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© Kate Peters
Here we are at the end of the first week of 2016. How’s it going so far? I spent the holidays lying in, reading stuff and watching my team Liverpool at silly hours of the morning. When at my desk, I was putting together a series of year end proclamations for Vantage.
It was a marathon, and by marathon I mean a six-parter. Still, that was more than 10,000 words and scores of images.
Part 1: The Best Nature Photos of 2015
Part 2: The Best Photobooks of 2015
Part 3: The Best San Francisco Street Photographer of 2015
Part 4: The Best Portraiture of 2015
Part 5: The Best GIFs of 2015
Part 6: The Best Photography Exhibition of 2015
Are these actually the best of the year? Are these the most watertight objective statements? Of course not, and I admit as much in the pieces. What they are though is my strongest arguments as to why these projects and ideas are more relevant, caring (even), fruitful and connecting.
Put your feet up. Have a glance.
© Thomas Roma
© Alan Powdrill
© Troy Holden
© Suzanne Opton
© Thomas Roma
© Vicente Paredes
Book cover of Vicente Paredes’ Pony Congo
© Brandon Tauszik
© Sara Terry + Mariam X
© Troy Holden
‘Claudia. 4 years’ © Julia Schönstädt
Statement of Being by Julia Schönstädt is a series of portraits and interviews with prisoners in Germany. According to Fotografia Magazine — which is running a series of six portraits currently — Schönstädt’s aim is “to dispel the stigma of the criminal and simply make the subject human.”
Schönstädt has worked with subjects of different age, gender, race and criminal prosecution. Some are sympathetic characters, others less so. Three women in their fifties are addicted to drugs; two see it as a problem, the other not. Harry is only 23 and doesn’t really seem to care if he goes back to prison or not. Then there’s the older guys who seem to be reforming themselves or aging out the game.
Most of the statements are insightful and honest. For example, when asked if prison helps people, Claudia (above) weighs her owns needs against those of others. There was positives for Claudia in the mere fact she was forced to come off drugs, but she accepts without that small mercy, prison is roundly a tough, tough place for most:
I know that I was in a personal situation where prison gave me space to breathe at first. If I would be torn out of my normal life now, and that can happen to anyone, that they get falsely accused, I would probably find that very traumatic. You are very helpless. You have very few possibilities to influence or shape things. You are completely dependent on the good will and concession of the officers. And part of it is also always luck, depending on what kind of people you will be put together with, and the groups that form. I think for a person who isn’t in an emergency situation as I was in, this is very dark.”
In every case, Schönstädt does a good job of revealing the interviewee. I suspect the excerpts are taken from longer conversations allowing Schönstädt to focus on the meat of the message. It’s a well-made project. But I am not without criticisms.
Schönstädt asks “Are You Ready To Listen?” but the query “Are You Ready To Look?” seems as appropriate.
Within in her presentation of both text and image, Schönstädt’s question seems to sideline the importance of the image . (This is not to say that we cannot conceive of a metaphor of “listening” to images, but for the purposes of my argument, I think it’s useful if think of listening as something related to written, read and spoken words.)
The question elevates the words of her subjects. Great. I’m all for portrait sitters having a platform to speak in their own voice. But I get the sense that here photography is used as filler and that the B&W portraits behave as illustration to the words, and as supplement. This is, of course, sad. We know photography can do many things and, I believe, it can be an activating agent in a project. In a purported photography project such as Statement of Being it absolutely must be activating.
But are we ready to look? When I do and inspect Schönstädt’s portraits I’m left wanting. They’re flat.
‘Volkert, 13 years’ © Julia Schönstädt
Now, we all know how difficult it is to make a good portrait, but these are so tightly cropped and made monochrome, I feel like I’m looking at a really earnest effort by an artist to depict someone, as opposed to looking at that someone. Schönstädt’s politics are aligned with mine and her use of multiple media is praiseworthy, but I don’t feel she has managed to do what great photography does, which is to get out the way of itself. Proximity doesn’t always mean intimacy.
I wonder if Schönstädt made the decision to get close so that she could remove evidence of the prison environment from her pictures? To give her subjects best chance at presenting as a person first and not as a criminal as default? I understand the urge but it’s not necessarily a solution. Nor is it necessarily a problem. For example, Robert Gumpert has used B&W imagery but drawn back and made the most of sterile pods in the San Francisco jail system to make compelling portraits. In short, I’d like to see more variation in Schönstädt’s portraiture.
