Noorderlicht

Cruel and Unusual

A gripping look behind prison walls

group-exhibition / 18 feb 8 apr 2012

© Araminta de Clermont

Araminta de Clermont

• LIFE AFTER. The Twins: Bless and Kojak

  This series is an exploration into the tattoos, and lives, of members of South Africa’s ‘Numbers’ prison gangs (the 26s, 27s & 28s) after having been released back into society, normally after many years, if not decades, of imprisonment. In jail, the men she photographed are considered to be “Kings”. Once freed, their tattoos stigmatize them as dangerous criminals, obscure their humanity and evoke fear in the general public. Unable to get jobs, many become homeless ‘strollers’, suffering high levels of substance abuse.

  

• LIFE AFTER. Passport (Achmed). 2008

  members of South Africa’s ‘Numbers’ prison gangs (the 26s, 27s & 28s) after having been released back into society, normally after many years, if not decades, of imprisonment. In jail, the men she photographed are considered to be “Kings”. Once freed, their tattoos stigmatize them as dangerous criminals, obscure their humanity and evoke fear in the general public. Unable to get jobs, many become homeless ‘strollers’, suffering high levels of substance abuse.

  

Amy Elkins

• BLACK IS THE DAY, BLACK IS THE NIGHT. 13/32 (Not the Man I Once Was)

  The series conceptually explores masculinity, vulnerabilty and identity through correspondence with men serving life and deathrow sentences in some of the most maximum security prisons in the US. Portrait of a man having thus far served 13 years out of a deathrow sentence, where the ratio of years spent in prison to years alive determined the level of image loss.

  

• BLACK IS THE DAY, BLACK IS THE NIGHT. 19/32 (Not the Man I Once Was)

  The series conceptually explores masculinity, vulnerabilty and identity through correspondence with men serving life and deathrow sentences in some of the most maximum security prisons in the US. This picture is a portrait of a man having thus far served 19 years of a Life without Parole (solitary) sentence where the ratio of years spent in prison to years alive determined the level of image loss.

  

Alyse Emdur

• PRISON LANDSCAPES, 2005-2011

  Prison Landscapes is a collection of over 150 photographs of prison inmates representing themselves in front of visiting room backdrops. Such backdrops, often painted by talented inmates, are used within the prisons as portrait studios. As inmates and their visitors pose for photos in front of these idealized landscapes they pretend, for a brief moment, that they are someplace else. The photographs are given to these visitors as gifts to take home and remember the faces of their loved ones while they are incarcerated.

  

• PRISON LANDSCAPES, 2005-2011

  Prison Landscapes is a collection of over 150 photographs of prison inmates representing themselves in front of visiting room backdrops. Such backdrops, often painted by talented inmates, are used within the prisons as portrait studios. As inmates and their visitors pose for photos in front of these idealized landscapes they pretend, for a brief moment, that they are someplace else. The photographs are given to these visitors as gifts to take home and remember the faces of their loved ones while they are incarcerated.

  

Christiane Feser

• NEIGHBOURHOOD PRISONS

  In Germany, as in most European nations, prisons often lie within towns and cities; European prisons & jails are older than the housing estates and urban developments that, ultimately, came to surround them.

  

• NEIGHBOURHOOD PRISONS

  In Germany, as in most European nations, prisons often lie within towns and cities; European prisons & jails are older than the housing estates and urban developments that, ultimately, came to surround them.

  

Brenda Ann Kenneally

• MONEY POWER RESPECT, PICTURES OF MY NEIGHBORHOOD: ANDY

  Andy eats cereal on the first day of school. While other kids his age are in class, his mother lies in bed, ill from a mixture of crack cocaine and methadone that she is getting to kick her heroine use. She needs to get up and get to the methadone clinic or she won’t be allowed to get her dose for the day. Andy was the tousle-headed street kid who could jump over five people with his bike, turn an abandoned building into a shelter for a dozen wild dogs, and stand toe-to-toe with any of the savvy young drug hustlers that worked the doorway of the corner store with his mother. Now, at 23, Andy him self is the father of a three year old. Andys’ daughter was born while his own mother was in prison and after the five- year anniversary of his father’s death. Andy’s childhood, fraught with intervention from the child welfare agencies and the criminal justice system has been the foundation for his wish to “do better for his own daughter.”

