the yard.
PP: What’s life like inside Aiud? What sort of rehabilitation programs exist? How are the prisoners’ days occupied?
CB: They are not busy at all. Not all of them are allowed to work or are willing to work, although they are released sooner if they do. Most of them “sit on the room”, as they say, and hang around watching TV or talking. There are not too many volunteers for the activities you are talking about – I met men sentenced to four years of prison who could reduce their conviction with a few months if they would work, but they preferred to lay.
After 2007, when private visits were made law, there was a noticeable difference in mood and spirit. Prisoners were allowed to receive packages from their families; they received better food; they did not have to wear uniforms any longer; and guards were not allowed to beat them.
Once Romania joined the European Union, in 2007, the whole prison system went through major revamp and the biggest reform was to introduce the right to private visits. This means that a prisoner who is married or in a relationship has the right to receive, every three months, a two-hour private visit which takes place in a separate room inside the prison compound. Plus, if a prisoner gets married in detention he or she can spend 48 hours with the spouse in the special room and is allowed visits once a month in the first year of marriage. In such a context I started photographing the first couples to enjoy the new rights inside the Aiud prison.
So, a side project is called Private Visits Room. I have photographed 34 rooms in almost all the Romanian penitentiaries. I do not know yet what am I going to do with this project.
PP: Prisoners are happier then?
CB: They are aware of their rights and this has made them more “courageous” in their relationships with the guards. I am not sure if that is right or wrong. Some of them eat and live better inside a prison than they did in their own homes – they have hot water and warm rooms.
PP: I really enjoyed Hungarian writer Attila Bartis‘ musing on freedom in the introduction to Bumbata. He describes YOU as free; free from expectation, free from dogma of the medium; free to explore. Is he right?
CB: If he describes me that way, he must know something! Atilla writes that I am not “constrained by documentation nor by shocking.” I spent more than three years taking pictures in Aiud and during this time I witnessed all sorts of happy, sad and even absurd events. I tried to get close to the prisoners and to photograph them without any exaggeration, without making them look like monsters or victims, but exactly the way they were: mockers, ostentatious, nostalgic or God-fearing. So in that sense, Attila is right – I was not constrained by documentation nor by shocking. I was free to observe unspectacular everyday life in prison.
Attila and I have been friends since 2010. I met him when I published his photo portfolio in Punctum magazine. I read his novel, Tranquility, all in a breath and after that I wrote to him, telling how much I enjoyed his photographic descriptions. I knew that he was also a very good photographer, so I interviewed him for Punctum magazine.
PP: Can you tell us about Punctum?
CB: I launched Punctum in December 2009 in Romania. Until Punctum, there was no magazine dedicated exclusively to photography in Romania. I wanted to launch a printed magazine because I missed photographs’ consistence and I wanted to educate the public and prove that photography means more than technical information, exposure compensation, shutter and ISO. I found a sponsor who could take care of the contributors’ fees and printing costs. I volunteered my time.
Punctum encouraged diversity and presented different kind of artists: renowned photographers from Romania, but also young students, pictures taken by prisoners from Targsor (the women that attended my workshop), but also portfolios of photographers from New York, Japan, Cuba and Hungary. Additionally, it recovered the history of Romanian photography and published documentaries about photographers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who were hardly known by the public. Each issue presented a photographic portfolio of a famous writer, director, painter or a violinist interested in photography, for example Bartis.
But after five issues (the magazine appeared quarterly with a circulation of 1,000 copies) I realized that I did not have the abilities to sell this magazine and make it profitable. After all, I am just a photographer, not a business man.
PP: Bumbata is of men’s prisons, but you also coordinated workshops in the Targsor women’s prison. Were these projects pursued at the same time?
CB: No, I held the workshop in Targsor women’s prison a year after I finished shooting in Aiud.
In Targsor, I chose six prisoners and I gave each a camera so that they could photograph inside. Of course, I needed special approvals for this. I taught them basic settings and concepts during one visit each week. The workshop lasted for two months. While I was there, I was downloading their pictures and explaining to them how could they improve and what they should shoot the next week.
PP: Did you do a similar workshop with the men in Aiud?
CB: I never held a photo workshop in Aiud. Actually, Ms. Raducanu from the Social Reintegration Department was supportive of the idea, but a workshop needed some special approvals from the National Administration of Prisons.
PP: How long have you been interested in prisons?
CB: Since 2005, when the National Administration of Prisons got in contact with me and offered me access in any Romanian prison. They had seen my photo album Transit. I told them I want to pick only one penitentiary. In order to do that, I visited several and then chose the one in Aiud, which I did for visual reasons: the old cellular system with small detention rooms.
PP: Who helped you secure access?
CB: Dana Cenusa, the spokeswoman of the National Administration of Prisons, helped me and secured my access anywhere inside the prison system.
PP: The guards uniform interests me. Why the balaclava hood?
