Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration 9780674919228, 067491922X

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MARKING TIME

MARKING TIME ART IN THE AGE OF MASS INCARCERATION

N ICOLE R. F L EET W O O D

H A R VA R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S C A M B R I D G E , M A S­S A­C H U­S E T T S 

L O N D O N , ­E N G L A N D

2020

Copyright © 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in Canada First printing Publication of this book has been supported through the generous provisions of the Maurice and Lula Bradley Smith Memorial Fund. Jacket art: Detail from Pyrrhic Defeat by Mark Loughney Jacket design: Sam Potts 9780674250901 (EPUB) 9780674250918 (MOBI) 9780674250925 (PDF)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: is available from loc.gov ISBN: 978-0-674-91922-8 (cloth)

For Allen, De’Andre, and Eric. For all my relations.

CONTENTS

list of illustrations  ix preface xv a note on method  xxi Introduction  1 1 Carceral Aesthetics: Penal Space, Time, and ­Matter 

21

2 State Goods: Clandestine Practices and Prison Art Collectives  55 3 Captured by the Frame: Photographic Studies of Prisoners  87 4 Interior Subjects: Portraits by Incarcerated Artists  118 5 Fraught Imaginaries: Collaborative Art in Prison  150

6 Resisting Isolation: Art in Solitary Confinement  190 7 Posing in Prison: F ­ amily Photo­graphs, Practices of Belonging, and Carceral Landscapes  231 Conclusion 255 not e s   265 acknowl­e dgments 

297

illustration credits  303 index 307

I L L U S T R AT I O N S

Ronnie Goodman, San Quentin Arts in Corrections Art Studio xxvi James “Yaya” Hough, I Am the Economy 5 James “Yaya” Hough, How Big House Products Make Boxer Shorts 5 Todd (Hyung-­Rae) Tarselli, untitled (chipmunk painting)

9

Muhammad al Ansi, untitled (Alan Kurdi)

11

Gil Batle, Sanctuary 17 Russell Craig, State ID 24 Ndume Olatushani, Winds of Change 35 Eddie Kates, Chain Gang 36 A Southern Chain Gang 36 Tameca Cole, Locked in a Dark Calm 41 Raymond Towler, Passing Time 43 Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, ­Ain’t I a ­Woman 44 Duron Jackson, Rikers Island Jail, NY 49 Stephen Tourlentes, Lucasville, Ohio, State Death House 50 Maria Gaspar, Wretched and Paramount I (Extreme Landscapes Series; Google study of Cook County Jail in Chicago) 51

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Sarah Jane Rhee, “Bomba Con Buya,” at Freedom Square, Day 10 53 Kenneth Reams, Capitalization 61 Daniel McCarthy Clifford, One Ton Ježek from The Leavenworth Proj­ect 63 Dean Gillispie, First Date 67 Dean Gillispie, Spiz’s Dinette 67 Dean Gillispie, Spiz’s Diner 67 Gilberto Rivera, An Institutional Nightmare 77 Jesse Krimes, Apokaluptein 16389067 79 Jesse Krimes, Apokaluptein 16389067: II 81 Jared Owens, Oculus 85 Jared Owens, Ellapsium: master & Helm 86 Unidentified man, Arkansas prison identification photo

95

Callie Brown, Arkansas prison identification photo

95

Sara Bennett, Keila on the Subway, Life After Life in Prison 99 Sara Bennett, Tracy, Life After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Project 99 Zora J Murff, Jerome at 15 101 Deborah Luster, L.C.I.W. St. Gabriel, Louisiana 105 Deborah Luster, E.C.P.P.F. 105 Chandra McCormick, Young Man 108 Dread Scott, Stop 113 Calvin Gorham, Self-­Portrait 114 Michael Moses El, Self-­Portrait with Desi 115 Edward, Portrait of Doris, DeCarrio, and ­Family 119 Cleveland, Portrait of DeCarrio 119 Daniel McCarthy Clifford, Mugs 121 George Anthony Morton, Mars 125

x

I llustrations

Letter from James “Yaya” Hough to Russell Craig with a portrait of Craig’s infant ­daughter

127

Titus Kaphar, The Jerome Proj­ect (My Loss) 131 Jesse Krimes, Purgatory 134 Mark Loughney, Pyrrhic Defeat: A Visual Study of Mass Incarceration 136 Mark Loughney, Pyrrhic Defeat: A Visual Study of Mass Incarceration (detail)

137

Ronnie Goodman, Self-­Portrait with Boots 139 Ronnie Goodman, portrait session at San Quentin State Prison

140

Tyra Patterson, Moon 141 Lisette Oblitas, In Your Eyes 144 James “Yaya” Hough, Portrait of Yaya 145 Russell Craig, Self Portrait 148 Russell Craig, Locks 148 Women of York, Shared Dining 151 Lisette Oblitas, Phyllis Porter Place Setting 153 The Reentry Think Tank, Reentry Bill of Rights, Preamble 156 Printmaking class at San Quentin State Prison

173

DonChristian Jones and Rikers mural students, Staying above the ­Water 177 DonChristian Jones and Rikers mural students, Keep Your Head Up 179 Jerome Washington, drawings for Moth and Light 181 Ron Cauthern, New Monument for Nashville 183 Prison Re­nais­sance, Metropolis 187 Billy Sell, Self-­Portrait 191 Carnell Hunnicutt Sr., Supermax Cell at Northern C.T. 195 Aron “Akili” Castlin and Ricky D. Matthews, An Architect’s Dream 199

I llustrations

xi

Omar Broadway and Douglas Tirola, An Omar Broadway Film 202 Omar Broadway and Douglas Tirola, An Omar Broadway Film 205 Moliere Dimanche Jr., untitled drawing on back of prison form

208

Moliere Dimanche Jr., Black Jesus 208 Moliere Dimanche Jr., Pills and Potion 209 Moliere Dimanche Jr., Tango 209 Ojore Lutalo, Being Persecuted for Po­liti­cal Thoughts 216 Ojore Lutalo, Seeing Is Believing 218 Ojore Lutalo, Torture Chamber 221 Justin Goh for Tamms Year Ten, I AM A MOM with Brenda 227 Laurie Jo Reynolds for Tamms Year Ten, My Picture with Blue Sky (for Roberto) 228 Jessica Posner for Photo Requests from Solitary, Sunset over ­Water (for Geri) 230 Frances and De’Andre

232

Deana Lawson, Mohawk Correctional Fa­cil­i­ty 236 David Adler, Prisoner Fantasies: Photos from the Inside 237 David Adler, Marlo, Prisoner Fantasies: Photos from the Inside 238

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I llustrations

Sharon, Allen, and Eleanor

239

Nicole, Allen, and Sharon

239

Allen, Valentine’s Day portrait

243

Eric, De’Andre, and Nicole

248

Nicole and De’Andre

249

Fleetwood ­daughters

250

Winter holiday greeting card

251

Eleanor, Allen, Nicole, and Sharon

252

Sandy, Eleanor, Allen, Yvonne, Yvette, and Nicole

253

Sable Elyse Smith, C.R.E.A.M. 257 Sable Elyse Smith, BACKBEND 258 Sable Elyse Smith, Avenal 259 Sable Elyse Smith, And ­Here Is a List of Names 260 Sable Elyse Smith, The Body Keeps the Score 263

I llustrations

xiii

P R E FA C E

Incarceration has reshaped my f­amily and my hometown in southwest Ohio. Countless relatives have been arrested and detained; some have been convicted and sentenced, while ­others have been held in­def­initely and then let go. One cousin was held in a county jail for several months without any charges ever being filed. Some of us have been profiled by police and falsely accused of crimes. O ­ thers have been convicted of serious crimes and sentenced to long periods in prison. The same month that I graduated from college, two of my closest cousins w ­ ere convicted and sentenced for involvement in the death of another young man from our community. ­There has never been a time in my life when prison ­didn’t hover as a real and pre­sent threat over us. As a young child, I recall Sunday visits with my mom to see my ­uncle, who was locked away in a prison thirty minutes from our hometown. Looking through files a­ fter my grand­mother passed, I was struck by how many times she had leveraged the modest home she owned in order to bail out a relative. We lived in a mill town that had experienced the woes of factories closing. The ­unionized manufacturing positions that had sustained our working-­class and lower-­middle-­class black community for a c­ ouple of generations w ­ ere no longer available. Studies of mass incarceration and the carceral state offer insightful explanations and historical accounts of what many of us witnessed and experienced in our communities: the mass removal of f­ amily members, neighbors, and friends, along with the permanent stigma on the imprisoned and their families.

xv

As I came of age in the 1980s and early 1990s, p ­ eople around me, mainly young black men but also older ­women and men, ­were being shipped off to prison at such a frequency that their sudden disappearance and long-­term absence became the norm. Boys my age who went to elementary and ju­nior high school with my cousins and me ­were ­there and then gone, some never to return. They w ­ ere invisible to us and hard to reach b ­ ecause of all the mechanisms that the carceral state uses to separate the imprisoned from their families and communities. We had no words to describe the utter devastation, the despair. As prisons rendered more and more ­people invisible, a spectacular visual assault on residents in communities like mine helped to justify mass incarceration. Repre­sen­ta­tion was an essential tool to support tough crime policies and punitive sentencing. Assaultive and dehumanizing images, such as “wanted” posters, arrest photo­graphs, crime-­scene images, and mug shots circulated frequently in local and national media and reinforced the practices of aggressive policing and dominant notions of black criminality. Stories of the rampant devastation of the crack era that portrayed young street dealers as monsters circulated. Opening our local newspaper was often cause for pain and embarrassment, as photo­graphs of ­people we knew in handcuffs ­were all too common; often t­hese w ­ ere images of black ­children and teen­agers, infamously referred to as “superpredators” in the 1990s by journalists and politicians, most notably Hilary Clinton. One of the most well-­known and egregious examples was the use of visual media to portray the so-­called Central Park Five, now known as the Exonerated Five—­five black and Latino teenage boys who w ­ ere falsely accused and convicted of raping a white 1 ­woman—as “a wolf pack.” Such repre­sen­ta­tions sparked fear and animus in the mainstream American public, especially among ­people distant from the communities living u ­ nder the terror of aggressive policing and imprisonment, but also among some ­people who lived in ­those neighborhoods. At the same time, ­there ­were other images being produced about mass incarceration—­images that rarely made the news and had l­ittle or no public circulation. They offered dif­fer­ent narratives of prisons and their impact. T ­ hese ­were not journalistic, scholarly, or l­ egal documents. They w ­ ere a diverse assortment of artworks and illustrations coming from prison: studio photos, handmade greeting cards, drawings, and other pieces of art made by incarcerated ­people. Incarcerated relatives sent home graphite drawings and birthday cards designed by

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P re face

artists in prison. In some prisons, we could take photo­graphs together when we visited our relatives and friends. The visiting rooms where we sat with our imprisoned relatives and friends often displayed paintings, miniatures, and sculptures made by incarcerated ­people. T ­ hese objects ­were not new forms of prison art, but as the size of the prison population boomed, the visual culture of mass incarceration grew along with it. I started working on this book as a way to deal with the grief about so many of my relatives, neighbors, and childhood friends who w ­ ere spending years, de­cades, or life sentences in prison. It was also an effort to connect with o ­ thers who are separated from their loved ones by prisons, parole, policed streets, and other forms of institutional and quotidian vio­lence. I began by displaying photos of incarcerated relatives around my apartment, partly as an attempt to work through my own discomfort with the pictures of them in prison and to bring their presence into my daily life. Then in 2012, Cara Bramson, a former student who at the time was working at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, invited me to give a pre­ sen­ta­tion as part of the center’s public engagement program. It was the first time that I had talked publicly about my incarcerated relatives and the visual rec­ ords of their incarceration: ­family photos, cards, drawings, and paintings on bedsheets. I had been mulling over ­doing a proj­ect on visuality and prisons but was afraid that it would be too emotionally challenging for my f­ amily and me. But a­ fter that first pre­sen­ta­tion, something unexpected happened—­something that would continue to happen over the years of lecturing and d ­ oing research on prison art. ­People came up to me afterward to describe how they ­were directly impacted by prisons, how they had been incarcerated themselves or had loved ones in prison, and about the shame and emotional difficulty of talking about ­these experiences in public. Some shared photos and art that came from prison. This is how the proj­ect grew—by word of mouth and connecting with o ­ thers. I started speaking more frequently at universities, nonprofit centers, and art institutions, in gatherings that w ­ ere often emotionally loaded for the audiences and for me. Afterward, o ­ thers would share, often bringing in examples of art made in prison. College students at elite institutions would reveal to me that they had incarcerated relatives back home. The work that I was ­doing affected my relationships and conversations with f­ amily members, too. My incarcerated relatives put