  

• MONEY POWER RESPECT, PICTURES OF MY NEIGHBORHOOD: ANDY

  

Jane Lindsay

• GEMS. Tintypes, cast resin, bottlecaps.

  A gem is small tintype image, around an inch in size, used in the 19th century. Historically the gem was less expensive making it more accessible to purchase. They were made using a camera with special lenses, which created a plate with several images. Gems were used the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. The “Gems” you are looking at, in many ways, are a record of individuals who find themselves in the hands of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department. Each gem is an attempt to recognize the value in every person worthy of basic human rights, regardless of who they are and the severity of the alleged crime. They are a representation of the three hundred people arrested every day in Maricopa County.

  

• GEMS. Tintypes, cast resin, bottlecaps.

  A gem is small tintype image, around an inch in size, used in the 19th century. Historically the gem was less expensive making it more accessible to purchase. They were made using a camera with special lenses, which created a plate with several images. Gems were used the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. The “Gems” you are looking at, in many ways, are a record of individuals who find themselves in the hands of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department. Each gem is an attempt to recognize the value in every person worthy of basic human rights, regardless of who they are and the severity of the alleged crime. They are a representation of the three hundred people arrested every day in Maricopa County.

  

Deborah Luster

• ONE BIG SELF: PRISONERS OF LOUISIANA

  In 1998 photographer Deborah Luster and poet C.D. Wright set out to produce a record of Louisiana's prison population through image and text. One Big Self is a document to ward off forgetting, an opportunity for those inmates to present themselves as they would be seen, bringing what they own or borrow or use: work tools, objects of their making, messages of their choosing, their bodies, themselves. The photographer has been commissioned, in a sense, by the inmates to make portraits for their loved ones—trying to ensure a balance between photograph and subject, to connect the viewer, whether mother, child, friend, or stranger, to the prisoner. The view is inherently personal.

  

• ONE BIG SELF: PRISONERS OF LOUISIANA

  In 1998 photographer Deborah Luster and poet C.D. Wright set out to produce a record of Louisiana's prison population through image and text. One Big Self is a document to ward off forgetting, an opportunity for those inmates to present themselves as they would be seen, bringing what they own or borrow or use: work tools, objects of their making, messages of their choosing, their bodies, themselves. The photographer has been commissioned, in a sense, by the inmates to make portraits for their loved ones—trying to ensure a balance between photograph and subject, to connect the viewer, whether mother, child, friend, or stranger, to the prisoner. The view is inherently personal.

  

Nathalie Mohadjer

• THE DUNGEON, 2009

  In the centre of the vast African continent, there is a constellation of misery. Fetid, isolated, and often illegal, Burundi’s single-cell “cachot” prisons are off the radar of even many of the country’s human rights organisations. Children as young as ten crouch in the reeking dark of these dungeons, sometimes for years, often with no evidence against them, and rarely having seen the inside of a court room. The Burundian constitution states fourteen days as the maximum imprisonment; the reality is a violent miscarriage of any sense of justice. For many prisoners, the only crime they have encountered is that of their imprisonment, and torture at the hands of the police. Arrested for infractions as myriad as sorcery and murder - or in the case of 10 year old Eli-Davide in Cibitoki, for just watching a stranger stealing DVDs - the unlucky pass from the violent hands of the police to the abuses of life under prisoner chiefs.

  

• THE DUNGEON, 2009

  In the centre of the vast African continent, there is a constellation of misery. Fetid, isolated, and of-
  ten illegal, Burundi’s single-cell “cachot” prisons are off the radar of even many of the country’s human rights organisations. Children as young as ten crouch in the reeking dark of these dungeons, sometimes for years, often with no evidence against them, and rarely having seen the inside of a court room. The Burundian constitution states fourteen days as the maximum imprisonment; the reality is a violent miscarriage of any sense of justice. For many prisoners, the only crime they have encountered is that of their imprisonment, and torture at the hands of the police. Arrested for infractions as myriad as sorcery and murder - or in the case of 10 year old Eli-Davide in Cibitoki, for just watching a stranger stealing DVDs - the unlucky pass from the violent hands of the police to the abuses of life under prisoner chiefs.