CB: According to the law, prisoners inside maximum security facilties that are convicted for murder, drug trafficking or cruelty deeds are accompanied everywhere by guards wearing balaclava hoods.
PP: Your work was exhibited and prisoners were escorted to the gallery by guards. What was the event like?
CB: I did not organize the exhibition. An art gallery from the city in collaboration with the penitentiary did so. I was touched by the encounter of the detainees with their families, wives and children.
PP: What are the attitudes toward prison and prisoners in Romania?
CB: Generally speaking, it is a controversial subject. Prisoners or former prisoners are considered the scumbags of the Romanian society. I was often asked what am I doing in the prison – have I not found anything more beautiful to photograph than the prisoners? I think that the bad image of the prisoners inside the Romanian society was one of the reasons why National Administration of Prisons asked me if I want to take photos inside the prisons. Maybe they thought that the fashion photographer in me could rehabilitate the image of the prisoners?!
PP: You explain that the prisoners appreciated the Polaroids and printed photos you gave them. How do you define photographs value within prison?
CB: They all want to send photos of them to their families. Because photo cameras are forbidden inside the prison, the value of a printed photo is priceless. They will be released and they will go back home. Prisoners are afraid of being forgotten – so the photographs helped them to remind their families of their existence.
PP: What were the prisoners expectations of photography and of you making images in their prison? Did they think you’d hit the news or sell images for big money across the globe? What was their understanding of your work?
CB: Some of them understood my work, others did not. They kept asking me what I was going to do with the images and I answered them that I will do an exhibition and, probably, a book. After Elle Man published the photos, I became famous inside the prison. They all wanted to be photographed because they have seen that my pictures were not denigrating them. After that, they trusted me.
PP: What did the staff think of your project?
CB: They wondered why I did not have something better to do with my time and money! But as I had all the approvals from National Administration of Prisons, what could they possible do to me, a mad man?!
PP: You did three years. How did you know when the shooting stage of the project was done?
CB: I wanted to finish with a prisoner’s release, so Pricu’s release ended the project. I knew before that I had come to an end. I felt I had become too visible – all the prisoners knew me and wanted me to photograph them. I could not pass unnoticed anymore. So, I took a break until I found out that Pricu was going to be released. I went to Aiud and spent the last two weeks only with him.
PP: What’s next?
CB: Recently, I won the The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism together with the journalist Elena Stancu and the next year I will travel around the country working on a multimedia project about the culture of education by violence in the Romanian families and society.
PP: Thanks Cosmin and congratulations on the impressive book!
CB: Thank you, Pete
BIOGRAPHY
Cosmin Bumbuț studied at the Faculty of Journalism Bucharest, and later studied photography at the Academy of Theatre and Film. For the last 18 years, Bumbuț has been a freelance photographer. His fashion stories and reportage has been published in Elle, Esquire, Marie Claire, Tabu, Cosmopolitan, FHM, Dilema and Viva! He worked as a photographer for Nottara Theater and Today newspapers. Between 1997-1998 he was a professor at the Academy of Theatre and Film.
Bumbuț has worked on advertising campaigns for Vodafone, ING Bank, Procter&Gamble, Wella, Epson, Coca-Cola Romania, Marriott Hotels and Mercedes-Benz Romania. to name a few. He was awarded The Best Fashion Photographer, Pantene Beauty Awards (2002), The Best Advertising Photo (Ad’Or Festival, 2001) and Best Advertising Photo (AdPrint Festival 1996). In 2006, he won the International Photography Award for a series of photographic portraits of convicts from Aiud Penitentiary.
In 1999, Bumbuț co-founded the photo group 7 Days and organized a series of workshops and photo camps. He co-authored the photographic album 7 Zile – 7 Ani in Maramures “7 Days – 7 Years in Maramures” (Humanitas, 2007). His book Transit (Humanitas, 2002) won the Art Book of the Year Award awarded by the Romanian Publishers’ Association.
Between 2009 and 2010, Bumbuț published Punctum, Romania’s only magazine dedicated solely to art photography. Bumbuț’s photographs have been exhibited in New York, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Thessaloniki, Madrid, Rome, Warsaw and Naples to name a few.
Richard Ross’ Juvenile-In-Justice project of photography and advocacy just keeps on rolling. And it does so with an experimental spirit and real world change.
Juvenile-In-Justice is currently on show at the Ice Box Project Space, part of Crane Arts in Philadelphia. Ice Box — which is in Kensington, one of Philadelphia’s poorest neighbourhoods — will host a free juvenile record expungement clinic on December 3rd.
The expungement clinic — which will be the first of its kind in Pennsylvania — expects to help 150 youth but there is no cut off. “We are going to take all we can and make sure no one is turned away,” says Ross.
Expungement is feasibly open to all youth but the expensive bureaucracy often prevents their ability to move into adulthood without criminal record they acquired as juveniles.