P re face

xv ii

me in touch with artists, and ­family members outside of prison sent me some of their photo­graphs and artwork. Through t­ hese experiences, I began to build community around our collective pain and survival, the many millions of families impacted by incarceration, the many millions held captive by prisons and other carceral structures. ­These encounters raised my awareness of how deep the pain went, how sorrowful it all felt, how vast the injustice and brutality of imprisonment was. ­Under the grief and rage was a sense of solidarity with ­others who shared the experience of watching their communities devastated by the vari­ous tentacles of what we call mass incarceration, the impact of which goes way beyond prisons. Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration grows out of nine years of researching and archiving visual art and creative practices among incarcerated artists as well as art that responds to mass incarceration. The book draws on multiple sources: interviews, site visits, personal collections, institutional archives, ­family narratives, and the growing scholarship in critical prison studies, black cultural theory, and visual culture. I have traveled to several states to visit with formerly and currently incarcerated artists. I have interviewed over seventy ­people, including imprisoned artists, teachers, nonprofit administrators, prison staff, activists, and the loved ones and relatives of imprisoned p ­ eople. I have visited prisons and nonprofit organ­izations where ­people have generously shared with me and have supported my research. Public programming has been integral to this work—as a way of exhibiting and archiving work that had not been seen publicly, connecting with ­people who have been directly impacted, and learning on the ground. I have or­ga­nized several panels, symposia, and exhibitions on prison art and the visual culture of mass incarceration. In October  2014, while directing the Institute for Research on ­Women (IRW) at Rutgers University, I worked with my colleague Sarah Tobias, associate director of IRW, to develop programming that explored the links between carceral studies, gender, and feminism. We hosted a three-­day conference with 120 participants and an art exhibition at six sites throughout New Brunswick and the Rutgers campus. It was through that experience that I met many of the artists, educators, and activists who appear in this book. In addition, I have collaborated with several artists and organizations to curate vari­ous events, including the Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx, Aperture Foundation, the Eastern State

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Penitentiary Historic Site in Philadelphia, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and Worth Rises. In 2018, I worked with Aperture Foundation as co-­curator and guest editor of Prison Nation, a special issue of Aperture magazine focusing on the role of photography in documenting mass incarceration, accompanied by a traveling exhibit and public programming. This book is a collective effort. Many have contributed to it, and as a result my community has grown. ­People I have come to know introduced me to o ­ thers. A community of po­liti­cally engaged artists and activists disparately impacted by incarceration continues to be fostered. The book has been made pos­si­ble by the transformative vision of freedom, justice, and belonging of an amazing group of currently and formerly incarcerated artists and their loved ones and allies. They inspire me ­every day. Our freedom is interdependent.

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A NOTE ON METHOD

Marking Time began with my meditation on the profound and myriad ways that hyperincarceration has impacted my f­ amily, my hometown, and the many places where I’ve lived (Houston, Oakland, Harlem). I de­cided to share t­ hese experiences and feelings publicly, at universities, art centers, and professional gatherings, and I would loosely structure my talks around images from my ­family’s prison archives. How and what I shared evolved as my community of directly impacted ­people grew and as I became more immersed in the robust scholarship on prisons and carceral studies. With the help of research assistants, I constructed a preliminary database of arts programs in prisons and jails across the country; many of ­these organ­izations participated in the Marking Time conference and exhibition at Rutgers in 2014. As I delved into the research, I chose to focus less on popu­lar media, governmental, and pop culture repre­sen­ta­tions of prisons and t­ hose ware­housed in them and instead to pay careful attention to the visual and creative practices emerging in and as a result of imprisonment. Initially, it was a challenge to get access since I was not formally affiliated with any organ­izations providing art classes. Through the assistance of incarcerated ­people I know, I gained more exposure to creative practices inside prison. Over time, I developed an incredible network of artists (both currently and formerly incarcerated), educators, administrators, attorneys, activists, ­family members, and volunteers whose acts of generosity and support

xxi

facilitated vari­ous kinds of access. T ­ hese contacts led to initial interviews that turned into ongoing conversations and collaboration with many who appear in this book. But the methodology is rooted in practices of care and collective survival among black ­women whom I have learned from my entire life. My aunt Sharon and cousin Cassandra exemplified the practices of care and a steadfast commitment to staying connected with incarcerated loved ones that so many millions of other black ­women have developed and performed historically and continuously. This methodology emerged from my observations of Aunt Sharon and Cassandra spending twenty-­one years consistently visiting and supporting their son and ­brother Allen during his imprisonment. What that entailed for them was laborious, eco­nom­ically extractive, and emotionally taxing. I cannot do justice to their care work in a few sentences or paragraphs. It included paying monthly phone bills, which sometimes amounted to thousands of dollars ­because of the exorbitant rates charged by prison phone vendors, ordering an endless array of goods for Allen, again from exploitive vendors, hiring attorneys to review his case, helping to support his d ­ aughter, who was only a c­ ouple of months old when he went to prison, and journeying at least monthly to wherever he was h ­ oused to sit in a prison visiting room across from him. They did it together. They supported each other. They listened to each other and cried when they needed to. Their work is the daily and fearless labor of black ­women across this nation to sustain intimate and f­ amily ties. This is the foundation of a con­temporary movement of diverse ­people not only to end mass incarceration, but to do away with prisons and caging entirely. One of the challenges of writing this book has been that many currently and formerly incarcerated artists are not in possession of their art, nor do they have documentation of their work or know how and where their art has circulated. For vari­ous reasons that all have to do with the extreme inequalities and exploitation that incarcerated ­people suffer, art made in prison is sent to relatives, traded with fellow prisoners, sold or “gifted” to prison staff, donated to nonprofit organ­izations, and sometimes made for private clients. Unlike artists who work outside prison, who are able to document their creations, incarcerated artists often are unable to photo­graph or make copies of their work. ­There are ­people I interviewed who described their work and practices to me but had nothing to show.

xxii

A N ote on M ethod

In some cases, artists ­were able to send their work to relatives or loved ones. I also received materials from attorneys, art instructors, and nonincarcerated allies who advocate for the arts of p ­ eople in prison. At times, I traveled to locations where the artwork was stored and hired or collaborated with photog­raphers to document it. ­Every step of the way, I was guided by the willingness of o ­ thers to share and to participate. In the case of a few artists, it was very difficult to make contact with them, ­either inside or outside prison. In one case in par­tic­ul­ar, it took me over eigh­teen months to be able to reach a formerly incarcerated artist whose work circulates widely through organ­izations and even news media but who has received l­ ittle remuneration or security as a result of his art and ­labor; he is unhoused. What I learned is that art in prison is a practice of survival, an aesthetic journey that documents time in captivity, a mode of connecting with ­others, but it does not resolve the injustices rooted in the carceral system. This book focuses on the art and aesthetic experiments of p ­ eople imprisoned in the massive labyrinth of domestic jails and prisons in the United States. It explores the creative practices that incarcerated p ­ eople cultivate and the relationships forged through art-­making. I foreground the experiments, experiences, and conceptualization of incarcerated artists in order to pre­sent prison art as central to the con­temporary art world and as a manifestation and critique of the carceral state. Generally when discussing artists, I do not state why an artist was sentenced and imprisoned, ­unless the artist has requested that I include this information or ­these details are primary to their self-­narration. I am not invested in categories of guilt and innocence. Scholars of carceral studies and abolition studies have argued that the proposition of degrees of innocence is perilous b ­ ecause it reproduces carceral logics. When advocates for incarcerated p ­ eople focus on innocence, abolition scholar and activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore writes, it does two t­ hings: First, it establishes as a hard fact that some ­people should be in cages, and only against this desirability or inevitability might some change occur. And it does so by distinguishing degrees of innocence such that ­there are ­people, inevitably, who ­will become permanently not innocent, no ­matter what they do or say. The structure of feeling that shapes the innocence defense narrative is not hard to understand: ­after all, if criminalization is

A N ote on M ethod

xxiii

all about identifying the guilty, within its prevailing logic it’s reasonable to imagine the path to undoing it must be to discover the wrongly condemned.2

At least four of the artists in the book identify as being wrongfully convicted. Two of them have been exonerated by the Ohio Innocence Proj­ect, and two w ­ ere released for time served, negotiated by their attorneys. For each of t­hese artists, their imprisonment for crimes they did not commit propelled their art-­making and their po­liti­cal consciousness and critique of prisons, so I speak of their wrongful conviction, exoneration, or release in this context. My intention is not to play into binaries about good versus bad prisoners, innocent versus guilty ­people, or t­ hose who are deserving of sympathy and recognition versus t­ hose who are not. At the same time, not to acknowledge their claims of innocence and eventual exoneration or release would be to enact another form of vio­lence against ­these artists who have entrusted me with their stories and art.

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A N ote on M ethod

MARKING TIME

Ronnie Goodman, San Quentin Arts in Corrections Art Studio, 2008.

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INTRODUCTION

In Ronnie Goodman’s 2008 painting San Quentin Arts in Corrections Art Studio, the artist is alone at work in a studio. The self-­ portrait locates him inside a cavernous space of multistoried walls and beamed ceilings. We see him in profile, from the knees up, dressed all in blue and bent slightly forward, studying a print. The painting’s ele­ments—­his solo presence, surrounded by stillness, and his relaxed stance, with angled head and paper in hand—­suggest an immersive state of creativity and concentration. On the walls, dwarfing him and above his reach, are portraits, landscape paintings, and still-­ life renditions. It is morning, gauging from the clock ­behind him and the light pouring in through the glass-­block win­dows that run the length of the wall. The details of the workspace—­the light, the height, and the open floor plan—­all suggest an idyllic scene for the creation of art. Goodman’s painting, indeed, references a long tradition of documenting the artist at work in a studio, art class, museum, or other institutional setting, such as Samuel Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre (1831–1833) and Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Studio) (2014). It is an act of self-­invention in which Goodman inserts himself into studio art traditions. Goodman made the painting while he was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison and a participant in the Arts in Corrections workshop run by the William James Association, a nonprofit organ­ization that provides art classes in prisons throughout California. Though the workshop takes place in a prison, t­here are

1

no figures of authority or evidence of punitive captivity immediately vis­ib ­ le in the painting, except for Goodman’s uniform and the surveillance win­dow in the upper left corner: a sign of penal supervision through which correction officers can monitor incarcerated ­people while remaining out of sight. The prison studio, in Goodman’s painting, is a place of imaginative possibility as well as a place constrained by his incarceration and the layered history of the carceral state. He meditates on his status as prisoner and artist—­portraying himself creating in this space while being marked by his prison blues and the invisible surveillance of the prison staff. His painting reflects on the conditions u ­ nder which art is made within prisons while also reimagining the space by curating the wall display inside the painting. He is studying both a work in hand and the space around him. Goodman brings some pieces closer to him, highlighting works that he ­favors. “I kind of rearranged it the way I wanted it on the wall. It ­wasn’t like that arbitrarily. I fixed certain t­ hings the way I wanted it done. I wanted to make sure I had a lot of my stuff. That was the piece I was looking at in my hand. . . . ​I’m drawing my stuff, so you can see, and you can see other p ­ eople’s work I liked that was t­here.”1 He has altered and curated the penal space, positioning portraits of his friends nearby and asserting his vision while being held captive. His repre­sen­ta­tion of the workshop is an act of aesthetic discernment. It also represents a striking contrast to the tiny cells where Goodman and other imprisoned ­people spend the majority of their time. In ­those cells, incarcerated ­people dream, plan, collect material, and make art that often goes undetected by prison authorities and unlicensed by teachers and administrators. Goodman’s self-­portrait foregrounds how the work of art emerges in relation to institutions, be they entities commonly associated with art, like ateliers, conservatories, museums, and galleries, or other institutional sites, like primary schools, subway stations, public streets, and even prisons. The painting is an example of what I call “carceral aesthetics,” which refers to ways of envisioning and crafting art and culture that reflect the conditions of imprisonment. E ­ very year, incarcerated ­people create millions of paintings, drawings, sculptures, greeting cards, collages, and other visual materials that circulate inside prisons; between incarcerated ­people and their loved ones; in private collections of the imprisoned, prison staff, teachers, and o ­ thers; and more recently in public domains and institutions like museums, libraries, hospitals, and universities. Prison art is produced

