As regular people

  • Dates
    2016 - 2017
  • Author
  • Topics Portrait, Documentary, Fashion, Social Issues
  • Location Washington, United States

For more than 20 years, much of my work has centered on themes of community. I have turned my camera toward people who lack the freedom and liberties afforded most individuals living in the United States.

These photographs represent inmates from two corrections facilities in Washington State; the Washington Corrections Center, and the Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women. In these photographs the subjects were offered the opportunity to select civilian clothing. Many of the volunteers in this series wrote a paragraph or two about their intentions upon release. Church, family and committing to a drug-free life were the overarching themes found in almost all of their goals. Each were given prints to keep or give to family, or for use in search of a job. The donated clothes are put to good use, given to the soon to be homeless and needier inmates upon their release.

I do not operate on the thesis that the people who fill our prisons are not regular. Rather, I focus on appearance. Incarcerated men and women are generally seen through media images as institutionalized and dehumanized subjects of a punitive system. Typically, they are more extras than actors in prison, wearing the prison costume; portrayed faceless or as silhouettes in a theater of glass, cinder-block and razor wire.

keywords: prison prisoners incarceration justice portrait corrections incarcerated fashion dress

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