“If not expunged, a juvenile record is often a significant roadblock to employment and other opportunities for these young people. Even when someone takes action to expunge their record, hiring a private lawyer can cost thousands of dollars,” says Ross.
The show demonstrates a laudable cohesion of art and social practice.
“So often art that speaks to social justice issues is simply looked at, provoking brief contemplation among the audience,” says Ross. “While awareness is certainly great, we are turning the gallery into a laboratory for social change: photographic evidence of a problem hangs on the walls, while the people among the art work to alleviate it.”
The expungement clinic is particularly needed in Pennsylvania, state which is bucking the national and effective trends of youth decarceration.
“Pennsylvania is one of only two states in which the incarcerated juvenile population is actually growing,” says Ross.
Ross is quick to point out that this bold project comes about through the efforts of many partner organizations fighting for youth justice in the Philadelphia area, not least inLiquid Art + Design. “Their work, from inception to impact, is truly admirable,” says Ross.
Why should we care about juvenile incarceration? Check out my WIRED article about Ross’ work for some answers. Below, are a few more of Ross’ photographs from Juvenile-In-Justice.
Restraint chair for self-abusive juveniles at the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center in Madison, WI houses 29 children and is usually at full capacity. The average stay for the emotionally and mentally disturbed juveniles, some of which are self-abusive or suicidal, is eight months. Children must be released at age 18, sometimes with no transition options available to them.
Nevada Youth Training Facility, Elko, NV.
“Time out room” at the South Bend Juvenile Correctional Facility, South Bend, IN.
“I photographed intake moments before a director of Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, Downey, CA, had the juveniles sit in erect and proper on the benches – an unnatural positions. This is one of three major centers of the Los Angeles Juvenile confinement system, collectively the largest in the country. The great majority here is populated by Hispanic and African-American juveniles,” says Ross.
The air-conditioning was not working when Ross visited the Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) in New Orleans. There had also been a fight the previous night and as a result, TV, cards and dominoes privileges had been taken away. The OPP, managed by Sheriff Marlin Gusman, houses about 23 juvenile boys. They live two to each cell. The cells at their narrowest measure six feet in width.
Challenge Program, El Paso, TX. “They come in once a day and do a search of my room,” says the 14 Year old girl. “Everything I have in there, EVERYTHING, goes out–including the inside of the mattress and a body search–once a day. It happens anytime. Random. I was arrested for assault against a 13-year-old girl. It’s sort of all right, but it also really sucks. I’m here for Violation of Probation. I was at home with an ankle bracelet. I got mad at my mother and started throwing chairs and cut my ankle bracelet. My Mother works for Rody One industries; my Father lives in Juarez. I just finished starting 8th grade. It’s boring but I like to write poems, and listen to music. One day I might want to work as a Corrections Officer in a prison.”
A 12-year-old in his cell at the Harrison County Juvenile Detention Center in Biloxi, Mississippi. The window has been boarded up from the outside. The facility is operated by Mississippi Security Police, a private company. In 1982, a fire killed 27 prisoners and an ensuing lawsuit against the authorities forced them to reduce their population to maintain an 8:1 inmate to staff ratio.
Screengrab from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s webcam of jail construction.
I always say that I’m open to looking at all types of prison imagery, so I guess I’m obliged to mention the 24-hour coverage of a prison that does not yet exist. (It’s a first for Prison Photography.)
The live feed is “an innovative and exciting way to involve the public,” said Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Rebecca Rosenblatt said.
Slated for a 2015 opening, tax payers can watch the construction of Maple Street Correctional Center in Redwood City. I suppose if you’re forking out $165 million for a jail, you want to see your money being spent?
The truth is this webcam is pitiful reminder of California’s budget woes and political battles over prison management and spending.
There’s an argument that a new jail is necessary due to California’s ongoing “Realignment” — a court-mandated program whereby state prisoners are being transferred to county jails in order to comply with federal orders to reduce the state prison system by approximately 32,000 prisoners.
That decision came about after a decade long legal battle — that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States — ruled that the overcrowding in the California state prison system led to inadequate physical and mental health care and an estimated one preventable death every 10 days. As a result the prison system was deemed “cruel and unusual” in its punishment and is in violation of every single California prisoner’s constitutional rights.
Unfortunately, Governor Brown refused to look at strategic release programs for non-violent offenders, at compassionate release for elderly and terminally ill prisoners or at drug treatment programs to ease overcrowding. Instead, Brown raided the state’s budget surplus — to the tune of $315 million — and will start paying private prison corporations to warehouse prisoners.
Money pouring into new jail construction. The indubitable Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB)report:
“In addition to AB109 realignment money, Sacramento has offered two funding streams that encourage county jail expansion and has refused to offer incentives for thoughtful decarceration. AB 900 authorized $1.2 billion in lease revenue bonds for the construction or expansion of jails, and SB 1022 authorized $500 million for jail expansion. If realignment is to be successful, the state must support counties to reduce their jail populations, rather than making plans to grow them.”