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MARKING TIME

in a number of ways and for dif­f er­ent audiences: through programs run by prisons, through organ­izations that bring art instruction and ser­vices into prisons, through formal and informal networks of incarcerated p ­ eople who share art and supplies, and through collaborations between incarcerated ­people and nonincarcerated artists, allies, relatives, and friends. The majority of art-­making in prisons takes place in cells and prison hobby shops, where incarcerated p ­ eople improvise and experiment with the numerous constraints ­under which they serve penal time. Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration is about both the centrality of prisons to con­temporary art and culture, and the robust world of art-­making inside US prisons. It emphasizes the aesthetic engagement and knowledge worlds of ­people largely excluded from civic life, art establishments, and public culture—­ people ware­housed in US prisons—through examining art by incarcerated p ­ eople, both solo and in collaboration with nonincarcerated artists, activists, and teachers, practices that explore the expansive reach of the carceral state. The stakes of ­these collaborations across prison bars are the subject of Chapter 5. Prison art practices resist the isolation, exploitation, and dehumanization of carceral facilities. They reconstitute what productivity and ­labor mean in states of captivity, as many of t­hese works entail laborious, time-­consuming, and immersive practices and planning. Art-­making in prison is also impor­tant to consider as part of the larger con­temporary art world, although prison art rarely appears in public galleries or museums. But established art institutions do not reflect the vast amount of art practices in any given era. To consider art by incarcerated p ­ eople as existing outside of art discourses or institutions rehearses the violent erasure of being imprisoned. Like art made in other arenas, prison art exists in relation to economies, power structures governing resources and access, and discourses that legitimate certain works as art and o ­ thers as craft, material object, historical artifact, or trash. Visual art is just one arena of a broader world of cultural production in prisons. Prison lit­er­a­ture, ­music, and theater have received more attention by scholars, writers, and advocates. Writings from prison, like the works of Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Oscar Wilde, Etheridge Knight, Antonio Gramsci, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Jack Henry Abbott, and George Jackson, are taught regularly in university courses. Sharon Luk’s 2018 book, The Life of Paper: Letters and a Poetics of Living beyond Captivity, offers a stunning and rich analy­sis of the significance of letter

I ntroduction

3

correspondence between incarcerated p ­ eople and their loved ones and communities over vari­ous historical moments; she emphasizes the poetics and materiality of letter writing.2 Collections of prison sound recordings have been produced for de­cades, and prison theater has been staged and anthologized. Less attention has been paid to the visual. A notable exception is Phyllis Kornfeld’s Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in Amer­i­ca (1997), an informative dive into art-­making in prisons based on Kornfeld’s years of teaching in vari­ous facilities and states. Kornfeld sets out to focus on art, and not the politics of prison, writing that she leaves that for experts of prison reform.3 I set out to engage the politics of art-­making in prisons, and, more expansively, art as politics in an era of massive ­human caging and ­under other forms of carceral power. How has the colossal reach of the prison industrial complex s­ haped con­temporary art institutions and art-­making? And how does visual art help to reveal the depths and devastation of our nation’s punishment system? Take, for example, the paintings I Am the Economy (2018) and How Big House Products Make Boxer Shorts (2018), by artist James “Yaya” Hough, made while imprisoned in Pennsylvania. In both works, the unclothed body of a black man appears to be fed into a machine operated by a white man in uniform. In I Am the Economy, the other end of the machine churns out dollar bills as the racialized prison population is “harshly and mechanically converted into cash by the prison industrial complex.”4 In How Big House Products Make Boxer Shorts, the captive body produces commodity goods, in this case underpants, that are sold back to incarcerated ­people. The bodies of imprisoned black men in Hough’s paintings fuel prisons by employing p ­ eople like the uniformed white man operating the machine, the vendors who sell commodities, t­hose who profit from the financialization of prisons and carceral facilities, and other networks and entities entangled in carceral governance. Hough’s work visualizes what esteemed scholar and prison abolition activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore describes as the extractive pro­cesses of the prison industrial complex: “Prisons enable money to move ­because of the enforced inactivity of p ­ eople locked in them. It means p ­ eople extracted from communities, and ­people returned to communities but not entitled to be of them, enable the circulation of money on rapid cycles. What’s extracted from the extracted is the resource of life—­time.”5 Hough’s art also echoes the concerns of nonincarcerated conceptual artist Cameron Rowland, whose works explore the extractive

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MARKING TIME

James “Yaya” Hough, I Am the Economy, 2018. Watercolor. ​James “Yaya” Hough, How Big House Products Make Boxer Shorts, 2018. Watercolor.

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and exploitive pro­cesses of black subjugation and confinement u ­ nder racial capitalism. One artist in a prison cell in Pennsylvania, the other in a studio in New York City, unaware of each other, make art that diagnoses the extractive practices of prisons as a continuance of the subjugation of black ­people. Both Hough’s and Rowland’s practices challenge the “inside” and “outside” logic of carcerality. Yet this idea of separation between the incarcerated and the nonincarcerated underpins the rationale of locking p ­ eople up in cages and rendering them invisible as a mea­sure of safety. Through artistic practices and creative communities inside prison, incarcerated artists fight the punitive isolation and severance of relationships that prisons impose. They work to undermine the carceral indexes, meaning the data and rec­ords—­like mug shots—­that mark ­people as criminal and incarcerated subjects, and the stigma of being a prisoner. Prison art is part of the long history of captive ­people envisioning freedom—­ creating art, imagining worlds, and finding ways to resist and survive.

Jared Owens, a formerly incarcerated artist, once described to me the risks involved in experimenting with art while in a federal prison. As an abstract painter, he wanted to make works larger than the canvases permitted. He saw a wood plank that would allow him to stretch a larger canvas. He de­cided to acquire the plank, which meant he would need to avoid detection by prison staff. Owens stated, “That was the longest three yards of my life.” I ­couldn’t shake his words and the significance of the risk-­taking involved in expanding his artistic vision. Had Owens been caught at any step along his three-­yard journey to and from the plank, he could have been thrown in the hole, his sentence extended, and his possessions confiscated. This book curves and weaves around the aesthetic risks, experimentations, and practices of incarcerated p ­ eople who imagine, create, and produce u ­ nder a system of punishment so brutal that most of the nonincarcerated public cannot even conceive of it. I could not have completed this book without Owens and other currently and formerly incarcerated artists being willing to share their experiences of making art, asserting their humanity, and claiming value and meaning while held in punitive captivity. Very often, artists described being locked away and forgotten as an impetus ­behind their art-­making. They have been punished and incapacitated; they have

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been labeled as prob­lems to other p ­ eople, communities, and society at large. Prisons are “catchall solutions to social prob­lems,” writes Gilmore.6 They function not by addressing the poverty, racial and gender oppression, underemployment, despair, and health crises (to name just a few ­factors) that reproduce prison populations but by incapacitating targeted populations and blaming them for the very prob­lems that led to their imprisonment. Incarcerated artists deliberately take the status of being labeled a social prob­lem or failure as the very grounds for their artistic experimentation. Failure amplifies their aesthetic improvisations and the risks they ­will take to produce works and worlds that exceed the prison. When many nonincarcerated p ­ eople think of prison art, images of handicrafts made from Popsicle sticks, illustrations on envelopes, crocheted placemats made from synthetic yarn, and forms of body art, like prison tattoos, come to mind. Shop proj­ects, like wooden jewelry boxes and furniture, are popu­lar in some facilities, as are making signs and murals in cafeterias, hallways, and visiting rooms. T ­ hese are some of the works of incarcerated artists, along with a vast range of other art forms that defy common perceptions of the cultural lives and artistic worlds of imprisoned p ­ eople. Many of them are reflections of the material limitations and scarcity of art supplies inside, constraints that some transform into innovative experiments with found objects, ephemera, and state property. A leaf painting by Todd (Hyung-­Rae) Tarselli animates such possibility. On a browned autumn leaf fallen from a maple tree, he has painted in realistic detail a chipmunk; microstrokes of brown, white, and red render the texture of fur along the animal’s body. The eye of its profiled face shines brightly. ­Behind the chipmunk, Tarselli has painted dark blades of grass and a harvest on which the animal nourishes itself—­a scene from nature painted on a piece of nature created in a prison cell. The life of the leaf as organic m ­ atter is part of the art, with holes on the surface from decomposing. Tarselli has spent years in solitary confinement, where he paints and draws scenes of nature. He also makes explic­itly po­liti­cal art that condemns the prison industrial complex and embraces revolutionary and liberatory ideologies of previous social movements, knowledge of which he acquired through reading and learning from ­others held captive, as part of what Dylan Rodríguez calls “the radical prison praxis” of imprisoned intellectuals that continues to influence generations of ­people locked away. Tarselli’s work materializes the conditions out of which prison art emerges: penal space, penal m ­ atter, and penal time, concepts

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that I elaborate on in Chapter 1. In brief, penal space is the architectural confinement and the sets of relations that imprisonment structures; penal m ­ atter is the ­limited access to material goods and objects for the production of culture in prison; and penal time is punishment mea­sured as time in captivity or ­under state supervision, such as parole. Art made in prisons is commonly described u ­ nder the rubric of “outsider art” or “folk art,” meaning art made by artists who have no or ­little formal training or who create outside of established art institutions. Other studies have focused on art programs and workshops that are based on models of art therapy, which grow out of the disciplines of psy­chol­ogy, education, and criminology and which promote exploring creative outlets as forms of healing and rehabilitating ­people. I do not employ the discourse of rehabilitative arts, although some of the artists and teachers I interviewed adhere to this framework. My main concern about a rehabilitative framework is that in its primary focus on changing the individual, it does not offer an analy­sis or critique of how the carceral state relies on producing criminal subjects and diminishing the life possibilities of entire populations. The framework of rehabilitative arts does not address the larger structural and po­liti­cal relationships that I attempt to map between art, aesthetics, and the carceral state. Moreover, my engagement with art is through the lens of an abolitionist vision to end ­human caging and the conditions that produce prisons. So while I do not write about prison art as necessarily therapeutic or rehabilitative (as ­those concepts are used in penal and clinical settings), I do acknowledge and re­spect that many incarcerated artists use and understand art-­making as part of their healing and coping inside prisons. Art made in US prisons and detention centers (what some call “cellblock art” and ­others call “inmate art”) is so common that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has several pages of guidelines that regulate the making, distributing, and selling of art in carceral facilities. The guidelines give prison administrators wide authority over how each prison or jail h ­ andles art-­making: “The Warden may restrict, for reasons of security and ­house­keeping, the size and quantity of all products made in the art and hobbycraft program. Paintings mailed out of the institution must conform to both institution guidelines and postal regulations. If an inmate’s art work or hobbycraft is on public display, the Warden may restrict the content of the work in accordance with community standards of decency.”7

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­ nder the warden’s discretion, the prison provides inU carcerated ­people with the ability to mail art to friends or ­family (at the prisoner’s expense) and to give work to ­family members with approval during visits. In many institutions, incarcerated artists are also allowed to sell works u ­ nder regulations by warden or staff that usually involve the prison taking a percentage of the sale. In the state of Ohio, for example, prisons take 20 ­percent of all art sales. Art made by the imprisoned can be quite lucrative for some institutions, and art workshops and education can function as ways of managing ­people held captive so that they do not challenge prison authority. At Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, prison art is widely sold at the biannual rodeo show, bringing in significant profit to the institution and a percentage to incarcerated ­people who can use it t­oward commissary or can send it home to relatives.8 In fact, most of ­these programs could not run without the permission of wardens and depart- T​ odd (Hyung-­Rae) Tarselli, ments of correction who see the benefit of art-making to the operations of untitled (chipmunk prisons. But in light of ways that prisons can instrumentalize prison art to main- painting), 2017. tain institutions, incarcerated artists and their nonincarcerated allies innovate and engage aesthetic practices that exceed and defy the strictures of prisons. Moreover, prison art shifts how we think about art collections and art collectors. The primary collectors of art made in prison are other imprisoned ­people and their loved ones. Art proliferates in prisons, and substantial collections exist inside cells, storage units, and classrooms of carceral facilities. Prison staff are also collectors of art made inside. Employees of prisons often commission incarcerated p ­ eople to make art on their behalf and negotiate rates within the prison economy. ­These negotiations usually take place off rec­ord and between ­people occupying very dif­fer­ent positions of power. “Commission” and “negotiation” are fraught terms to describe arrangements in which unfree artists are asked by ­people who hold enormous authority over their livelihood to make art in exchange for money, goods, or special treatment. Most artists who described making work for