‘Oliver, Life Sentence’ © Julia Schönstädt
I’m currently writing an essay “How To Photographs Prisoners Without Shaming Them.’ Most of the essay focuses on pairing photography with other media. In some bodies of prison portraiture it is either stated or obvious that the photographer collaborated with the subject over the composition and presentation. Given that Schönstädt’s portraits are identical in direction, I wonder if this was the case?
I am not saying Schönstädt doesn’t respect her subjects the opposite is clearly the case, but photography is more about the viewer than the practitioner and we must always be aware of existing stereotypes and prejudices when making photographs. The audiences’ reaction trumps the author’s intent. The audience’s reception is what defines a work ultimately.
Take the above image of Oliver as an example. Some might read his face as mischievous. Others, no doubt, will read it as menacing and devilish. I don’t think the appearance of a sinister looking male helps win sympathy. This is tragic for a project which is wholly sympathetic to the prison population.
Oliver speaks frankly and sensibly:
I became violent very early on. First there were money-related crimes starting at 7 or 8 years old. Violence came a bit later, but when I was 7 or 8 years old I stole and so on. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I was 22 that I was held responsible for the first time.
It really struck me that something wasn’t right with me or with my story when a great deal of my family passed away – my grandfather, grandmother, and father [after being imprisoned]. I was married then and my wife divorced me. She stayed with me for 5 years but then she got to a point where she couldn’t take it anymore. And all that lead me to think something isn’t quite right here. Then I went to see a psychiatrist and got even more reasons to think about everything.
I had relatively little empathy for people, that’s just the way I grew up. I was raised in a violent environment. But that doesn’t mean that I was consciously punished by being beaten, more in a way you would also train a pitbull. […] I didn’t feel like that was something that wasn’t okay. I experienced my childhood as something really nice. Only through a person from the outside, I realised that it wasn’t all that normal, the way I grew up. And through realising that, I was able to reflect much better.
Oliver is in full grasp of his antisocial behaviour and has made steps in therapy to address it. He’s locked down for life but trying to improve himself. He is not devilish. How do I know this? Again because of Schönstädt’s keen efforts. Listen to Oliver speak in the video below and ask if the mood and personality of his still portrait tallies with that of the video portrait. Are we ready to look?
San Pedro Prison in La Paz, Bolivia is a singular type of prison. It accepts tourists. It also attracts professional photographers. For me, the story of San Pedro has always been the sporadic schedules of guided tours within the prison. First they are on, then they are off.
The very existence of images made by free-wheeling tourists tells us a lot more about the administration’s attitude to security, social priorities and moneymaking than the visit of any single photographer. One might presume that a professional photographer’s visit would be a rare thing … if it wasn’t for the thousands of photographs made by amateurs.
Still, I like very much a few of Giovanni Cobianchi‘s portraits in his San Pedro Limbo series.
If these images from San Pedro interest you, consider looking at Toby BInder’s work I featured earlier this year in Photos of Infamous Bolivian Prison Go Beyond Common Tourist Snaps
David Adler has been collecting prisoner made portraiture since 2006.
Adler’s work is very similar to Alyse Emdur‘s Prison Landscapes (readers will know Emdur is a favourite of mine.) But in fact, Adler and Emdur approach the visual culture and the act of collecting the photos very differently. I’ll be publishing an interview with Adler shortly, but to summarise, Emdur is thinking about social justice whereas Adler is thinking about the economics of the system. Both consider the painted backdrops as significant contributions to American artistic production.
Adler thinks of his work as a theoretically infinite, open-source project, that anyone could take on. Conversely, Emdur considers her presentations as collaboration with each of her subjects.
More to come.
Meanwhile, if you’re in NYC, Adler’s exhibition Prisoner Fantasies: Photos from the Inside is showing at the Clocktower Gallery in Lower Manhattan, until the end of August. Also, you can read a brief interview with Adler, by Harry Cheadle for VICE.
[Yes, the visual similarity between this post and the last was intentional.]
In 2005, Alyse Emdur unearthed a photograph (above) of her visiting her older brother in prison. She recalls, even as a 5 year old, her confusion and discomfit with the tropical beach scene to her back.