In time, the San Mateo Sheriff’s Office plans to release a time-lapse video of the creation of the 280,000-square-foot jail grow from start to finish.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Selfies recently. Mostly, I’ve been thinking about what useful things I might have to say.
I wrote an extended comment to Marvin Heiferman’s blog post about Selfies. It’s as certain as I can be right now about a form of portraiture that is changing faster than my thinking.
“I cannot accept that Selfies should be dismissed out of hand as a lazy mode of photographic production, as to do so would be a refusal to engage with the way hundreds of millions (of predominantly young) people choose to image the world and their place in it. The Selfie form doesn’t make sense to an adult world as the dominant imperatives of social responsibility and/or artistic merit tied to past discourse about photographic production seem absent. But why should kids step sideways to meet old priorities of the medium when adults could as easily step sideways to meet them where they are?”
I cover a lot more in the (long) comment including: the Selfie as empowerment; the gender disparities in how we judgement and consume Selfies; the best written analysis on Selfies; and why artistic responses to the Selfie might be the most valuable departure points for discussion on the form.
Check out Marvin’s post and have your say about Selfies.
I’ve been stumbling across some mind-blowingly novel prison photographs recently. This incredible Facebook Album by Steve Milanowski fell on my radar and the colour is something special.
Milanowski photographed at three prisons during the eighties — Walpole, Massachusetts (1981, 1982); Ionia, Michigan (1984); and Jackson, Michigan (1985). In 2012, he began shooting the outside of Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin. In each case, Milanowski was working independently and not on assignment.
As colourful and characterful as these images are it’s worth bearing in mind that prisons of this era were beginning to creek. Dangerous overcrowding existed in Michigan prisons in the early eighties, and Jackson in particularly was renowned as a tough prison with gangs and enforced convict codes.
These prison photographs have, up to this point, only had limited circulation. Some feature in Milanowski’s book Duplicity, others on his website. A few photographs have appeared in museum exhibitions around the country. I wanted to know more, so I dropped Steve a line with some questions.
Scroll down for our Q&A.
Prison Photography (PP): Where did your interest in prisons come from?
Steve Milanowski (SM): It dates back to my childhood: my dad was an attorney in Michigan and very occasionally had clients that he had to visit in prison. When I was in 5th and 6th grades, maybe twice, he took me along (taking me out of classes) on the prison/client visits. For a 6th grader, these visits were absolutely unforgettable. Indelible. This was an environment that was utterly foreign to my existence. It was almost as if my eyes weren’t fast enough to take it all in. To a kid, nothing in the world looks like a prison.
PP: What was the purpose of your visits the these four prisons?
SM: Simply to make new photographs in places that have mostly been, in the past, photographed with visual cliche and with the perceived grittiness of black and white films.
PP: How did you gain access?
SM: My first permission was with Walpole in Massachusetts. I sent a letter to the Walpole warden; it was written on MIT stationary. I was a graduate student at MIT and I think the name helped in getting me access. I found that once one gets permission to photograph in a prison — that permission leads to more permission. I used the Walpole photographs in gaining access to Jackson and Ionia prisons. No negotiations were needed; they all gave me fairly easy access. Initially, I only asked for single-visit access.
PP: How would you characterize the atmosphere of the prisons?
SM: The atmosphere was taut, tough and difficult at most turns — very regimented and formal. In some instances, I was assigned a female escort which made my shooting more difficult because the inmates had no hesitation in shouting out awful, obscene things; and, the female escorts seemed bent on proving that they were not bothered or intimidated by these nasty shout-outs.
PP: How does this body of work relate to your other projects and your philosophy/approach to photography generally?
SM: I consider my work to be the work of a portraitist. My prison portraits are stylistically in line with the portrait work that I pursue “out in public” at public demonstrations, holiday parades, festivals, fairs, and competitions.
PP: What were the reactions of the staff to your photography?
SM: I never really sought out their reactions. My photographs did seem to always successfully get me more access though.
PP: What were the reactions of the prisoners?
SM: Never really got reactions, per se. But with each portrait, I offered a free print if they wrote me a request and visually described themselves; some inmates wrote back and praised the images. Some seemed to want to start a pen pal relationship, just because, it seemed, some inmates had few contacts with the outside world.
PP: What is your personal opinion of prisons? Have they changed since you visited in the eighties?
SM: Prisons, then and now, in America, seem to continue to be warehouses; I think most Americans are aware of the fact that we, as a nation, have one of the largest prison populations in the world — and that we incarcerate at a level that far exceeds almost all other nations.
Have prisons changed? One change I’ve noticed with great concern is the concept and use of Supermax prisons which seems to be uniquely American. With older prisons as well as Supermax prisons, we seem to never be willing to spend much money on reducing recidivism.