  

Yana Payusova

• RUSSIAN PRISON SERIES 2003-2005. Son, 2004

  Russian Prison Series was inspired by Payusova’s experience of studying and listening to personal stories of incarcerated teenagers (14-21 year-old boys) at Lebedeva and Kolpino prisons in St. Petersburg. Many of them became the victims of the economic chaos that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union.The work plays with concepts of saintliness, sins, holiness, and martyrdom by drawing on symbolic elements of Russian Christian Orthodox culture. The painted photographs are poetic invitation into the subjects’ life, thoughts, pain and sufferings.Payusova notes that both prison and church cultures are structured by rigid hierarchies and employ secret languages known only to a privileged few. Payusova conflates the two visual systems.“To shock or to insult the viewer is not my intention. I want them to consider what is more important - an icon or: a human life”.

  

• RUSSIAN PRISON SERIES 2003-2005. Eye of Faith

  Russian Prison Series was inspired by Payusova’s experience of studying and listening to personal stories of incarcerated teenagers (14-21 year-old boys) at Lebedeva and Kolpino prisons in St. Petersburg. Many of them became the victims of the economic chaos that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union.
  The work plays with concepts of saintliness, sins, holiness, and martyrdom by drawing on symbolic elements of Russian Christian Orthodox culture. The painted photographs are poetic invitation into the subjects’ life, thoughts, pain and sufferings.
  Payusova notes that both prison and church cultures are structured by rigid hierarchies and employ secret languages known only to a privileged few. Payusova conflates the two visual systems. “To shock or to insult the viewer is not my intention. I want them to consider what is more important - an icon or: a human life”.
  

  

Lizzie Sadin

• CHILDREN BEHIND BARS 1999-2007. Surveillance camera, Black Canyon School, Arizona.

  Video surveillance of solitary confinement cells where young inmates can be held for a week. They are placed there if they display aggressive behavior to either staff or inmates, and also if they attempt suicide.

  

• CHILDREN BEHIND BARS 1999-2007. USA, Boot Camp California.

  How a State treats its prisoners is a good indicator of the quality of its democracy. A society is judged as to how it treats its minors. Too often promiscuity, racketeering and violence reign in the prisons, detention centers and camps, designed specifically to house young children. Too often dignity is violated.Over the course of eight years and in eleven countries - in countries of conflict or peace; in countries with rule-of-law and in non-democratic countries - Sadin depicts the inequalities, injustices and humiliations often suffered by incarcerated children. "I was driven by the idea of providing the public with a view inside these detention centers and of conveying the views of the inmates to the outside world. I wanted to restore dignity to these young people, to break the silence surrounding them and, most importantly, to break their isolation. It is a story destined to bring them out of the shadows."

  

Lori Waselchuk

• GRACE BEFORE DYING. Prison Guard Watches From The Levee, 2007

  A life sentence in Louisiana means life. More than 90% of the 5,300 inmates imprisoned at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola will die behind bars. Until the hospice program was created in 1998, prisoners died mostly alone in the prison hospital. But the nationally recognized program, run by one staff nurse and a team of inmate volunteers, has changed that. Now, a terminally ill inmate is transferred to the hospice ward. Here, inmate volunteers work closely with hospital and security staff to care for the patient. The volunteers, most of whom are serving life sentences themselves, go to great lengths to ensure that their fellow inmate does not die alone. Prison officials say that the program has helped to transform one of the most violent prisons in the South into one of the least violent maximum-security institutions in the United States. Grace Before Dying looks at how, through hospice, inmates assert and affirm their humanity in an environment designed to isolate and punish.

  

• GRACE BEFORE DYING. George Checks Jimmie’s Breathing, 2008

  A life sentence in Louisiana means life. More than 90% of the 5,300 inmates imprisoned at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola will die behind bars. Until the hospice program was created in 1998, prisoners died mostly alone in the prison hospital. But the nationally recognized program, run by one staff nurse and a team of inmate volunteers, has changed that. Now a terminally ill inmate is transferred to the hospice ward. Here, inmate volunteers work closely with hospital and security staff to care for the patient. The volunteers, most of whom are serving life sentences themselves, go to great lengths to ensure that their fellow inmate does not die alone. Prison officials say that the program has helped to transform one of the most violent prisons in the South into one of the least violent maximum-security institutions in the United States. Grace Before Dying looks at how, through hospice, inmates assert and affirm their humanity in an environment designed to isolate and punish.