To Alyse, these garishly coloured corners of the prison visiting rooms are analogous with commercial photo portrait studios, “If you weren’t familiar with prisons, you might think these were prom photos or made in community centres. They’re very ambiguous,” says Alyse.
Fascinated by the obscure and closeted mural works in prisons across the U.S., Alyse meditated upon them in her MFA grad show (she even commissioned a prison artist to paint a mural on parachute canvas). She is now bringing hundreds of authentic American prison visiting room portraits from her Prison Landscapes project together in a book to be released later this year.
Alyse contacted over 300 prisoners via prison penpal and dating websites. Just over 150 agreed to be part of the project.
In the past, I’ve argued that visiting room portraits may constitute the largest type of American vernacular photography not seen by the majority public. I’ve also noted how companies will manipulate these portraits and, at the request of the owner, photoshop out the prison environment. Photoshop “services” such as these are the post-production equivalent of the denial existent in the original works.
If these idyllic landscapes are about escape it might not just be in an emotional sense, “They are a security feature,” says Alyse. “The backdrops are there to control the type of imagery that is being exported out of the institution. To be specific, the administration doesn’t want images of the inside of the prison to circulate outside of the prison because the thinking is that those images could help an inmate escape. That’s what makes these images slippery and interesting; they also create an escape for the poser and for the [family member] who receives the photo.”
How or why does this discussion matter? Well, essentially these are images about control. Cameras are considered a security hazard by prison authorities. Prisoners have no opportunity to self-represent (bar some very exceptional prison photo workshops). After their mugshot, these visiting room portraits are the only chance America’s 2.3 million prisoners have to achieve something that approximates self-representation. These are highly mediated images and they are often a performance that belies the hardship of prison life.
Alyse and I talk about the regionalism of the backdrop murals; the dearth of research on this quirky and hidden aspect of American visual culture; and Alyse notes how the artistry of mural painting is disappearing as acrylic and enamel paint is replaced by large photo-printed screens.
LISTEN TO OUR DISCUSSION ON THE PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY PODBEAN PAGE
Alyse Emdur (b. NJ, USA 1983) works with photography, video, research, social engagement, and drawing. Her work has been exhibited at Printed Matter and the Lambent Foundation in New York; the University of Texas Visual Arts Center in Austin; Bezalel University in Tel Aviv, Israel; the Lab in San Francisco; La Montagne Gallery in Boston; Laura Bartlett Gallery in London, England; Spacibar in Oslo, Norway; In Situ in Paris, France, and Kunststichting Artis in Hertogenbosch, Netherlands.
In Spring 2012, a book of her project Prison Landscapes will be published by Four Corners Books (London).
Download an interview with Niels Van Tomme published in the Fall 2011 Issue of Art Papers Magazine, here (PDF)
Download an excerpt of Prison Landscapes published in Issue 37 of Cabinet Magazine, here (PDF)
Catherine Flynn was sentenced to 6 months at Newcastle City Gaol for the conviction of the crime – stealing money from person. Age (on discharge): 34; Height: 5.1; Hair: Brown; Eyes: Blue; Place of Birth: Ireland; Status: Married.
Courtesy of the Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, there’s an absolutely beautiful set of portraits of criminals from the early 1870s in Newcastle, England.
This incongruous bunch is made up of men and women; young and old. Most have been sentenced to short-terms for theft of items (in most cases) necessary for survival – including boots, trivets, chickens, tobacco, oats, beef, or, in one case, four rabbits.
The portraits, which date from 1871-1873 are posed with much intention. Usually, the sitter rest a forearm on the chair back and sits with clasped hands. Sometimes they grip the lapels of their coat. All eerily poised.
John Richards was convicted of the crime – stealing money from person and was sentenced to 3 months at Newcastle City Gaol. Age (on discharge): 25; Height: 5.5½; Hair: Brown; Eyes: Blue; Place of Birth: Plymouth; Status: Single; Occupation: Hatter
This set of portraits remind me a lot of the well-circulated and well-loved portraits of criminals from the archives of the Police and Justice Museum, Sydney Australia. When I posted about them in January, 2011, I pointed out the obvious fact that they went beyond the sole purpose of identification one expects of police photography; Portraits, Not Mugshots.