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prison staff discussed how they would barter with the staff for access to prohibited material or ­favors, including help getting clandestine art sent out of prison. For incarcerated p ­ eople, access to art-­making and owner­ship of one’s art vary widely across prisons and detention centers. Some facilities have fully stocked art rooms and offer art classes in multiple genres. In ­others, incarcerated ­people create peer-­run art groups where they share resources and teach each other techniques. Artists often appropriate state material in the ser­vice of art, a practice that is a rule infraction and can result in work being confiscated and other forms of punishment. Their practices are highly surveilled, and art can be seized for many reasons. “Officers can confiscate pictures ­because of their subject ­matter. Nude pinups usually receive tacit approval so long as the art is enjoyed discreetly. It can be hung on cell walls in some prisons and not in o ­ thers. . . . ​If a painting can be interpreted as inciteful to riot, it ­will be confiscated. Images of vio­lence against officers, gang symbols, racist insults, and offensive writing are forbidden,” writes Kornfeld.9 In places like the death row unit of Louisiana State Prison, condemned ­people are now legally prohibited from making art without the warden’s approval, ­after the art of one man on death row made it out and was sold online. A 2012 state law declares, “Any sketch, painting, drawing or other pictorial rendering produced in w ­ hole or in part by a capital offender, u ­ nless authorized by the warden of the institution,” is to be considered contraband, and creating it is a crime punishable by up to five years of imprisonment.10 The law was implemented as a mea­sure to prevent p ­ eople on death row from acquiring fame or financially profiting off their imprisonment. The issue of owner­ship of and profiting from art made by the incarcerated turned into international news in 2017, when the Pentagon attempted to shut down Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo Bay, an exhibit of art by current and former detainees at the military prison. The pieces ­were created in an official program in which detainees w ­ ere provided access to art courses. The exhibit was widely praised, with reviews in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Guardian. One such painting, by Muhammad al Ansi, depicts the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea as his ­family sought refuge. Ansi based his painting on a widely circulated photo­graph of Kurdi’s dead body on a Turkish beach by Turkish photojournalist Nilüfer Demir.11 Though the Department of Defense had initially approved the art for the exhibition, stamping the backs of the works with “Approved by US Forces,” the US

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government subsequently appeared to have reservations about the works’ enthusiastic reception and the narrative of captivity emerging from news coverage. It also objected to attempts at selling any of the works. As a result, the military has prohibited art from leaving the camp, meaning detainees can no longer give their works to their attorneys or f­ amily, which prior to the show had been common practice. The Pentagon released the following statement: “Items produced by detainees at Guantánamo Bay remain the property of the U.S. government.”12 According to this policy, detainees are no longer able to take their art with them if and when they are released. Instead, the military proposed incinerating art left b ­ ehind. As access to and owner­ship of prison art are contested, so too is the category itself. The term, as one art historian told me, leaves ­little to the imagination; it tells the audience what to expect before they even look. Similarly, a writer interested in the topic discouraged use of the term, warning that it suggested devalued ​ uhammad al Ansi, untitled M (Alan Kurdi), 2016.

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and amateur forms of art-­making. He was concerned that the term would diminish the aesthetic innovation of the art made inside prisons. Treacy Ziegler, an art instructor in prisons and curator of Without the Wall—an art exhibit of works by anonymous artists, half of whom w ­ ere incarcerated—­offers a similar critique of the category. In curating the show, Ziegler queried, “Can we experience art without the story of the artist?”13 Without the Wall attempted to challenge the public’s conception of prison art by asking audiences to consider their investments in interpreting such work through ste­reo­typed ideas about the themes, genres, and media used by incarcerated artists. But a journalist reporting on the exhibition also noted the contradiction in this curatorial exercise, arguing that much of the draw of the show for audiences was that some of the art came from prison. How does art made in captivity challenge familiar assumptions about what it means to be imprisoned while still revealing the institutional constraints out of which it emerges? Questions about the terminology we use for prison art and the conditions in which it gets produced have become even more timely as art by incarcerated ­people circulates more widely in the public sphere. During an artist talk that I moderated with a formerly incarcerated artist, a man in the audience commented on how rarely we discuss the significance of the setting in which works are made when looking at art by nonincarcerated p ­ eople. The formerly incarcerated artist agreed, but also made clear that when a piece of art is made in prison, it is impossible not to acknowledge the significance of the institutional context. He noted that his artwork changed significantly when he went to prison ­because of the setting, the regulation of time, the constant presence of correction officers, and the l­imited access to materials—­all of which altered his aesthetic horizon. For him, penal time, penal ­matter, and penal space led to a more deliberate, repetitive, and sometimes even mechanical process—­one that produced labor-­intensive, time-­laden works that he would not have made outside punitive captivity. I use the term “prison art” instead of “prisoner art” b ­ ecause I think the former is more capacious and expansive and also includes art made in collaboration with nonincarcerated artists. It is a term that attempts to destigmatize incarcerated artists while gesturing at the ways that incarceration reaches far beyond prison walls and the ways that mass imprisonment impacts aesthetics and culture more broadly. ­These creative practices become more urgent and grow in scale and

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number as survival strategies in the wake of mass incarceration. With the growth of prisons over the past few de­cades, the modes of re­sis­tance and forms of culture made by imprisoned ­people have expanded.

Mass Incarceration and Carceral Visuality My analy­sis of some of the aesthetic and cultural implications of incarceration benefits from recent works by scholars, activists, l­ awyers, and journalists on mass incarceration and the US prison system. Investigations of the historical, l­ egal, so­ cio­log­i­cal, geographic, and economic dimensions of prisons have offered analyses of the range of ­causes and implications of the rise in prison populations and structures of penality. Attacks on radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Terror, deindustrialization, neoliberal policies, law-­and-­order policing, segregated and punitive education, unemployment, the criminalization of poverty, austerity mea­sures, and the ongoing war on nonwhite, queer, and gender-­nonconforming p ­ eople—­all have contributed to an increase in the US prison population by over 500 ­percent since the 1970s.14 Historian Elizabeth Hinton chronicles how attacks by federal, state, and local government agencies against black activism of the 1960s and 1970s partly gave rise to the punitive policies of policing, surveillance, and harsh sentencing that created mass incarceration: “Built by a consensus of liberals and conservatives who privileged punitive responses to urban prob­lems as a reaction to the civil rights movement, over time, the carceral state and the network of programs it encompassed came to dominate government responses to American in­equality. Indeed, crime control may be the domestic policy issue in the late twentieth ­century where conservative and liberal interests most thoroughly intertwined.”15 Other scholars have examined how the War on Drugs has resulted in one in five p ­ eople in US prisons serving time for drug charges.16 The confluence of c­ auses and circumstances has resulted in the United States having the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with “almost 2.3 million p ­ eople in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 1,852 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,163 local jails, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S.

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territories.”17 Laws like the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 have resulted in longer and harsher sentences, the lowering of the age at which ­people are sent to prison, the overuse of solitary confinement, the increase in life sentencing, and a vast expansion of the reach of incarceration far beyond the prison walls. As one example of the impact of this punitive turn, a 2017 study by the Sentencing Proj­ect reports that life sentences have qua­dru­pled since 1984, resulting in over 206,000 p ­ eople serving life or “virtual life” sentences in 2016. Of ­those serving life, almost half are black.18 Currently, t­ here are efforts from the grassroots level to local politics to state and federal proposals to undo some of ­these punitive laws and sentencing guidelines, but they are small in scale compared to the massive toll and devastation of the carceral state.19 In addition to scholarly and journalistic investigations, activists and organizers have been crucial in bringing public awareness to the reach and devastation of prisons. They have often used visual advocacy to illustrate the scope and toll of the prison industrial complex, and ­these works are part of the broad arena of the visual culture of mass incarceration. One of the farthest-­reaching is the rich accumulation of posters and data reproduced on the website Prison Culture: How the PIC Structures Our World, edited and archived by Mariame Kaba. Kaba, a longtime activist and abolition or­ga­nizer, began the site to gather sources on mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex to share with o ­ thers. Over time, it incorporated sources from o ­ thers as a collective effort to amass art, readings, and other resources to understand and analyze prisons’ impact on modern life. One example of Kaba’s visual advocacy in collaboration with other abolitionists is No Selves to Defend: A Legacy of Criminalizing ­Women of Color for Self-­Defense, a visual and poetic anthology created to raise funds for the defense campaign of Marissa Alexander, who was incarcerated for fighting back against her abusive partner. No Selves to Defend comprises portraits of w ­ omen of color incarcerated for defending themselves; proceeds from the anthology’s sales went t­ oward Alexander’s ­legal fees.20 While I focus largely on the art and aesthetics produced by ­people held in prisons, my work is in conversation with the larger field of activists, organizers, and scholars visualizing and working to undo prisons. One of the reasons why it is crucial to attend to the art practices of the imprisoned is b ­ ecause the carceral state not only removes p ­ eople from their homes and neighborhoods; it also shapes

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how prisons and ­people confined to them are viewed in public life. This power to reveal and to hide prisons and the imprisoned has an enormous influence on how the larger public comes to understand the function of the prison and to justify the removal and incapacitation of millions. In popu­lar entertainment, journalistic exposés, and documentaries, images of “life ­behind bars” fascinate, horrify, and titillate. They also offer a familiarity with prison as a cornerstone institution of modern life, but one that the majority of ­people never enter. The nonincarcerated public comes to recognize prison and the imprisoned almost exclusively through a set of rehearsed images created by the state and by nonincarcerated image makers—­images like arrest photos, mug shots, the minimal furnishings of the prison cell, fortress-­like walls, barbed wire, bars, metal doors, and the executioner’s chair. About this familiarity with the visual repre­sen­ta­tion of prisons, Angela Davis writes, “The prison is one of the most impor­tant features of our image environment. This has caused us to take the existence of prisons for granted. The prison has become a key ingredient of our common sense. It is t­here, all around us.”21 As Davis suggests, this familiarity normalizes prisons, and in so d ­ oing, t­ hese images and the public’s comfort with them obscure the profound impact of prison on modern life, and especially on the many millions of lives captured or susceptible to the system. What goes largely unseen is how incarceration strips away civil rights and transforms the intimate relations, ­family connections, social networks, and public lives of ­those directly impacted. The power of the state to arrest and capture, to make vis­i­ble and invisible, underscores the significance of visuality as a tool of state authority that structures who sees and what can be seen.22 Prison thrives on limiting the field of vision of imprisoned ­people and the nonincarcerated public, and in many re­spects ­those who work on behalf of the carceral state, though in very dif­fer­ent ways. Each is positioned to see only a fragment of the labyrinthine system. Visual theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff explains that visuality functions through classifying, separating, and aestheticizing groups “to prevent them from cohering as po­liti­cal subjects, such as the workers, the p ­ eople, or the (decolonized) nation.”23 In the context of prisons, visuality functions to keep the imprisoned stigmatized as criminals who are excluded from realms of the intimate, social, and po­liti­cal. Carceral visuality enforces the idea that the primary relationship of p ­ eople in

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prison is to the punitive state. This reinforcement takes many forms, from photographic indexes to surveillance cameras to guard booths and watchtowers. Carceral visuality makes incarcerated ­people both invisible and hypervisible, but also unseeing and unseen. Public life generally excludes incarcerated ­people, but their shadow presence and status as the punished are foundational components to the perception of freedom, access, and mobility in the United States. Prison art and collaborative art proj­ects between incarcerated p ­ eople, nonincarcerated artists, and directly impacted communities often call attention to this power of prisons to structure visibility, recognition, and access to public life for ­those locked in and ­those locked out, even ­after they have served time. If incarceration is largely about “systematic social dismantling,” as Sharon Luk describes it, or “mass elimination,” to use Kelly Lytle Hernández’s framing, the art collectives and practices among incarcerated artists and with nonincarcerated ­peoples provide roadmaps to place-­making and community formations that undo the logic and mandate of prisons.24 In a culture that turns punishment into entertainment, with the proliferation of countless tele­vi­sion shows about policing and prisons, the artistic practices of incarcerated ­people illuminate visual worlds that challenge what Michelle Brown calls “penal spectatorship,” a normative viewing relationship to the criminalized, the detained, and the deportee that legitimates their capture and exclusion.25

