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This is the third and final post about Photoville. We’ve had the beginning, the middle and so now, the end.
Of the two dozen photographers in the show, only three had actual objects (Sye Williams’ darkroom prints, Jane Lindsay’s bottle caps and Deborah Luster’s tintypes). Given the cost and hassle of shipping, it was decided that the re-used Noorderlicht exhibition prints would not be returned.
I was given instructions to destroy all prints.
It occurs to me that a lot of people don’t talk about this aspect of contemporary exhibition-making. It’s not really sad to see them go, because they never belonged to anyone. They only belonged to the show. And besides, knowing they were to be destroyed, I put most of them up with double sided sticky tape, so there was no preserving them after that ultra-adhesive abuse anyway. Super-strong magnets are hardly kind to bare prints either!
We do plan to travel Cruel and Unusual (make Hester, Noorderlicht and I an offer!) and as such we’ll see shiny versions printed again.
Until then, think on these images of photogaeddon, wanton destruction and image massacre.
David, DJ at the prison radio station holds a Polaroid of him and his wife. He said the picture was taken more than 15 years before, when he was 18 and she was 16 years old. During his hour as DJ he played mostly Gospel and Christian music at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, June 27, 2000.
Photographer, writer and psychotherapist Adam Shemper and I talk about his portraits and photographs from Louisiana State Penitentiary.
LISTEN TO OUR DISCUSSION AT THE PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY PODBEAN PAGE.
At the age of 24, Adam was challenged (almost dared) by a family friend to “experience something real.” The friend offered him an introduction to warden Burl Cain and the test to photograph within Angola Prison.
We all have difficulty putting our work out in the world, and Adam found that after his nine-month stint at Angola he had more questions than answers.
For many years the work remained unpublished and Adam’s own justifications for the work unsteady. We discuss the life-cycle of the photographs, the reactions of the prisoners to Shemper and his work, and generally, the responsibilities of photographers toward their subjects.
In photography, as in life, it is all about relationships and positive connections that benefit all parties.
Victor Jackson, cell block A, upper right, cell #4. He had ‘I Love U Mom,’ tattooed on the inside of his right forearm. Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, April 17, 2000.
LaTroy Clark, cell block A, upper left, cell #6, Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, April 17, 2000
Don Jordan reads the Bible in his cell, Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, April 17, 2000
Jonathan Ennis puts a puzzle together of a farm scene in Ward 2 of the Louisiana State Penitentiary hospice at Angola, March 21, 2000.
A man sleeping during the day in the main prison complex, camp F dormitory, Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, February 1, 2000.
Henry Kimball and Terry Mays in cell block A, upper right section, cell #15, Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, September 6, 2000.
Brian Citrey, main prison, cell block A, upper right, Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, April 17, 2000
Nolan, a prison trustee, standing in front of the lake, where he often spends his days fishing. He caught catfish and shad on this day for the warden and his guests. Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, June 27, 2000.
Man cuts open sacks of vegetables to sort through, Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, June 27, 2000
After chopping weeds in the fields, men wash up as they transition back to their cell blocks at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, April 17, 2000.
Men housed at prison camp C dig a ditch at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, January 31, 2000.
All images © Adam Shemper.
Images may not be reproduced elsewhere on the web or in print without sole permission of the photographer, Adam Shemper.
© Adam Shemper
Photographer: Adam Shemper
Title: ‘In the Wheat Fields, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, Louisiana’
Year: 2000
Print: 9″x9″, B&W on archival paper.
Print PLUS, self-published book, postcard and mixtape – $325 – $BUY NOW
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Another incredibly beautiful and difficult image has been made available for purchase to funders of my Prison Photography on the Road proposed road-trip. This time by photographer and psychotherapist Adam Shemper.
I first discovered Shemper’s work in the Mother Jones feature, Portraits of Invisible Men: A photographer’s year at Angola Prison. Shemper describes how he responded to the frequent question for inmates, “What are you doing here?”
I answered that I’d come to make their largely invisible world visible to the outside. I said I wanted … to reconnect them in a way to a world they had lost. I talked of the prison-industrial complex and the deep-rooted inequalities of the Southern criminal justice system. (Almost 80 percent of the inmates at Angola are African-American and 85 percent of the approximately 5,100 prisoners are serving life sentences.) But as I spoke of injustice, it was obvious I wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t know from their daily lives.
Eventually I stopped trying to explain what I was doing. I simply kept taking pictures.
Chaperoned by a prison official at all times, I visited dormitories, cellblocks, and even the prison hospice. I photographed prisoners laboring in the mattress and broom factories, the license plate plant, the laundry, and in fields of turnips, collard greens and wheat.
BIOGRAPHY
Shemper was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. His images and words have appeared in Time, Mother Jones, Double Take Magazine, The Oxford American, Salon.com, and The San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, The Daily Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan) and The Bund (Shanghai). Selected images from his Sardis Lake series were included in the International Center of Photography’s exhibition, Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (2003). He lives in Sonoma County, California.
Prison Photography 