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Golf Five Zero watchtower. Crossmaglen, South Armagh, Northern Ireland, UK. © Jonathan Olley.
Last month, I had a jolly nice chat with a jolly nice chap about what all this means at Prison Photography. Where’s this open journal taking me?
I said if I took this whole thing to the academy, it could be as simple as a historic survey: The Uses of Photography to Represent, Control and Surveil Prison, Prisoners and Publics in the United States (1945 – 2010).
I was encouraged to ditch the historical view and engage the modern. Ask myself, why should anyone care about prisons? Only a small minority care now and that status quo has remained for many reasons tied up in the antagonisms of capitalism. Would a historical survey change minds and attitudes or just lay out on paper the distinctions most people have already made between themselves and those in prison?
Perhaps people would care more if the abuse of human rights that exists within the criminal justice system of America were shown to impinge on everyone, not only on those caught in its cogs?*
What if we consider the methods and philosophies of management used by prisons and identify where they overlap with management of citizens in the “free” society. Think corporate parks, protest policing, anti-photography laws, stop and search, street surveillance, wire taps, CCTV.
My contention has always been that there was no moral division or severance of social contract over and through prison walls. For me it’s never been us & them; it is us & others among us put in a particular institution we call prison.
But, now I am seeing also, there is an ever decreasing division of tactics either side of prison walls. Strategies of management and technologies of discipline perfected in prisons have crept into daily routine.
What has this emphasis on containment and of monitoring – at the expense of education and social justice – done to our society and to our expectations of society?
SURVEILLANCE/CCTV IN PHOTOGRAPHY
And now for the tie in with photography…
Thinking about surveillance, obviously we have the big show at Tate from this Summer, Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera with its devoted section to CCTV. (Jonathan Olley‘s work from Northern Ireland is the standout.)
But I always think back to Tom Wichelow‘s series Whitehawk CCTV (1999), possibly because he insists it is not a criticism of CCTV just a look at the politicisation of the human subject viewed through its lens.
Most remarkable in the series is the trio of images of the tragic site of a murder. They reveal to us that looking and bearing witness can be an act of respect as much as that of curiosity as much as an act of control. We are all compelled to look, but some observers are recording the feed and have a disciplinary apparatus to back it up.
Untitled (CCTV footage). Young family visits murder site. Brighton 1999. © Tom Wichelow
Untitled. Friends of murdered boy visit the site. Brighton 1999. © Tom Wichelow
Untitled. Resident reveals murder site outside her bungalow window. Brighton 1999. © Tom Wichelow
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*There’s a simple argument that we all suffer because our tax dollars support a broken system that makes us no safer.
Alfie Brooks (not his real name) is the focus of Amelia Gentleman‘s recent Guardian article. Photographer Tom Wichelow spent 12 months with Alfie documenting his life:
During those 12 months, Alfie was sentenced to eleven days in prison (for stealing 400 balloons). It was his first stay in prison. Alfie intends it to be his only stay in prison. He was bored.
A coffee table at his flat, on which are instructions on how to use the curfew tag he has to wear. © Tom Wichelow
To the journalist, Alfie is simultaneously endearing and frustrating; he delivers pearls of wisdom and then childish logic. More startlingly, sometimes the two are the same – and we, the reader, need to rethink our perceptions and expectations of a younger generation without the same future-oriented behaviours we value and reward.
Alfie is affable and greeted warmly by folk about his hometown. He isn’t violent and has never stolen from an individual, only shops. It is a code he justifies. He has also smoked marijuana for as long as he can’t remember:
AMELIA GENTLEMAN
For me, Gentleman’s piece is not a ground-breaking piece of journalism, but it is unique. It takes the time to look at a young life that could be the norm for more young lives than we’d like to admit. It really spells out for us the drifting uncertainties of life for youth who’ve opted out of formal education, but are still bright, articulate, playful and “clear with ambition”. Gentleman has a fondness and hope for Alfie which is appropriate and understandable.
TOM WICHELOW
Gentleman’s piece is well supplemented by Tom Wichelow’s photo essay, A Year in the Life of Alfie Brooks. His year long study of Alfie is a nice counterpoint to other work in his portfolio, notably his work on CCTV in the Whitehawk housing estate, Brighton, You’ll Never be 16 Again and 2000 portraits.
Prison Photography 