Collecting and Exhibiting Prison Art While the majority of art by incarcerated ­people remains b ­ ehind prison walls, in the past de­cade ­there has been a growing interest in prison art and in art proj­ ects by nonincarcerated artists that address mass incarceration. Exhibitions and cultural programs on art made by ­people in prison and in collaboration with ­others have been mounted at several museums and universities. ­These include Mirror / Echo / Tilt, at the New Museum (2019); Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System, at the Con­temporary Art Museum Houston (2018); Carceral States, at the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College in V ­ irginia (2017); Visions of Confinement: A Lens on ­Women in the United States Prison System, at Hunter East Harlem Gallery (2016); On the Inside: A Group Show of LGBTQ Artists

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Who Are Currently Incarcerated, at Abrons Art Center in New York City (2016); Shared Dining, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (2015); and Marking Time: Prison Art and Activism (2014), which I co-­curated with my colleague Sarah Tobias at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Hatched in Prison, an exhibition of art by formerly incarcerated artist Gil Batle at Ricco / Maresca Gallery in New York City, is an example of the current interest in prison art and how prison continues to shape the aesthetics of many artists even ­after they have been released. During his incarceration, Batle survived by designing tattoos, making portraits, and handcrafting greeting cards that he sold to other prisoners and staff. Since his release, he has visualized his twenty-­year experience in California state prisons through carvings on ostrich eggshells, using a dentist’s drill to e­tch out elaborate scenes of penal settings and narratives of the juridical pro­cesses that capture ­people. In one tableau, a judge slams down the gavel as the convicted man bows his head u ­ nder the weight of judgment and authority. In another, Batle ­etches intake items that a new arrival receives—­a roll of toilet paper, a bar of soap, a comb, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. The majority of his carvings are depictions of imprisoned ­people; some are interpretations of mug shots. One egg displays an image of a sleeping man who had been involuntarily confined to a psychiatric unit inside prison. Another, called Sanctuary, shows a handcuffed man with officers at his sides guiding him into the system. Batle reflects h ­ ere on what prison does to the prisoner: “Convicts are never ­free,” w ­ hether imprisoned or released, he states.26 One reviewer writes, “At first glance, the carved eggshells could pass for ancient artifacts u ­ ntil you look carefully at the subject ­matter: suicides and stabbing, fights and race riots, cavity searches, and other t­rials and tribulations of Gil Batle, Sanctuary, 2014. Carved ostrich-­egg shell, prison life.”27 6.5 × 5 × 5 inches.

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The impact of mass incarceration on the art world extends to philanthropy, foundations, and grants. In 2017, the New York Times announced that philanthropist Agnes Gund had sold Roy Lichtenstein’s 1962 Masterpiece for $150 million to start a criminal justice initiative, including the Art for Justice Fund, which supports arts-­based proj­ects that address decarceration efforts and work to end mass incarceration.28 The Right of Return Fellowship is an initiative that provides support for formerly incarcerated artists who pursue issues related to mass incarceration and reentry, partly cofounded by formerly incarcerated artists Russell Craig and Jesse Krimes. The Rauschenberg Foundation and the Soros Foundation offer social justice grants to support proj­ects on racial justice and mass incarceration. ­These initiatives are making apparent links between cultural institutions and penal institutions. When I began researching this book, I set out to learn as much as I could about art-­making in prisons. I wanted to learn about access to supplies, where ­people made art, what influenced their choices in an environment of ­little choice, and how the conditions of the prison s­ haped their creative practices. I was struck by the fact that ­every person I interviewed spoke of how making art created a community and sense of belonging for them. They spoke of making art in captivity as a relational practice that fostered friendships among incarcerated p ­ eople, and sometimes with prison staff and art teachers. They discussed how making art strengthened connections between incarcerated ­people and their nonincarcerated ­family, loved ones, and personal networks. For some, like Raymond Towler, Ojure Lutalo, and Ndume Olatushani, art-­making connected them to ­legal advocates and activists who became involved in getting them released. For the many ­people I interviewed who had been in solitary confinement, art-­making was crucial to maintaining a relationship with self, and to creating a subject position that defied the extreme deprivation of isolation units. Prison art teaches us many t­ hings: it shows the relationality of art; it highlights marginalized populations as producers and collectors of art; and it connects the artistic experiments in prison to aesthetic currents in the larger art world. In looking at culture and aesthetics from punitive captivity, from isolation, from torture and no-­touch torture, from spaces where p ­ eople are rendered dead or dead-­ in-­waiting as punishment for their very existence, I am preoccupied by the significance of making, of producing, of aesthetic engagement—­even for an audience

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of one, even when the artist knows that the work might be confiscated by prison staff and destroyed, even when the procuring of materials and the appropriating of space and resources might lead to more punishment. I won­der about the art, writing, and other creative output by imprisoned ­people that remain trapped in prison walls, confiscated, or destroyed by prison staff. Throughout this book, I highlight the compulsion to make, to create, and to produce meaning ­under brutal and austere circumstances in the larger context of the carceral state. T ­ here are lessons ­here, developed by the punished and imprisoned, about how to create, to forge relations, and to embody and represent one’s life ­under unimaginable conditions. From ­these lessons, we learn about a society that relies on punitive confinement as a solution to myriad social, economic, po­liti­cal, ecological, and health crises. Prisons—­indefinite detention, parole, concentration camps—­exist inasmuch as we allow them to.

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1

CARCERAL AESTHETICS P E N A L S PA C E , T I M E , A N D M ­ AT T E R

In a 2016 BBC news story titled “Inside Decaying US Prison, Former Inmates Are Guides,” Russell Craig leads a BBC journalist and film crew on a tour of the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, a defunct penitentiary turned museum in Pennsylvania. Walking the crew through the decrepit cells and along the empty corridors of the gothic structure, Craig somberly states, “You see that wall and you just know, you just know, ­you’re not seeing freedom for years.” Craig is speaking from personal experience. He tells the audience that before he became a tour guide at the museum, he was a prisoner at Graterford State Prison in Pennsylvania, and he describes himself as “an artist, formerly incarcerated, and now employed at Eastern State where I give tours.” As part of the tour, he takes the documentary crew into the prison chapel, where the walls are covered in art: religious murals painted by Lester Smith, who was incarcerated at Eastern State in 1955. Craig explains that Smith was driven to make art while in prison and states that, like Smith, he too is part of a tradition of incarcerated artists. “I’m privileged to be following in that culture b ­ ecause I’m kind of ­doing the same ­thing.”1 The video then shows Craig painting in his art studio, where he continues to discuss the significance of being part of a legacy of artists

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who emerged in prison, and how he gained a sense of identity and value by identifying as an artist while imprisoned. His work as a tour guide at Eastern State, which was one of the world’s first penitentiaries, is newsworthy largely b ­ ecause of his former status as a prisoner, as the headline suggests.2 But Craig turns the BBC lens to focus on another narrative: one of his identification, both individually and as part of a collective, as an imprisoned artist. He uses the word “privilege” to stake claim to a tradition of incarcerated artists, instead of focusing on the litany of negative associations the public, especially through the news media, makes about ­people in prison and the culture they create. Craig does this while showing the BBC crew his artwork, which he incorporates into his tours. “When I went to prison I had a mentor named James Hough, that was an excellent artist, who gave me pointers, gave me supplies, ­things like that. He gave me my first pastel. I ­didn’t even know what a pastel was. Art was like a way to distract me from the real­ity of being in a prison. Then eventually I started thinking, ‘Somehow I’m g ­ oing to be an artist.’ It was p ­ eople who was giving me discouragement, like, ‘You ­can’t make a living as an artist.’ . . . ​ Then James, my mentor, was like, ‘If you master something, they w ­ on’t deny you. So he said, ‘Become undeniable.’ And that’s what I aim to be, undeniable.”3 The short documentary highlights the significance of Craig as a formerly incarcerated man walking through the halls of the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site and the presence of art and creativity in this site of criminalization and punishment. Yet Craig’s assertion to be undeniable and his claiming of a legacy of culture that emerges from prisons exceed the documentary narrative and defy common assumptions about prison and the ­people held ­there. Craig uses the format of the news story to bring visibility to the presence of ­those rendered invisible to the broader social world, and to insist on the social and cultural value of imprisoned ­people. He speaks to their artistic practices, imaginary worlds, dreams, and mentoring traditions. As part of my research for this book, I walked through the corridors of Eastern State with Craig on one of his tours. We had already known each other for two years. He had participated in programs that I had or­ga­nized on art and incarceration, and I had interviewed him several times about his experiences making art in prison. Craig was excited about his new position at Eastern State and how it might serve as a vehicle to make his art more vis­ib ­ le to a larger public. During

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the tour, I observed Craig, a young black man, and the visitors on his tour—­all white, except for me. He began by presenting a rather expected institutional narrative of the prison—­one that adheres to the information contained in guidebooks and public materials about the site. I walked ­behind the other tourists as we listened to him discuss the history of the penitentiary and the conditions of life for prisoners ­there, and watched him point to the cells that ­housed famous prisoners like Al Capone. ­After giving us the standard tour, he then shifts, as he did with BBC, to use what I call penal space—­the architecture of punishment—to assert another narrative: that of the emerging artist in punitive captivity. The juxtaposition between the built environment of the penitentiary and the art of Smith and Craig sets up a relationship between the system of locking ­people away as punishment and the imaginary worlds and creative practices of t­ hose held ­there. The artistic pursuits of the incarcerated are starkly framed against the horrors of cell blocks and locked cages. What might be less clear is how the aesthetic proj­ect of the prison serves as the institutional framework out of which Craig’s art and the works of other incarcerated artists emerge. While incarcerated, Craig crafted styles and aesthetic practices that both arose from the very conditions of imprisonment and resisted the isolation and exclusion that prison enforces. He developed peer-­mentoring relationships with other incarcerated artists. He used prison materials, like administrative documents, to make art, and he used penal time—­that is, time as punishment—to cultivate a vision of himself as an artist while honing his skills and becoming what his mentor James “Yaya” Hough called being “undeniable.” Craig also developed a relationship with Mural Arts Philadelphia, a nonprofit organ­ization that implements arts-­based programming in prisons and with ­people directly impacted by the carceral system. ­After his release, Craig began working as a teaching assistant at Mural Arts Philadelphia and mentoring young p ­ eople who are on parole. He, like many other incarcerated artists, transformed the limitations of prison—­namely, lack of materials, spatial constraints, surveillance, and the punitive regulation of time—to create art. Moreover, his art also grapples with notions of selfhood as a young black man in relationship to perceptions of racialized criminality and the stigma of the labels “criminal,” “inmate,” and “prisoner.” State ID (2013), a painted self-­portrait that Craig shows visitors on his tour, boldly asserts the status of the prisoner as artist and the artist as incarcerated

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Russell Craig, State ID, 2013. Acrylic on parachute textiles, 34.75 × 54.75 inches.

person. The painting is an enlarged version of Craig’s prison ID card, an administrative identification tag that each incarcerated person is required to wear in carceral facilities. In his reimagining of the ID card, Craig performs a willful act of self-­crafting as an artist, one that incorporates punitive markings, like the word “inmate,” which appears in large font. U ­ nder “inmate” is listed his criminal index number in the Pennsylvania system. His l­ egal name appears in a lighter, smaller font. The top line reads, “PA Department of Corrections,” the bureaucratic name for the state system that governs incarceration. In it, Craig has underscored the word “art.” Craig elaborates on his discovery of art to navigate being imprisoned and labeled a criminal: Art was like my tool, and then I found art in the prison, in the system. It says, “PA Department of Corrections”—­De-­part-­ment—so it says “art” in the m ­ iddle of “Department.” So I underlined “art,” ­because that word just happened to be hidden inside “Department.” That just was, you know, in­ ter­est­ing how that was ­there for me. Art was my tool, my vessel, to navigate out of this system, out of that kind of lifestyle that just was ­going nowhere.4

