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Photojournalism

Portraits of Invisible Men

A photographer’s year at Angola Prison.

Photo Essay by Adam Shemper

Fri March 6, 2009 1:38 PM PST

A prisoner hoeing weeds at the edge of a wheat field in the Louisiana State Penitentiary once asked me: What are you doing here? If he were a free man with a camera, he said, he would be somewhere else—out of the blazing summer sun, far from this 18,000-acre prison on former plantation land.

I heard the same question often through the year I spent photographing at Angola. I answered that I’d come to make their largely invisible world visible to the outside. I said I wanted to document daily life in the prison and to represent them as individuals, 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. I felt the suffering that ran like a stream through their lives to others—family members, victims—in the outside world. And I hoped that somehow, my images would show them not as part of some desolate hell hidden in a bend of the Mississippi River, but as part of a social fabric, however rent, that includes us all.

9 Comments | Post Comment

PRISONS IN AMERICA

Submitted by Hosea (not verified) on April 6, 2009 - 5:45am.

the South is America truth, the way this country really treats people of my color, with total disdain for "equal rights and justice". I live in the red state of Missouri, at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Rush Limbaugh was born here. When I ask will America offer my people "the American dream", share the wealth of freedom.

Angola pictures

Submitted by John (not verified) on April 21, 2009 - 6:54am.

tagged as:

solution

With all due respect to Adam Shempers considerable talent a number of photo essays on life in prison have been done. Prison is where criminals end up. Most are crowded, dangerous, under (and poorly) staffed, old, and full of uneducated minorities. A photo essay on HOW and WHY these men - and women become criminals is a photo essay that should be done. Kids born out of wedlock, in poverty, poor education, no strong parental figures, gang membership, drugs, poor role models, et al produces most of the criminals in America. As a film maker I've shot in prisons, on the street, gone on police patrols, and been in ghettos and youth camps. I was filming the police on a late night patrol when they picked up a 12 year old black child carrying a car battery he'd stolen. No one from his family would come to the police station to address the issue. To me, this is the beginning of a life of crime and and a photo essay thats needed.

John, you nailed it. It is

Submitted by luke_warm_fusion (not verified) on August 26, 2009 - 4:45pm.

John, you nailed it. It is easy to take a bunch of mornful pictures in prison. They are supposed to be depressing places. Heck, if you've spent any time near one, you are glad we have them! The great injustice is not how we treat prisoners, it's how we won't spend dime one to prevent at risk kids from becoming prisoners, then we'll drop all sorts of cash into locking them up later.

The actuality of the US

Submitted by justinhubbard (not verified) on August 30, 2009 - 1:15pm.

The actuality of the US carceral state is that prisons are made up largely of our nation's poorest, not 'minorities.' According to a mid-year report by the USDOJ in 2007, 35% of male prisoners were Black, roughly 33% were white, and 18% were Hispanic. In that same report, white and Hispanic men and white women were the groups that most grew in size from 2000 until the midyear report in 2007.

This is not a problem of 'lack of parental figure' or 'gang membership,' as these all point to some degeneracy in the social interactions of both people of color and those imprisoned in poverty. If you say that these are problems that can be addressed as preventative measures, then you must ask what has caused the dilemma of unwedded pregnancies, etc. This is not to say that these same groups exercise no agency, but when left with a limited field of choice, people will choose the one most advantageous to their perceived well-being. As long as a socio-political-economic system operates that excludes whole communities, crime will persist. What is the solution?

The beginning of answering this question means enacting social-welfare reform that addresses centuries of disenfranchisement by investing in schools, housing, and healthcare. Rather than throwing social and political capital behind being 'tough on crime,' the real target is abolishing a state of affairs that validates increased police patrolling and prisons. According to the California Progress Report: "The vast majority of prison admissions are inmates being returned from parole because of new offenses or parole violations: In 2004, over two-thirds (67%) of admissions were prisoners being returned to prison. " The success of prisons is completely overstated, given such statistics. Looking to end crime will not be found by simply moving the ghetto and putting walls around it, as the geographic dislocation of communities is the carceral logic. This also alludes to parallel activities across the US of gentrifying entire cities, whereby social problems are not solved, they are simply moved by redlining neighborhoods and raising rents to such heights that poor populations no longer have access to affordable housing.