The conservative right loves to convey the idea that they are tough on crime — tough prisons, tough sentencing, and the idea of “throw away the key.” So, our prison populations grow, and we build more prisons than any other nation. We’ve seen the expansion. And the Democrats? They do their best to avoid being tagged as “soft on crime.”
PP: What are Americans’ feeling toward crime and punishment?
SM: Americans very much ignore prisons and prison life — unless they live near a prison where the prison is the source of some level of local employment. Americans seem to only take notice of prisons when there is a problem, an escape, a prison disturbance (that receives national media attention), or when there is some breakdown in the system.
There seems to be a real void in political or community leadership especially in the realm of education as a path to reducing crime and reducing prison populations; the idea gets plenty of lip service.
PP: What role has photography in telling publics about prisons? Is it an effective tool?
SM: I think photography can help — and be an effective tool in informing the public about prisons and who inhabits American prisons; but, I’m not sure at all that our society wants to look at prisons and prison life … its too easy to ignore.
PP: What camera and film did you use?
SM: 4×5 Linhof and 4×5 Kodak and Fuji color negative. Sometimes a Pentax 6×7 with Fuji and Kodak color negative film. And, always combining flash with ambient light.
PP: The color you introduce is unusual for prison photographs. From looking at your other work, it is clear you revel in colour portraits. Were you aware that you were making unique images; splashing color all over these darkened corners of US society?
SM: Unique images? Well you have hit on something that was a primary intention: I wanted to make photographs that told you something new. Pictures you hadn’t seen before. Prison photography is rife with cliches. I thought if I were given access to prisons, I’d make different photographs. I was not arrogant about this — just determined to make images that had not been seen before.
I was determined, self-directed and wanted to get as many photographs as I could accomplish in, typically, a 1 to 2 hour visit. I limited my talk and conversations — I was on a mission.
BIOGRAPHY
Steve Milanowski is a photographer and, with Bob Tarte, co-author of Duplicity, a monograph of his own portraits. Milanowski earned his BFA from The Cranbrook Academy of Art and his MS from The Creative Photography Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His photographs are part of the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, The Houstin Museum of Fine Arts, The High Museum of Art, and The Polaroid Collection and numerous public collections. MoMA published his work in Celebrations and Animals; his work was also included in MoMA’s recent survey of late 20th century photography in the newly reinstalled Edward Steichen galleries.
The project runs “a year-long practicum at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School that trains law students in the art of visual advocacy — making effective arguments through film.”
I’d think being a law graduate and then a real world lawyer would be enough; one expects visual journalists or documentarians to have this sort of territory covered. Perhaps not? Never too many advocates or concerned observers, right?
Q: Why should law students learn visual advocacy?
A: Visual and digital technologies have transformed the practice of law. Lawyers are using videos to present evidence, closing arguments, and victim-impact statements; advocates are making viral videos to advance public education campaigns; and scholars are debating ideas in a multimedia blogosphere. Everyone’s doing it. But no one is really teaching it — or reflecting upon it. We see training in visual advocacy — effectively evaluating and making arguments through videos and images — as a vital part of our legal education.
Of the films the VLP has produced The Worst Of The Worst is of particular interest to me. One can be lax and think that solitary confinement is a brutal practice prevalent only in California, New York, Illinois and other large states, but every state has at least one SuperMax including the seemingly genteel Connecticut.
The Worst of the Worst takes us inside Northern Correctional Institution, CT’s sole supermax prison, and includes interviews with a range of experts and administrators are interwoven with the stories of inmates and correctional officers who spend their days within the walls of Northern.
From the trailer, the treatment of the correctional officers and prisoners seems sympathetic. This gives me hope; it suggests the problem is the fabric of the facility which prohibits rehabilitation, rather than a presumption of fault or inadequacy. Prisons are toxic and often inflexible enough to capitalise on the potential of people who are caged and work within.
Screengrab from LOCK EM UP! Juvenile Injustice at Rikers Island Prison
Often, people don’t want to read an article, seek out a book, or even browse photographs about American prisons. Myself included, at times. Often, you just want to crawl up on the sofa and watch real life difficult issues on screen.
Often, I am asked if I have seen a famous prison film. Often one of the ones on this list. Often, I have and more often I am at pains to say that dramatisations — no matter how they refer to real life events — are not real life events. I like to refer people to documentaries about American prisons that have been made in the past forty years. Most on this list have been made in the past decade. Together they paint a picture very different to that in the (Hollywood) movies. There’s no WWII Germans, no mid-20th-century tyrant wardens, no Sly Stallone or Pelé.
In this list you’ll find petty grievances, coercive tactics, routine frustration, difficult truths, repeated lose-lose scenarios, intractable prison violence in overcrowded facilities and the constant games of submission, power and suspicion.
I’ve included them with annotated links because hopefully these videos — just as I hope with photographs — may offer you entry into these daily and virtually-invisible abuses.