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Craig has broken apart the department of correction to locate other possibilities beyond criminalization and punitive captivity. He is not interested in state-­ mandated notions of rehabilitation and correction. He has found something of himself and for himself through reconstituting his criminal index as a portrait of an emerging artist. Like many artists in prison, Craig engages in practices of carceral aesthetics, or forms of art-­making that emerge as a result of the carceral state. It is a concept that I employ to examine a range of relational art practices among incarcerated ­people, between incarcerated ­people and nonincarcerated artists, and increasingly among socially engaged artists who use art to address the carceral state. The concept describes forms of art-­making and cultural engagement that take place across vari­ous states of un / freedom produced in the era of mass incarceration. How art creates relational possibilities that disrupt the mandate of prison—­which includes isolation, the burden of time, the disruption of f­amily life and social relations, and one’s removal from civil society and public life—is the focus of this book. Such artistic practices radically challenge the impenetrability of prison, with its architecture, administrative systems, economies, and meta­phors of locked doors, metal bars, and fortresslike walls. ­These artworks attempt to depict the scale and reach of incarceration and si­mul­ta­neously to address what one might call a provisional public, a space of engagement facilitated through and against how prisons have ­shaped the public sphere and relations among p ­ eople differently positioned across carceral geographies. Carceral aesthetics is the production of art u ­ nder the conditions of unfreedom; it involves the creative use of penal space, time, and m ­ atter (concepts explored ­later in this chapter). Immobility, invisibility, stigmatization, lack of access, and premature death govern the lives of the imprisoned and their expressive capacities. Such deprivation becomes raw material and subject m ­ atter for prison art. The creative practices of incarcerated ­people fundamentally challenge aesthetic traditions that link art and discernment to the f­ ree, mobile, white, Western man. Instead, carceral aesthetics often involves rendering “one’s self out of sight,” to borrow a phrase from theorist Simone Browne, or being forcibly rendered out of sight, to imagine and then clandestinely construct other worlds, ones that speak to and through captivity.5 It involves “fugitive planning,” and it builds on black radical thought and traditions that center the cultural production of ­people held

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in captivity, as well as on collective movements for freedom, historically and in the pre­sent.6 I use the term “carceral aesthetics,” instead of “anticarceral” or “abolitionist” aesthetics, to highlight the materiality, architecture, temporalities, logics, and economies of the production of prison art. One might argue that the concept of carceral aesthetics can be used to describe a wide range of art made in prison—­ including art by hate groups and violent repre­sen­ta­tions against the very p ­ eople who are subjected to incarceration, examples of which circulate widely in prisons— an argument that I do not dispute. As I curate and develop the framework, I focus on a set of practices that reveal the conditions, power, and materiality of prisons, while recognizing that artists in this book hold varying po­liti­cal, racial, gender, and other identifications. Though not all artists identify as abolitionists, I am interested in how carceral aesthetics can serve as practices of relationality, creativity, and discernment that do not aim to reproduce or preserve prisons, but to visualize the end of ­human captivity, devaluation, dispossession, and the carceral logics that tether bodies to penal systems. In this regard, carceral aesthetics builds upon prisoners’ rights movements, the black radical tradition, and other dissident cultural and po­liti­cal movements for freedom. To understand the significance of the aesthetic practices of incarcerated artists, it is impor­tant to contextualize their work within overlapping Enlightenment­era proj­ects: the birth of the prison and the public museum as institutions of governance, and the formation of aesthetics as a pedagogy and discourse. Both prisons and museums emerge as late eighteenth-­and early nineteenth-­century institutions that w ­ ere created as technologies of state power to manage and order populations, and to cultivate a notion of the citizen subject who would assent or be disciplined. The public museum was devised to instruct populations on the cultural practices, manners, and ideas about value and display that reinforced governance, while the penitentiary functioned to contain, punish, and reform populations that did not conform. Histories of the prison detail how the penitentiary arose out of shifts in thinking about the role of punishment and social reform in society. It was seen as a reasonable, humane, and orderly form of punishment over the spectacle of the gallows, the guillotine, and other public displays of state vio­lence against the criminalized of e­ arlier eras.7

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Early museums, as Tony Bennett discusses in his history of the museum, often incorporated exhibitions of historic forms of punishment, like displays of scaffolds and cat-­o’-­nine-­tails; he suggests that the exhibits legitimated the penitentiary as a corollary institution of Western development. Bennett writes that the history of the public museum “cannot be adequately understood u ­ nless viewed in the light of a more general set of developments through which culture, in coming to be thought of as useful for governing, was fashioned as a vehicle for the exercise of new forms of power.”8 Both museums and penitentiaries ­were often built in highly vis­i­ble parts of the city and in close proximity to each other. John Bender writes about how the architecture of the eighteenth-­century penitentiary system, with Gothic-­style facades, foreboding gated entrances, and fortress walls, was a reminder to “all who would enter, or even pass by, of the power of confinement to alter the spirit through material repre­sen­ta­tion.”9 Lisa Guenther suggests that architects and social reformers of the early penitentiary, like Benjamin Rush, intended for the institutions “to heighten the anxiety of both the prisoner and the public about the site, nature, and duration of punishment.”10 ­These analyses of the disciplinary power of prison architecture build in large part on Michel Foucault, who theorizes that “the major effect of the Panopticon” is “to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.”11 Bennett writes: If the museum and the penitentiary thus represented the Janus face of power, ­there was none the less—at least symbolically—an economy of effort between them. For t­hose who failed to adopt the tutelary relation to the self promoted by popu­lar schooling or whose hearts and minds failed to be won in the new pedagogic relations between state and p ­ eople symbolized by the open doors of the museum, the closed walls of the penitentiary threatened a sterner instruction in the lessons of power. Where instruction and rhe­toric failed, punishment began.12

Both institutions are foundational to the conceptions of freedom, aesthetics, and subjecthood that continue to frame con­temporary life. Art critic and curator Risa Puleo writes, “The museum is a repository for all that a society values, and the

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prison a site for storing all that the same society seeks to disavow and discard. Indeed, the two institutions are inextricably entangled.”13 Built a short distance from the Pennsylvania Acad­emy of the Fine Arts, which was established in 1805 as the first art museum in the nation, the Eastern State Penitentiary was one of the first penitentiaries. Based on Jeremy Bentham’s infamous panopticon, a type of structure built for social control in which prison guards could monitor all cells from a watchtower in the center, Eastern State represents the prison as an aesthetic proj­ect “designed to inspire penitence, or true regret, in the hearts of prisoners.”14 Eastern State’s practice of bringing in prisoners hooded so that they could not see or be seen reinforces both the stakes of visuality as a tool of state power and the aesthetic proj­ect of prisons to control to an excruciating degree the sensory experience of the imprisoned. Since Eastern State ceased to operate as a prison in 1970, it has become a museum. Its architecture is featured as one of its main attractions, a monument to the history of the penitentiary, as the tour given by Russell Craig demonstrates. Inside the cells where prisoners once served penance in isolation, viewers now see art that reflects the themes of imprisonment, punitive control, and state surveillance. Con­temporary art exhibitions in ­these cells include works such as Michelle Handelman’s Beware the Lily Law, a video installation based on testimonials of incarcerated trans p ­ eople; an installation that reproduces a cell at Guantánamo Bay military prison; and art by Jared Owens and Jesse Krimes, two formerly incarcerated artists whose work is featured in this book. Eastern State on display as one of the world’s first penitentiaries and as an exhibitor of con­temporary art about prison materializes some impor­tant links between incarceration and exhibition, prison and museums, aesthetics and punishment. Aesthetics as conceived in the Enlightenment era developed in tandem with the museum and the prison. Jacques Rancière states, “Aesthetics emerges as the theory of an experience of sensory neutralization, of a concrete experience of the oppositions that structured the hierarchical world-­view, and also that it is “a specific regime for the identification of art.”15 Kandice Chuh and David Lloyd analyze how the development of aesthetics was not only foundational to state power but also a racializing discourse about the ­human and nonhuman.16 Both scholars lay out how aesthetics is part of the larger formation of the humanities that legitimate state power and empire, and also part of the classification and hierar-

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chization of p ­ eoples and cultures. Aesthetics was foundational to the development of the liberal citizen subject, a category that excluded enslaved and exploited ­peoples, indigenous p ­ eoples, colonized p ­ eoples, women of all races, and the criminalized. Carefully attending to the writings of Immanuel Kant on aesthetics, Lloyd points to the racial regime under­lying Kant’s theories and their association with freedom. For Kant, the mobile and discerning observer, the man of freedom, is the progenitor of aesthetic discernment and valuation.17 Kant links aesthetic discernment to a racial hierarchy that centers around certain Eu­ro­pean nationalities and that locates blackness at the bottom: The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling. Mr. Hume challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have been set f­ree, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything ­great in art or science or any other praise-­ worthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts earn re­spect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between ­these two races of man, and it appears to be as ­great in regard to ­mental capacities as in color.18

Kant’s understanding of aesthetic discernment associates Eu­ro­pean whiteness with modernity, moral virtue, judgment, and freedom. Blacks, on the other hand, are transported as commodities. Even when they are ­free, they are unable to rise to be creators of the arts and sciences. They are talentless and trifling, and are unaware of the “finer feelings.” Lloyd theorizes that the aesthetic “divides the pathological subject from the ethical, capable of engaging—­communicating—in the sphere of public or common sense. It regulates both the deferral of the po­liti­cal right to participation u ­ ntil aesthetic education has raised the subject to repre­sen­ta­tion and the permanent racial exception of the subject defined categorically as pathological, the Savage.”19 Examining how race figures into Kant’s thinking, theorist Fred Moten writes, “The regulative discourse on the aesthetic that animates Kant’s critical philosophy is inseparable from the question of race as a mode of conceptualizing and regulating ­human diversity, grounding and justifying in­equality and

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exploitation, as well as marking the limits of h ­ uman knowledge through the codification of quasi-­transcendental philosophical method, which is Kant’s acknowledged aim in the critical philosophy.”20 Kant’s racial hierarchy of aesthetic discernment is also key to his thinking about punishment and captivity. ­Legal and literary scholar Robert A. Ferguson examines how a retributive theory of punishment was a significant component of Kant’s philosophy. Ferguson argues that Kant’s rigid stance on retribution as punishment keeps in line with Enlightenment-­era thinking as much as it does moral reform: “Kant insists on the rigor in punishment. His search for pure justice and an immutable standard of right leaves no room for flexibility. This rigor drives him inexorably ­toward capital punishment and beyond to the lex talionis, an eye for an eye. . . . ​His stance is exact: ‘Punishment . . . ​must always be imposed on the criminal simply ­because he has committed a crime.’ ”21 Philosopher J. Reid Miller connects Kant’s ideas about h ­ uman differentiation to the biblical concept of the Hamitic curse—­a term used to refer to a supposedly inherited mark of criminality that has been associated with blackness. The Hamitic curse is part of a value system that tethers blackness to criminality and to the bottom of h ­ uman development. Miller writes about vari­ous philosophical debates over Ham’s crimes and their meaning for a racialized and criminalized genealogy: “The difficulty of identifying the substance of Ham’s crime lies not in the discovery of a content that could be made pre­sent but in the impossibility of the emergence of any nameable crime outside an inheritable language of comparative worth.”22 Such notions of aesthetics, punishment, and freedom position race as foundational to social, l­egal, and philosophical notions of criminality and penality. American systems of penality grow out of discourses on race that conceptualize black subjects as nonhuman and inherently criminal. The development of American prisons cannot be disentangled from racial capitalism, the architecture and systems of confinement of the slave plantation, and the normative public’s repre­sen­ta­tion of racial vio­lence and captivity to discipline black subjects. Mabel O. Wilson writes, “Plantation enclosures directly link to the carceral spaces of prisons. During post–­Civil War Reconstruction, Louisiana erected, for example, its new prison on parcels of land from several plantations known as Angola, named for the region of Africa where the plantation’s slaves had originated. . . . ​­Today, the

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18,000 acre Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, known as ‘The Farm,’ operates as the largest maximum security prison in the United States.”23 Incarcerated artists are involved in forms of innovation that fundamentally contest dominant frameworks of aesthetics, criminalization, and imprisonment. They engage in art-­making that upends how aesthetics and the production of art within Western thought and culture belong to the domain of the discerning, mobile, sensory, white, and ­free Western man who ascribes value and judgment. Carceral aesthetics, as relational practices, reposition the viewing and discerning subject away from Western racial hierarchies to create affective possibilities of belonging, collectivity, and subjecthood from positions of unfreedom.