Imprisoned for what they were compelled to do.

Submitted by Georgeo57 (not verified) on May 12, 2009 - 10:24pm.

Life is replete with illusions. For example, it appears to us so clear that our world is completely still, and motionless. Yet the truth is that our Earth hurtles around the Sun at a speed of over 670,000 miles per hour. In psychology, an accepted understanding is that our heredity and our past experiences (nature and nurture) cause our behavior, leaving no room for a human free will. In physics, an accepted understanding is that everything happens as a result of either causality (cause and effect) or randomness, again leaving no room for a human free will.

A tragedy we all must bear is that prisoners, as have been we all, were compelled by forces completely beyond their control to commit the crimes that brought them to prison. Whether it was bad genes, bad parenting, lack of education, an unruly unconscious, a racist society, or a combination of such and/or other influences, the truth is that those prisoners are as lacking in free will, and therefore as innocent, as the saintliest among us.

Life is unfair in that way. I pray that if an afterlife awaits us, it will not be similarly unfair, and that all humankind will share a common place of love and joy. I wonder how much longer humanity will suffer the delusion that we human beings act according to a "free" will, independent of the influences that, in reality, compel our every thought. I wonder how much longer our equally compelled ignorance of this profound but simple truth will compel us to afflict ourselves with guilt and each other with blame.

http://www.a1z3.com

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on August 12, 2009 - 4:49am.

tagged as:

solution
result

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/شاتنك/شات/دردشة/شاتنك/شاتنك/افلام/اغانى/منتديات/منتدى

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Thank You for your work. It

Submitted by alice (not verified) on September 8, 2009 - 9:55pm.

Thank You for your work. It is astonishing that we're not outraged enough on the disparate number of minorities imprisoned in the U.S..

thank you for this

Submitted by zelena (not verified) on November 1, 2009 - 3:32pm.

I'm a resident of Baton Rouge, LA. My father, who is originally from Mississippi, often goes fishing in the lake that is located on the Angola property. Women are not allowed. Growing up in the area, there is a lot to be pondered. We often hear stories about Angola but no one has ever seen the inside although many of their family members are caged inside with no hope of being released.

The incarceration rates of minority individuals as a cycle is seen most obviously in places like Louisiana - places where the standard of education is lower than it should be and the standard of living is low as well. Doing documentaries and writing articles are fine but it's the lives and the stories of these men - looked at objectively as well as thoroughly (the binding tape being the cycle that they have been involuntarily a part of)- that will make a difference.

Angola within itself is a great example of how the prison industry is turning into a commercial industry. Majority, if not all, of the things produced within those walls are used to sell to the outside so as to maintain the prison, economically. And this, from my understanding, is aside from the government allowances.

Thank you for this photography essay - I, myself, am a young photographer and this inspires me to delve deep into the human experience that, although I may find it commonplace as well as disturbing, needs to be portrayed in some medium to bring attention to it.

Thank you.

اسلوب موقع شبكة

Submitted by عالم حواء (not verified) on November 13, 2009 - 4:59am.

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Explore: Photo Essay

Package Root

Sarah Palin, Tito the Builder, and Me

I have a cameo appearance in an important scene in the Palin book. Guess what? She didn't get it exactly right.

Afghanistan's Firebrand

Former Afghani parliament member Malalai Joya on warlords, women's rights, and failed US policy in her homeland.

GM's Rainforest Racket

In Brazil, people with some of the world's smallest carbon footprints are being displaced—so their forests can become offsets for SUVs.

Portraits of Invisible Men

A photographer’s year at Angola Prison.

PRISONS IN AMERICA

Angola pictures

John, you nailed it. It is

The actuality of the US

Imprisoned for what they were compelled to do.

http://www.a1z3.com

Thank You for your work. It

thank you for this

اسلوب موقع شبكة

From Russia, With Fear

A secret community of Chechen refugees.

Who Shot Rock & Roll

Behind a generation's iconic images.

Meadowlands

The swamp between New Jersey and New York City.

The Anime Within

Are you fact or fiction?