THE LIST (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
ONE
Nick Broomfield’s Tattooed Tears (1979: 85 minutes)remains an uncomfortable classic. It was filmed in the early days of youth lock up in California. The California Youth Authority (CYA) made the mistake of treating its juvenile detention facilities as adult prisons and its wards as incorrigible criminals. Since the film was made the youth prison population bloated to over 11,000 and 10 facilities before the courts ruled the system needed to be completely restructured. The system has been renamed the California Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) and now runs only three facilities for about 1,200 boys. The shrinkage was the largest single system process of decarceration in U.S. history. Criticism of the long hours of lockdown, suicide and violence continue.
The “soundtrack” to Tattooed Tears is the constant hooping and hollering and banging of heavy doors and furniture. There’s a dispute between staff (in remarkably casual dress) and a young man about food. One prisoner refuses to be subjected to a search and so is taken to an x-ray machine for a rectum-scan in another building. The exchange is cagey and about not losing face. The x-ray shows the prisoner had no concealed weapons and the question is why would he go through all that dark theater? Well, what else was he going to do that night? The protracted exchange was about refusal to cede the power over ones own body – the little power one retains as a prisoner.
There are so many pointed observations about the perversity of institutionalized life; the military boot-camp style training in the yard seems facile, the parole board hearing will have you crying; the bro-down restraint technique training among the staff is strangely light-hearted, the exchange between a female counsellor and a boy about his hallucinations is tense and sad. The closing scene of a yelling preacher is madness embodied.
Broomfield filmed for 14 weeks. He and his small staff slept in the adjoining hospital. The juvenile prison “got to him” and the constant racket left him feeling it was a space in which “nothing sensitive can happen.”
While LOCK EM UP! Juvenile Injustice at Rikers Island Prison makes very questionable use of footage of violence in adult facilities that confuses — and perhaps manipulates — the viewer, it presents one of the most recent and serious cases of institutional failure. The film covers the physical lay-out of the dormitories, interviews with young men who’ve been locked up and focuses on the horrendous 2008 death of Christopher Robinson. Robinson was a beaten to death because he reportedly did not fall in line with “The Program” an alleged gang structure that the Rikers’ authorities failed to address.
Tragically, Robinson was only inside Rikers because he had stayed at work too late, broke curfew and was in violation of his probation. It’s a stand out case of a needless death. The film ends with 4 minutes of statistics outlining the disproportionate number of minorities in the NY juvenile detention system.
THREE
Here’s a “two-fer.” Spaced six years apart, Louis Theroux has made a couple of documentaries about two highly-populated and highly-pressurised institutions. In Behind Bars, a documentary about San Quentin Prison, Theroux speaks to guards, trouble makers, white racists, and a transgendered prisoner called Deborah Lee Worledge (who Robert Gumpert photographed in the San Francisco Jails shortly before her death in 2008).
Despite the clickbait title, MegaJail (2011, 120 minutes) is a lesson in how a facility should not be run. Miami’s main jail has many pretrial detainees and a high turn over of prisoner. With overcrowding comes violence and coercion.
In both documentaries, Theroux interviews perpetrators and potential victims of violence and prison staff. He does so with his usual slightly-bumbling and disarming demeanour. At times, the attitudes he encounters are almost unbelievable.
FOUR
Within the five fold increase of the U.S. prison population over the past 35 years, the number of women in prison has increased eightfold. This is due to longer sentencing and many women being sentenced for conspiracy or possession under extended War On Drugs legislation.
Mothers Of Bedford looks at the support offered through the Children’s Center at Bedford Hills Prison, which is New York State’s maximum security women’s facility.
The House I Live In, the much publicised and toured film about the economic and moral failure of the War on Drugs by director Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Reagan, Freakonomics) is a punch in the gut for those that think racial inequality is a small problem in America’s criminal justice systems. The War on Drugs has been a war on poor people and mostly a war on minority communities.
The House I Live In is a documentary fusion of the ideas forwarded by Michelle Alexander scholarship and David Simon’s dramatizations. Simon appears in the film and describes the assault on poor communities of colour as a “holocaust in slow motion.”
Finally, hats of to Al Jazeera for putting together this excellent primer on the California womens prison crisis.
SEVEN
Herman Wallace died on October 4th, 2013. Against the state’s wishes, a judge ordered his release on compassionate grounds 3 days prior to his death from cancer. One of the Angola 3 and one of America’s most well-known political prisoners, Wallace lived in solitary confinement for 41 years.
Despite the brutalization of body and mind, Wallace somehow stayed sane and fought for a retrial with allies inside and out. From his 6×9 cell, he was asked by artist Jackie Summell to imagine his dream house. Herman’s House (and here) documents Wallace’s and Summell’s longterm collaboration and through this one story shines a light on the issue of widespread and abusive use of solitary confinement in the U.S.
A family member of a prison guard — whose murder was controversially pegged on Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King — states in the film that she doesn’t think they are guilty. It’s an opinion that has long been held by the activists and legal scholars who’ve looked at the inadequate process that sent the three men into longterm solitary confinement.