Black Radical Tradition and Relational Aesthetics As relational practices that connect imprisoned p ­ eople to larger worlds and possibilities, carceral aesthetics builds on the analy­sis and cultural production of racial capitalism, gender construction, captivity, and the contours of black freedom proj­ ects in the face of extreme vio­lence and deprivation grounded in the black radical tradition. Geographer and prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore writes, “The Black Radical Tradition is a constantly evolving accumulation of structures of feeling whose individual and collective narrative arcs per­sis­tently tend t­oward freedom” and that it is “­shaped by energetically ex­pec­tant consciousness of and direction ­toward unboundedness” as “movement away from partition and exclusion.”24 Many imprisoned black radicals, especially during the 1970s, produced works of literary, theatrical, and visual art that became impor­tant writings and cultural pieces for incarcerated and nonincarcerated p ­ eople for de­cades. T ­ hese works show that prison art is not simply influenced by but is part of the black radical tradition.25 In fact, one could argue that carceral aesthetics extends the arcs described by Gilmore by demonstrating the significance of culture-­making and aesthetic transgressions that explode the binary of victory or failure underpinning much po­liti­cal organ­izing and many social movements.26 Relatedly, carceral aesthetics offers conceptions of relationality that disavow the systems of value / worth, criminalization, and punitive governance of dominant Western art institutions and aesthetics.

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Art critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud writes that relational art takes “as its theoretical horizon the realm of h ­ uman interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an in­de­pen­dent and private symbolic space.” According to him, relational aesthetics emerge in the context of modernity and globalization, with par­tic­ul­ ar focus on the art practices of the 1990s spurred by the internet and new modes of gathering, or what Bourriaud describes as “greater individual mobility” and “the gradual freeing-up of isolated places.”27 Art historian Grant Kester critiques Bourriaud’s theory of relational aesthetics as a model for collaborative engagement between artists and communities and between artists and the social world as material and site for the production of art. Instead, Kester posits a concept of “dialogical practice” to develop ways of collaborating and engaging directly with the po­liti­cal stakes of art and the communities impacted. Both Bourriaud and Kester are invested in transformations in the role of art in social life and community engagement, and in the role of the artist as an agent of change.28 Although they use the language of relationality, they speak to practices that are in conversation with, but not quite what I describe as, carceral aesthetics. Carceral aesthetics foregrounds relational modes that emerge inside prisons and are initiated by incarcerated p ­ eople, and that often are devalued and ignored by art establishments. They are practices that proj­ect across carceral divides and that create meaningful engagement not bound by prison. Black radical scholars and artists have examined how racialized penality shapes access to the public—­public life, public knowledge, public good, and public ser­ vices. They have also troubled the divide between the purported ­free and unfree in theories of the public and civil society. As scholar Marlon Ross notes, within black studies, activism, and communities ­there is a long, established consideration of “the unbreakable cultural bonds that exist across seemingly impenetrable prison walls. The voices, philosophies, stories, tunes, and visions of prisoners are too often the ordinary stuff of African American life. African American lit­er­a­ture, ­music, philosophy, fashion, visual art, grassroots politics, and social criticism are inseparable from the culture produced by, about, and for the imprisoned.”29 An example of what Ross notes is seen in the efforts of the Black Emergency Cultural Co­ali­tion to establish prison art and education exchanges in US prisons during the 1970s (discussed in Chapter 5).

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Moreover, the black radical tradition offers a critique of the category of the criminal and a redeployment of it as a strategy of reor­ga­niz­ing marginalized, criminalized, and imprisoned p ­ eople. The black radical tradition interrogates carceral logics of freedom and racial discourses and systems that produce black life as criminal. Moten theorizes that black artists and musicians are often involved in a “juris-­generative pro­cess of law making and law breaking, okay, between sort of legality and criminality. They are not opposed to each other in some simple­ass way. We have been placed ­under historical conditions that require us to break the law, to disobey.”30 Moten’s theorization of the “criminal” practices of black artists and thinkers as necessary acts of creativity and freedom resonates with the furtive practices in which incarcerated artists must engage in the production of art, and resignifies the category of the criminal or the prisoner away from stigmatization and ­toward creativity and collective organ­izing. Similarly, historian Sarah Haley examines the criminalization and imprisonment of black ­women and girls during the Jim Crow Era. Haley discusses how black girls and w ­ omen w ­ ere punished for violating white aesthetic proj­ects. Focusing on the case of young black girls convicted of destroying flowerpots and taking flowers from the property of white homeowners, Haley documents and analyzes how they ­were punished harshly and sentenced to convict ­labor for “destroying the aesthetic pleasures of white property rights and in so ­doing creating a history of no décor.”31 Haley argues that ­these practices and other acts by criminalized and imprisoned black w ­ omen w ­ ere forms of sabotage, which she defines as “the practice of life, living, disruption, rupture, and i­ magined ­futures; it is about the development of epistemologies of justice and collectivity, contestations of the binaries produced through Western juridical doctrine and the individualizing ethos of criminal punishment.”32 Carceral aesthetics also challenges the isolated confinement enforced by penal architecture. Prison art practices foster an alternative formation of “the public,” in which the imprisoned, t­ hose ­under vari­ous forms of surveillance, and the seemingly f­ree are viewers and participants. And while it provides a way of seeing and engaging culture that might run c­ ounter to state narratives of criminality and imprisonment, aesthetics alone ­will not topple the carceral state. Yet such practices are fundamental to envisioning freedom and a world without cages. Ndume

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Olatushani was sentenced to death in Tennessee for a murder he did not commit. Olatushani was on death row for twenty years and in prison for twenty-­seven before he was released. His journey to freedom involved becoming a student of black studies and marking art: I understood the issues of race. B ­ ecause I grew up in a town where busing started. So, coming out of the proj­ects and being bused to white schools, and that stuff . . . ​I knew about it. I came up in it. I was always aware of what was ­going on. But yeah, once I found myself convicted of this stuff ­here, the first ten years that I was in prison, I chose not to have a TV in my cell. I ­didn’t want to spend endless hours watching TV and not getting nothing done and ­doing nothing ­else. ­There ­were a lot of ­brothers around me who ­were putting books in my hands and so you know, I read a lot of history, and black history, and world history, . . . ​For me, it was kind of this, even more of a transformation. So, like I said, my art was always informed by knowledge.33

­After the death of his m ­ other, which happened a c­ ouple of years into his sentence, Olatushani fell into despair. Over time, he turned to art for survival, structuring his days around making art, first graphite drawings and eventually paintings. Olatushani’s paintings, like Winds of Change (1993), depict black ­people who are unbounded. The works are bright and colorful. Color for him was a way of resisting the sensory deprivation and close confinement of death-­row cells: I just always wanted to use vibrant colors b ­ ecause color, for me, was always a form of re­sis­tance. You prob­ably know that in most jails and prisons, if you can see the paint on a wall, ­they’re all white, grey, or some dull color. ­You’re in an environment devoid of color. . . . ​The one t­hing I knew and understood while I was sitting on death row, the one t­hing the ­people ­couldn’t control was my mind and my thoughts. Even though, at some point, if they wanted to come in and take me and execute me, they certainly could have did that, but the t­hing they ­couldn’t do was take my mind. I refused to give that up. . . . ​Even though ­you’ve got me in this colorless environment, you c­ an’t stop the color that was actually happening in my head.34

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Through Olatushani’s use of color and depictions of ­free black ­people, he created imaginary worlds and communities that sustained him during his incarceration. While Olatushani was on death row, his artwork was exhibited in a show arranged by an anti–­capital punishment organ­ization, and through that experience he met Anne-­Marie Moyes, an activist against the death penalty. They developed a relationship and ­later married. Moyes, inspired partly by her commitment to bringing attention to Olatushani’s case, earned a law degree from Vanderbilt University. She eventually got a large New York law firm to take on his case pro bono. Olatushani continued to make art and garner support. In 2012, at the age of fifty-­four, he was released from prison. During a panel discussion of an exhibition in which his art was featured, Olatushani stated, “Art literally freed me.” No one in the audience dismissed his words as an empty platitude. Since his release Olatushani continues to make art and works with advocacy groups to end capital punishment and mass incarceration more broadly. While wrongful conviction Ndume Olatushani, and innocence are not the focus of my research, Olatushani’s experiences in Winds of Change, 1993. prison for crimes he did not commit fuel his art and activism on behalf of others. The relational possibilities of carceral aesthetics arose during an encounter that happened at a prison art panel and exhibition that I co-­organized in the Bronx in 2017. At the end of the panel, which featured four formerly incarcerated artists and an art teacher who worked in prisons, a man named AJ raised his hand and said, “I’m h ­ ere ­because my ­father has work in the exhibit. He asked me to come and check it out. I h ­ aven’t seen his work. I ­didn’t even know that he was an artist.” AJ asked the panelists to speak about what making art in prison meant to them. He wanted to know what it meant for his f­ ather. ­Later, he toured the exhibit, smiling and sharing stories of his f­ather. He asked several attendees to pose in front of his ­father’s drawings so that he could send the

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Left: Eddie Kates, Chain Gang, 2016. Graphite on paper, 8.5 × 11 inches. Right: A Southern Chain Gang, Detroit Publishing Com­pany photo­graph collection (Library of Congress), circa 1900–1906. 1 negative: glass, 8 × 10 inches.

36

photos to his ­father to let him know that he had an audience outside prison for his art. Eddie Kates, AJ’s ­father, was sent to prison in 1991, when AJ was seven. Kates’s detailed graphite drawings are based on historical photo­graphs of black Americans during the Jim Crow era; they depict ­people working on chain gangs, working as sharecroppers, and as victims of lynching. Kates draws cotton in a detailed, textured light, shaded by the institution of chattel slavery and by shifting forms of racial capitalism postslavery. His drawing Chain Gang (2016) is a reinterpretation of an archival photo­graph of four black young men, perhaps teens, from the early 1900s. In his interpretation, Kates crops the image and focuses on the features of the incarcerated, in par­tic­u­lar providing g ­ reat detail of the eyes as they gaze out from ­under their hats. AJ’s presence was especially moving for one of the panelists, J. D. McGuire, an artist and professor who has taught in several prisons. A year e­ arlier McGuire had taught Eddie Kates in a class at East Jersey State Prison in New Jersey through NJ-­STEP, an association of higher-­education institutions and state agencies that offer college courses in the state’s prisons. McGuire used art to facilitate discussions about racial in­equality, American history, and social justice. He created a curriculum called “Contraband Scholars,” which brought incarcerated art students from two facilities into conversation and collaboration, although they remained physically separated. Lessons combined drawing exercises, writing prompts, and analy­sis of readings and images about social justice, the history of racial captivity, and mass incarceration. McGuire shared the works between the two prisons so that students in each fa­cil­i­ty ­were aware of what the other class was d ­ oing. Kates’s drawings w ­ ere assignments from that class; he used the assignments to connect with a history of black captivity, as well as with fellow incarcerated ­people who participated in the courses; with teaching artists; with his ­family; and with a broader nonincarcerated public.