When Alec Soth reflected on their quality and his constant search for excellence, he remarked, “I once again wonder why I bother with photography. It seems unfair that an anonymous police photographer can be as good as Avedon and Arbus.” Alien, and teasingly inaccessible, these portraits from Newcastle hold a similar power over the viewer.
In occurs to me, antique photographs allow us to distantly gawp toward ‘the other‘ – and precisely because they are ‘the other’. We can do this with more-or-less impunity and without the ethical problems of objectifying those in the photographs. I presume this is because the people are dead and the era is gone? There’s next-to-no political fallout for lazy interpretation of this century-old ‘other’?
Compare this to the politically fraught task and responsibility of gazing over photographs of other cultures in contemporary society. ‘The other’ is reinforced and made safe by the passing of time. However, ‘the other’ separated not by time, but only by space in our world today is very problematic.
Just something to think about, but not to taint your enjoyment of this dusty, eye-feast of portraiture.
Jane Farrell stole 2 boots and was sentenced to do 10 hard days labour. Age (on discharge): 12; Height: 4.2; Hair: Brown; Eyes: Blue; Place of Birth: Newcastle; Married or single: Single.
Also know as James Darley, at the age of just 16, this young man had been in and out of prison, but on this occasion he was sentenced for 2 months for stealing some shirts. Age:16; Height: 5.0; Hair: Brown; Eyes: Hazel; Place of Birth: Shotley Bridge; Work: Labourer.
MUGSHOTS
Elsewhere on Prison Photography:
In Joliet, Fine Art Photographers Have Got Nothing on Anonymous Inmates
Who Owns the Rights to A Mugshot?
HAT TIP
Thanks to Aaron Guy, curator for the photography collection of The North of England Mining Institute, for the link. Here’s Aaron sharing some of his discoveries [1], [2] in the archives on his personal blog, and here’s his @AaronGuyUK Twitter account.
Dread Scott‘s 2004 Lockdown pairs portraits with audio statements from the prisoners. The stories intend to represent the two million-plus inmates in American prisons. Dread’s belief is that America is defined by its criminal justice system and its incarcerated masses. This is not a position I would query.
Ostensibly, Lockdown is a less confrontational work than his renowned What is the Proper Way to Display the U.S. Flag? (1988) but the strength of the polemic, from which it stems, is no less.
Dread has drawn strong support as well as well-publicised contempt for his art and politics. Even the most respected progressive voices in politics, theory and photography have paused to question the coherence of his work. Dread, I trust, would expect no less than strong reaction to his work.
Among other identifiers, Dread is an avowed Maoist. He has stated, “This is a world where a tiny handful controls the great wealth and knowledge humanity as a whole has created.” In America more than any other ‘developed’ nation this statement applies. Dread’s political statement must be taken as delivered and used as the departure point for this work.
For our interview, I wanted to focus on Dread’s efforts and successes in accessing prisons, drawing testimony and mounting the piece. And to find out why these efforts were necessary.
Q & A
PP: How many prisons/jails did you visit while making Lockdown?
DS: I visited one prison and I went to another where I was turned away at the last minute. I also worked with some youth who had been in the system, but were not locked up at the time I photographed and interviewed them. This is also true of one adult ex-con I worked with.
PP: How many portraits are in the series?
DS: There are eleven that I show. Obviously I took more, but there are eleven that are good. I also would like to expand the project but I have no plans to do this at the moment.
PP: Did you choose the sitters or did they choose you?
DS: In most cases the prison chose them and told them that a photographer wanted to do a project involving prisoners. Then once I met with them I discussed more about the project and most of them wanted to be part of it.
PP: Were there prisoners who were simply not eligible for participation in Lockdown? If so, for what reasons?
DS: I wanted to get a somewhat broad sampling of the prison population. In many respects this was achieved, but because I was unable to work on the project as extensively as I would have liked, some types of prisoners aren’t in the project. For example, I didn’t get to any women’s facilities, any jails and I was not to visit any prisoners on Death Row.
PP: Did you ever photograph a prisoner having had no prior contact or discussion?
DS: Generally this is how the project was done – I would be introduced to them and photograph them in the same day.
PP: Who controlled the length of time you had to introduce your project to, and work with, each of the sitters?