NINE
Another film invested in describing forgiveness in difficult circumstances, Unlikely Friends goes inside San Quentin Prison to explore how families of crime victims and prisoners can build a positive future out of very unfortunate circumstances.
Often the idea of forgiveness is the reserve of religion, but its embrace must be central to social justice if we are to progress from medieval retribution within our criminal justice systems. This is a film designed to challenge all your preconceptions.
Wrongful conviction brings persistent shame upon any criminal justice system which makes claim to effective and neutral application of the law. Mistakes and injustices occur and they are most grave in cases of death sentences. The film-series One For Ten derives its name from the statistic that 1 in 10 death penalty sentences are passed down on innocent persons.
Over five weeks in April and May of 2013, a team of four traveled the width of the US and interviewed ten individuals who had been freed from death row. Each film profiles a major issue in wrongful convictions highlighted through an individual case.
You can check out all the first hand testimonies of exonerees here. Above, I’ve embedded John Thompson’s film. Thompson was a victim of prosecutorial misconduct in which the prosecutor illegally withheld evidence from the court that would’ve proved Thompson’s innocence. Since his release after serving 14 years, Thompson has gone on to found Resurrection After Exoneration, been a Open Society Fellow and campaigned for accountability among state prosecutors.
ELEVEN
Director Matthew Pillischer began Broken On All Sidesas a way to explore, educate about, and advocate change around the overcrowding of the Philadelphia county jail system. The documentary fast became an analysis of mass incarceration across the nation and the intersection of race and poverty within criminal justice.
Broken On All Sidescenters around the theory that mass incarceration has become “The New Jim Crow.” That is, since the rise of the drug war and the explosion of the prison population, and because discretion within the system allows for arrest and prosecution of people of color at alarmingly higher rates than whites, prisons and criminal penalties have become a new version of Jim Crow. People of color have been targeted at significantly higher rates for stops, searches, arrests, prosecution, and harsher sentences. So, where does this leave criminal justice?
The feature-length documentary is available for activists and educators to use in order to raise consciousness and organize for change. If your school, workplace or organization wants to host a screening, you can contact the director.
TWELVE
Originally aired in , the UK Channel 4’s Torture: America’s Brutal Prisons is a convincing argument to say that Abu Ghraib was not just an outlying aberration on foreign soil. Rather the Abu Ghraib abuses were the logically outcome of carceral philosophies grown here in the U.S. Two of the senior guards at Abu Ghraib, Ivan L. (Chip) Frederick II and Charles Graner, had careers in Utah as correctional officers.
We were “fortunate” to witness and condemn the Abu Ghraib abuses, but perhaps our analysis didn’t go far enough. Imperialism exists here at home.
Conceived by photojournalist Susan Madden Lankford (on Prison Photographyhere) of Humane Exposures and directed by award-winning director Alan Swyer, It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing features interviews with more than 25 experts in the fields of law enforcement, law, politics, life training, addiction treatment, and childhood development. Nonviolent offenders who have turned their lives around after successfully completing remediation and literacy programs are featured as well.
The film ushers the audience through facilities with proven track records for changing the lives of both juvenile and adult offenders. The film asks why funding for multiagency complex solutions to feasible reentry programs are so difficult to put in place by California’s legislature. The question is even more pressing given the state’s overcrowded prisons and the proven reduction in recidivism well-designed reentry programs deliver.
The emergence of prison yoga and prison transcendental meditation programs may point to a trend for eastern philosophy in U.S. prisons. Dhamma Brothersdocumentsthe first extended Vipassana retreat in a North American maximum-security prison.
The Vipassana retreat is an emotionally and physically demanding program of silent meditation lasting ten days and requiring 100 hours of meditation.
FIFTEEN
Produced by Oprah Winfrey and narrated by Forest Whitaker, Serving Life documents Angola Prison’s hospice in which prisoners care for dying fellow prisoners. Louisiana has ridiculously harsh, long sentences and far too many Life Without Parole sentences. As a result, 85-90% of the men imprisoned at Angola will die there. Imprisoning the elderly is an expensive and foolish proposition — in all states, the average age of the prisoner is increasing.
In photography, this is an institution that Lori Waselchuk expertly documented in her project Grace Before Dying, which incorporated an education program, traveling exhibition and excellent book.
Shot over a six-month period in Iowa State Penitentiary, Prison Terminal tells the story of the final months in the life of a terminally ill prisoner, Jack Hall and the hospice volunteers, they themselves prisoners, who care for him. It provides a poignant account of how the hospice experience can profoundly touch even the forgotten and often maligned lives of prisoners.
Certainly one of the most unexpected narratives in the list, Sweethearts Of The Prison Rodeo tells of female prisoners preparations and competing in an Oklahoma prison rodeo, in 2007.
