The images and art works that make up this exhibition - mostly vernacular and documentary photographs, but also one artist’s book and a series of image transfers onto prison soap - restore dignity to their subjects by restoring nuance to their stories.Ĭhandra McCormick, “Young Man, Angola Prison” (2013) (courtesy the artist) If prisons ban certain texts for what their narratives might inspire in readers, cameras are also banned and thus prevent prisoners from telling their own visual stories.

But as a New York Times report on the regulation noted, the keeping of books and knowledge from inmates, and in particular black Americans (who make up 49% of New York’s state prison population), has a history that runs back to the 1971 Attica uprising, and even further to the days of slavery.ĭeborah Luster’s stunning portraits of inmates at Louisiana’s State Penitentiary in Angola, built on the land of former slave plantations, make up the nucleus of Aperture Foundation’s exhibition Prison Nation and connect directly to this history of slavery, imprisonment, and censorship. When news spread earlier this year that New York would implement an expanded ban on books available to inmates in state prisons, the story seemed a fresh blow to the state of American prisons. Cover of Aperture magazine, Spring 2018, “Prison Nation”

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