DS: Ultimately, it was the prison that controlled the hours of the visit and how many I would be allowed. But once that was set, I could spend as much or as little time with any one prisoner.
PP: How did you organize yourself and your subjects during the projects as a whole? What forms did the communication take before, during and after the sitting for the photograph?
DS: With rare exception, I wasn’t able to communicate with the prisoners before the photography/interview session. The sessions were very intensive. I generally wasn’t able to spend more than an hour with each prisoner. Often I only had about 40 minutes so the work was done quickly. I would start by discussing what I was trying to do with the project and let them know that I wasn’t working with the prison and in fact that I was a revolutionary and I felt that the whole system was worthless. Which is not what the project was about but I wanted them to know where I was coming from. If after knowing more about me and the project they wanted to participate, we would move forward.
Generally, I would then photograph them and then I would interview them, which in many ways was just a conversation. As a preface to the interview I would say something like “It’s clear that the main requirement to get into jail today is that you be poor and Black or Latino. Who is in jail? I need to learn your story and want to tell it. Many people don’t know. And those that do know, people like you and your family aren’t talking about it enough. I need the truth. What happened? How did you end up here? I want to put faces on the slaves of these prisons, which are like modern day slave ships that don’t float.” Then we did the interview. As for more communication after the session, unfortunately the prison that I was working with made this impossible. I sent photographs of all the prisoners to them and I wrote again thanking them for participating. I never heard back from anyone. What I later learned when I met one of the prisoners when he was on the outside, he said that neither he nor anyone else ever got any photo or letter from me.
PP: How do you deal with impartiality?
DS: I am not impartial. I think that this is an unjust society and has exploitation woven into it’s very fabric – a society where a tiny handful control the wealth and knowledge that humanity as a whole has created. The imprisonment of two million+ people shines a lot of light on the society as a whole. I wanted to bring to light the people that are latterly hidden from society broadly and make a work that presented portraits of these hidden people and brought of out the insights they have about the society that imprisons them. Because these people and there ideas are written out of the popular discourse in society, I think that this project can reveal a lot about the society as a whole. The prisoners express their individual views and don’t necessarily share all of mine, but through the work as a whole, an audience has the opportunity to grapple with a lot about the foundations of this society and see and meet people who have a lot to say about it.
PP: What reasons did each of the inmates have for taking part? Were their reasons opinions that you also held or had previously held?
DS: Many of the prisoners initially met me because it was a break from their daily routine. Some were intrigued by the change and chance to work with some sort of photographer. Most didn’t know much about the project prior to meeting me. But once they met me they mostly decided to participate because they wanted to have both their individual story put out in the world, but also they saw this as a chance to be part of a broader conversation about a country that imprisons over two million people. There was also a small minority who were looking for some angle to shorten their time or hoped I was a vehicle to communicate with people outside.
PP: Did you take many pictures of the same sitter? Did the inmates of each portrait have a say in which print you chose for exhibition?
DS: Yes, I generally took about 20 pictures of each person. Sometimes a few more and occasionally less. Because the prison prevented me from communicating with them, they weren’t able to have any input into the portrait that I used.
PP: James Clifford has said, “Represented voices can be powerful indices of a living people – more so even than photographs, which, however realistic and contemporary, always evoke a certain irreducible past tense.” How important to this piece are the audio tracks; the ‘represented voices’ of the inmates?
The audio is essential. It is as much part of the project as the photographs and I will not exhibit the work without the audio. One thing that I wanted to do with Lockdown is bring the faces, voices and ideas of those who are hidden behind bars in the gallery and museum setting. People throughout society need to see who is imprisoned and know what insights they have in the world. So there is an important level of the ideas. But there is also a question of voice. It is very specific and allows the audience to encounter the prisoners in a much more real and complex way.
PP: Did each inmate prepare a statement or do you edit audio in post-production from single unrehearsed dialogues?
DS: The audio is carefully edited from much longer interviews. The interviews typically were about 30-40 minutes. And the audio in the work uses about 3-6 minute excerpts.
PP: How do you describe the relationship between the collected raw data (first-hand spoken testimony; photographic documentation; a unique name/identity) and the cultural frame you set it in (gallery, public space, political statement)?