Since 1940, the Oklahoma State Penitentiary has held an annual ‘Prison Rodeo.’ In 2006, female prisoners were allowed to participate for the first time. Oklahaoma has the highest female incarceration rate in the country. The women share common experiences such as broken homes, drug abuse and alienation from their children.
Prison Rodeo’s used to be common. One still exists at Angola Prison in Louisiana. They are exploitative gladiatorial spectacles. Some prisoners and prison officials will say it brings variety, money-earning potential, momentary hero-worship to prisoners lives, but I’d argue esteem and productivity can be earned in ways other than placing men and women at serious physical risk.
There remains a strange irony in the romantic intrigue we have with a population of people that we’ve systematically closed off from society and largely ignored. Before making this documentary, we were mostly informed by the cultural lore of prison through film and music such as Cool Hand Luke, Stir Crazy, and Folsom Prison Blues. […] A gained sense of humanity for the offenders became a guiding theme in telling their stories. […] We’d like to use this documentary to help recognize the lives of prisoners and those re-integrating into society. Through prison and public screenings, community forums and an outreach plan, we’d like to create grassroots dialogue to improve awareness of issues and create opportunities. In addition, Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo is establishing a Scholarship for inmates attending college while incarcerated.
EIGHTEEN
The Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia has been working tirelessly for three decades to unite the city’s many constituencies. One of the taller orders is to unite the prison population with the outside world, but in Concrete, Steel & Paintwe see just how that is possible — specifically the bringing together of prisoners (people who’ve been convicted of crime) with victims of crime.
The Mural Arts Program is about restorative justice. In other words, by expanding the scope of activities beyond mere punishment and by opening up unlikely conversations and shared activities, every individual effected by a (violent) crime can find a voice, be heard and hopefully find some closure, or at least new means to move on with life. The stakes are high but the rewards potentially huge. But, it takes courage. See what happens when you bring victims and perpetrators of crime together to explore healing, social justice and even forgiveness.
NINETEEN
What I Want My Words To Do To You follows the four years that Eve Ensler worked with women from Bedford Hills Prison, NY, on creative writing.
Ensler staged performances of their writing in the free world, but crucially took the performance into Bedford Hills. Ensler enlisted superstars Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez and others, but the real stars of the program are the women who give so much of themselves to each other, to their writing and to us the audience. Very emotional.
TWENTY
The 1980 rebellion at New Mexico State Penitentiary was not defined by politics as prison uprisings before or since. It has been defined as unadulterated violence as New Mexico Penitentiary describes.
The institution was a powder keg and its overcrowded conditions deplorable. On the night the 36-hour riot began, only 12 guards watched over more than 1,100+ prisoners. It was relatively straight forward for the prisoners to take the prison. During the day-and-a-half they had control, retribution torture and killings were carried out on prisoners identified as informants. The last 20 minutes of this documentary explain graphically what went on. Interviews with former guards, captured guards and prisoners involved in the riot make this an authoritative account.
TWENTY ONE
Of course a Herzog-treatment of Texas, the death penalty and questions of existence and humanity would make the list: Into The Abyss.
The thousands of men and women who have been executed by the U.S. have likely grappled with the strange confluence of justice, self, healing, vengeance, correction and murder that factor into their execution. None, until now, had Werner Herzog to connect the dots for them.
TWENTY TWO
There are many tragic abuses dispatched in the US prison industrial complex. The inability to care for old people behind bars is one of the more awful ones. Al Jazeera’s Dying Inside: Elderly In Prison reveals how patients suffer and die and the system limps along. Our moral standing as a society disintegrates with it.
It is morally repugnant that we neglect infirm people, especially when it is frequently the obscenely long sentences we’ve handed down that mean pensioners
TWENTY THREE
How were five children convicted of gang rape when there were no witnesses, alibis in place, and zero DNA evidence? Racism that’s how.
Ken Burns’ Central Park Five delves into the public hysteria, the baiting for so-called-justice, widespread prosecutorial misconduct and the inability of the courts, the press and the public to see they were collectively framing these young teens. Even more relevant today sadly, with Trump as the bully-in-chief. If he had had his way, these five (now free) men would all have been killed years ago.
BONUS MATERIAL
I’m a lover of primary source material so C-SPAN’s unedited reel from filming at Sing Sing Prison, NY, in 1997 is a rare treat. Multiple people who live and work at Sing Sing are interviewed including the prison chaplain says, “prison religion is one piece of the survival kit.” What an interesting turn of phrase? Religion as a tactic rather than a spiritual choice. Or at best, religion as a coping mechanism. Religion — which is treated with much skepticism in liberal America — as a naive bandaid.
IF YOU DO PREFER DRAMATISATIONS
Seek out Un Prophete (about French prison) and Carandiru (about the infamous, now-demolished Brazilian prison of the same name).
WHAT DID I MISS?
Any other documentaries about U.S. prisons you recommend? Leave them in the comments section below.
Prison Photography 