DS: The portraits and interviews form the basis for the work but the art, once it is exhibited is just that – art. The art would be inconceivable without the photos and interviews, but they have been selected & edited and assembled to be a coherent work of art.
PP: Does your artistic voice compete with the oral testimonies/voices of the men you photograph?
DS: While the testimonies of the individuals are important as an individual expressions, Lockdown is the opinionated view of its author. I am not mischaracterizing any of the individual stories, but I have put them within the overall meditation on a society that imprisons over two million people that is Lockdown. So my voice dominates on a certain level. The work is really the collective voices and photograph, not the individual stories. It is made up of individuals, but I think that the whole adds up to more than the sum of the parts. It is because of this, the way the work is structured overall, that it is not a “documentary” where one person’s story is next to their photograph and it is about all of the individuals. It is about what they, through the work as a whole, address as a group.
PP: About your work, you have said, “the continuum of history is a recurring theme in many of my works” and therefore inviting comparisons between past and present events. Do you use artistic devices, photographic or otherwise, to assist the viewers with these comparisons?
DS: Yes, but I don’t see the continuum of history as being so foregrounded in this work. Some of my projects will have a lynching paired with police brutality or an electric chair. This isn’t so much the case with this work. Though I did decide to make the portraits black and white which roots somewhat in the past and situates the theme of the work as being tied to a longer history as well as roots the project in a certain photographic tradition.
PP: Are you following a photographic tradition? If so, which elements of past photographic works inform Lockdown. If not, where then should people find their visual cues for reading the photographs?
DS: In making this work, I really appreciated Danny Lyons’ Conversations with the Dead. My project is different but it is on this continuum. Also, Avedon’s In the American West. Again, I’m doing something different. I think Avedon is exoticizing his subjects a bit, but they are really great portraits and he does reveal things about the people he shoots that many outside of the culture don’t know about. Meat packers and guys on oil rigs aren’t often part of Chelsea conversations. Also, Roy DeCarava’s influenced this work. Particularly how he respected many of the people he photographed. As the project is not just a photo project, I drew on other artistic traditions. Actually the text and image work from the 80s has informed me on works like this. I just use audio text rather than written. What I am doing is new, but it wouldn’t exist without these influences.
_______________________________________________________________
Dread Scott works in a range of media including installation, photography, screen printing, video and performance. Dread first received national attention as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1989, President Bush Sr. declared his installation What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag? “disgraceful,” and the entire US Senate denounced the work when they passed legislation to “protect the flag.” As part of the popular effort opposing compulsory patriotism, he, along with three other protesters, burned flags on the steps of the US Capitol. This resulted in a Supreme Court case and a landmark decision.
In 1992, Dread was a fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program. In 1995, he was awarded a Mid Atlantic\National Endowment for the Arts Regional Fellowship in Photography. In 2000, he participated in the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue directed by Anna Deavere Smith at Harvard University. He has been awarded a Mid Atlantic/NEA Regional Fellowship in Photography, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture (2001) and Fellowship in Performance Art/Multi-disciplinary Art (2005), and a Creative Capital Foundation grant. In 2000 he participated in the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue directed by Anna Deavere Smith at Harvard University. That year he also worked on a Special Edition Fellowship at the Lower East Side Printshop.
His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Robert Miller Gallery in New York, Brooklyn Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and the DeBeyerd Center for Contemporary Art in the Netherlands. His public sculptures have been installed at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York and Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota.
In 2008, the Museum of Contemporary African Disporan Art in Brooklyn, NY hosted Dread Scott: Welcome to America.
This interview provides more extensive coverage of Dread Scott’s oeuvre and politics.
Go to Magnum and search “Gilden Guantanamo”. I’m not sure Gilden’s technique could really flourish at the illegal prison but he had a good go.
(From top left, clockwise) 1. Major-General Geoffrey Miller, Commander of Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay, is in charge of the 680 suspected enemy combatants in the camp. 2. Specialist Lily Allison Fitzborgen, a reservist who wants to become a police officer, is one of the guards who watches over the detainees. 3. Surveillance at Camp America. 4. Sergeant guard at a hospital for “enemy combatant” detainees. His name is blacked out so the detainees can’t see it. (Below) Before a prayer breakfast at Camp America.
All photos © Bruce Gilden/Magnum
Prison Photography 