Penal Space, Time, and ­Matter Prison art practices like ­those of Kates and Olatushani are largely ­shaped by the conditions of penal space, penal m ­ atter, and penal time, which govern the lives

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of incarcerated ­people and structure any attempt to communicate or collaborate with nonincarcerated allies. ­These conditions also produce the experiences, material, and themes of their contestation. “Penal space” is the prison itself, the architecture of confinement, but the concept also refers to the disruption of ­family relations and domestic space, the imposition on movement and mobility, the restrictive and highly monitored experience of the geographic, material, social, and psychic environments in which the incarcerated are ware­housed, punished, and surveilled. Gilmore writes, “Prison is not a building ‘over t­ here’ but a set of relationships that undermine rather than stabilize everyday lives everywhere.”35 Prisons regulate contact, intimacy, and access at ­every turn. In so d ­ oing, penal space extends beyond the built environment to encompass how carcerality structures relationships through an expansive power to determine life outcomes for populations most impacted by arrest and captivity. Scholar Anoop Mirpuri writes, “The ongoing construction of cages and cells, the constant monitoring of t­hose on probation and parole, and the generalized extension of the U.S. surveillance state throughout the social body saturates the po­liti­cal economy of neoliberal capital to such an extent that it may not be pos­ si­ble to localize the prison as a discrete space.”36 In terms of art-­making, “penal space” refers to sites in prisons where incarcerated ­people create, such as structured workshops, hobby and crafts rooms, recreational areas, and sometimes alone in isolation cells. It is a concept visualized in Ronnie Goodman’s painting San Quentin Arts in Corrections Art Studio (2008), which depicts a studio where Goodman created art during his imprisonment (see Introduction). Penal space can also include arenas where art-­making and the production of culture challenge the restrictions and regulations of prison. Reflecting on her experience teaching and collaborating on a mural proj­ect inside a Mexican ­women’s prison, feminist theorist Marisa Belausteguigotia Ruis examines both how penal space impacts the logistics of collaborating with imprisoned ­women and also how art-­making can potentially transform the very space of penality. Through the pro­cess of making murals on prison walls, a collective involving incarcerated and nonincarcerated participants formed, one that constantly pushed at the restrictions and borders of the institution. Belausteguigotia Ruis writes, “We came to the conclusion that a story can be developed only by making vis­i­ble the trespassing of limits and borders: a crossing. The mural text,

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our visual narration, performs an effect of crossing.”37 She asks, “How do captive spaces enable or resist signification?”38 “Penal time” encompasses the multiple temporalities that impact the lives of the incarcerated and their loved ones. It refers to sentencing guidelines but also significantly invokes how modern theories of penality turn time into a mode of punishment. Ferguson argues that punishment as time sentenced in prison is flawed, given that most legislators, prosecutors, judges, and ­others involved in the criminal ­legal system have no concept of what time feels like inside prison. He queries, “Can any person at liberty ­really comprehend what confinement does to time? . . . ​Can we know what the years actually mean to one serving them in prison?”39 Imprisonment fundamentally reconstitutes being in time, as a ­human subject who senses, observes, and experiences one’s environment. Many of the ­people I interviewed discussed how time moves and functions differently in prison. One formerly incarcerated artist said he kept track of the days by the food served. Prison reconfigures time not only for the imprisoned but also for the intimate relations and social network of the imprisoned. One artist who spent twenty years in prison, from age twenty-­five to forty-­five, commented that during the time he was stuck in a cell, his friends w ­ ere having ­children, traveling, and building c­ areers. Penal time also refers to the afterlives of captivity, where many remain tethered by stringent parole, digital monitoring, mandatory drug testing, and other forms of carceral governance. In 2018, Emile DeWeaver was released a­ fter spending over two de­cades in California prisons ­under the condition of lifetime parole. Theorist Stephen Dillon suggests that in prison, time is experienced as a form of slow death: “The centrality of death to incarceration undoes normative modes of temporality so that the prisoner is subjected to a space that is timeless. Indeed, the carceral state’s dream of the prisoner’s f­uture is one of incapacitation, slow death, and nothingness.”40 For the millions of blacks, Latinos, indigenous ­people, and other dispossessed groups imprisoned or u ­ nder some form of penal surveillance, penal time exists within centuries-­long practices of dispossession and captivity. Tameca Cole’s collages, which she made while at Tutwiler Prison and in Birmingham Work Release, link penal time to other forms of racialized subjugation and precarity. During her imprisonment, Cole participated in Die Jim Crow, an arts initiative created by New York–­based producer and activist Fury Young that addresses the historical links of racialized captivity through ­music and art. With

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titles like Die Jim Crow—­The Movement (2016), The Jim Crow Playbook: Money Games (2016), and Black Lives Splattered (2016), Cole’s collages combine composite images from newspapers and magazines of high-­profile cases in the criminal ­legal system and anti­black vio­lence, placing them alongside images of public figures and celebrities. In so ­doing, her art makes connections between the carceral state, penal spectatorship, and entertainment culture. Cole’s piece Locked in a Dark Calm (2016) is a composite portrait in which the face at the center of the work is only partially revealed; the figure is enveloped in a gray cloud. At the time that Cole made it, she was taking art classes through the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Proj­ect, connected with Auburn University. “I was constantly trying to reach out and find programs to remind myself that I had self-­worth.” On the day that she made Locked in a Dark Calm, she states, “I was so angry that I wanted to explode,” ­because of mistreatment she had experienced from prison staff.41 She noted that any response from her to the staff would increase her sentence or lead to more discipline. Her only outlet was art. Through the act of creating, she was able to enshroud herself in a state of calm that manifested through the work itself as a visualization of the constraints of penal time and space, and the artist’s strategies to survive them. Reginald Dwayne Betts, in his coming-­of-­age memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, meditates on his experience as a black teenage boy incarcerated in an adult prison, and considers the long duration of black captivity and the intergenerational dynamics between black boys and men in prisons. Time from this perspective is experienced as a brutal real­ity of observing countless black men who entered as youths grow old in prison as newly arriving black boys continue to enter the system. Betts writes about his own strug­gle managing the nine years that he served in vari­ous prisons in ­Virginia: “I felt ­every second that I was b ­ ehind the walls and bars of the prisons that held me. I felt it in the names that I would go months and months without saying. Names I only think of now as I try to tell this story.”42 He discusses the unimaginably long sentences of many of his peers—teenage boys sentenced to twenty, thirty, forty years and more— and their vari­ous strategies to cope with the idea of living the rest of their lives ­behind bars. About a fellow prisoner who was sentenced as a teenager to ninety years without parole, Betts writes, “Isaac was holding a clock with no hands.”43

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Tameca Cole, Locked in a Dark Calm, 2016. Collage and graphite.

Useless clocks also appear in Raymond Towler’s painting Passing Time (1984– 1990), and they symbolize an unrelenting aspect of penal time: the waiting. Phi­ los­op ­ her Lisa Guenther writes, “Waiting to do nothing—or waiting to avoid the punishment of further waiting so that one’s basic needs or desires can be addressed—is an overwhelming feature of prison temporality, even beyond the most obvious occasion for waiting: for eventual release from prison.”44 The painting was part of what Towler describes as a self-­study of “the old masters as they are called” while incarcerated at Lucasville prison in Ohio.45 Towler was influenced by Salvador Dalí to use a surrealist technique to turn the clocks from objects for mea­sur­ing time into devices that have no utilitarian value as they melt ­under the relenting sun:

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Just my situation, and all this time that I could possibly have to do. I always had hope that I would get out, but I had to be a realist and just know that I had a lot of time. That’s the word that you hear. Twenty times a day, if not fifty. “I gotta do this time.” “How much time you got?” “What time is it?” . . . ​You start keeping time with a calendar instead of a watch. . . . ​ Every­thing was the same, so it kind of blends in, just like the painting. It all kind of melts together. Where, ya know, even the chow hall, spaghetti Sunday and fish on Friday and chili on Tuesday. . . . ​For months, and years, at a time. Fried chicken on Christmas Day, and turkey slices on Thanksgiving. The years just blend together. It’s all one big blob.46

Towler, a black man wrongfully convicted of raping, kidnapping, and assaulting a white girl, spent twenty-­nine years in prison before being exonerated through the work of Ohio Innocence Proj­ect. He managed waiting by studying new artistic styles and experimenting with vari­ous media. He sold his art and used the proceeds to help fight his case. Similar to Olatushani, Towler states that he painted his way to freedom. “Penal ­matter” refers to the material conditions of imprisonment, which include extreme restrictions on what incarcerated ­people can possess.47 In most facilities, possessions are ­limited to what can fit inside a locked box, on a c­ ouple of shelves, or in a small set of drawers. Incarcerated p ­ eople’s access to material items is highly regulated and conditional; in most cases, they can only order goods through state-­approved vendors at prices higher than they would be outside prison. In some states, they can receive care packages with supplies from p ­ eople on their approved senders list. At any moment, however, a person’s cell can be inspected and their possessions confiscated by prison staff. Art supplies are minimal in most prisons, and therefore incarcerated ­people repurpose existing items and experiment with found goods to create. Appropriating existing material and discarded items in the ser­vice of art connects the work of incarcerated artists with other groups of marginalized artists and cultural prac­ti­tion­ers with l­ imited means and who are excluded from traditional art institutions and markets. For example, art historian Kellie Jones writes of black artists like Noah Purifoy who transformed the “notion of lack into something useful, aesthetic, and in the ser­vice of good; altering trash and shoddiness into that from which beauty flowed.”48

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​Raymond Towler, Passing Time, circa 1984–1990. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 18 × 24 inches.

“Penal m ­ atter” also alludes to the body trapped in punitive captivity. Dylan Rodríguez theorizes that “the captive is both the state’s abstracted ­legal property / obligation and intimate bodily possession.”49 Artists like Russell Craig and James Hough use art to explore how incarcerated p ­ eople are state property. Hough makes works that explore the dehumanization of prisoners as they are treated as objects and ware­housed as commodities that fuel the business of incarceration: the vari­ous companies and entities that benefit from the carceral system (see the Introduction for two examples of Hough’s work). Color, or what I call “penal hues,” is another crucial ele­ment in prison art related to penal m ­ atter. It holds enormous significance in US prisons. Certain colors demarcate bound­aries that incarcerated p ­ eople are not allowed to cross—­for example, lines painted yellow or orange to designate areas for prison staff only. The color of clothing signals security level in some prisons: incarcerated ­people wear dif­fer­ent colors based on how they are categorized (minimum, medium, or maximum). The color of clothing also distinguishes the imprisoned from prison staff. Colors can designate age categories in adult prisons, where p ­ eople ­under eigh­teen

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might wear a dif­fer­ent uniform than the general prison population. Most significantly, skin color determines who goes to prison, for how long, and the conditions once inside. Although in most prisons ­people have restricted access to paints, markers, and other modes of color through the hobby and craft room, by purchasing them through the commissary, or through art classes, incarcerated artists are often ­limited by the options available. Certain colors, like vibrant reds and blues, are not available ­because they contain chemical compounds like metals or flammable materials that are banned in most prisons. ­Because of ­these constraints, incarcerated artists innovate color. They create their own paints, dyes, and stains using existing penal m ­ atter. Their experimentations expand their aesthetic environment, given the muted and dull chromatic schemes that exist in most prisons. Incarcerated artists create dyes from hair products, print media, tea, coffee, candy, shoe polish, and Kool-­Aid—­anything that ­will dissolve in liquid and result in color. They use found material to transfer color onto other surfaces. They also use color to resist disciplinary control and sensory deprivation, as Olatushani described. Penal space, time, and ­matter are conditions that continue to shape the art of many formerly imprisoned p ­ eople, even years a­ fter their release. Mary Enoch Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, ­Ain’t I a ­Woman, 2018. Video still.

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Elizabeth Baxter’s video triptych, ­Ain’t I a W ­ oman (2018), penned u ­ nder her per­ for­mance name, Isis tha Saviour, renders her experience before, during, and ­after incarceration as a carceral continuum, which she describes as “a prison to prison pipeline.” The title of her video is taken from Sojourner Truth’s famous speech denouncing the racial and gender oppression that black ­women endure, delivered at the ­Women’s Convention, held in Akron, Ohio, in 1851.50 Baxter links the experiences of con­temporary black w ­ omen in US prisons to the experiences of enslaved black ­women, especially regarding their reproductive ­labor and the disor­ga­ni­za­tion of the black ­family by racial capitalism. Demonstrating how the black body transforms into penal ­matter and how black ­women’s reproduction is controlled ­under the carceral state, Baxter’s video reimagines her harrowing experience of being pregnant in prison. She was forced to give birth while shackled for forty-­three hours during l­abor. Shortly ­after she delivered her son, he was taken away from her and she was placed in administrative segregation, a type of isolation unit often framed as protective custody for ill, vulnerable, or abused p ­ eople. Resisting how the regulation of penal space, time, and matter sever black f­amily relations, Baxter raps, “Nothing can ever come between a m ­ other’s love and her offspring. . . . ​We ­can’t be separated even through space and time.” In the video, she visually and orally recounts her ordeal by restaging her ­labor in captivity. Using the historic site of Eastern State Penitentiary as the setting, she appears in the decrepit hallways and cells wearing an orange jumpsuit with chains around her wrists, ankles, and waist. She strug­gles with an armed male guard while her arms and legs are shackled over her swollen stomach. She is forcibly placed on a gurney with even more restraints. Her legs are held down while she cries and screams, convulsing in ­labor pains. She narrates, “Flashbacks, screams, echoes of a slaveship wreckage.” A ­ fter a life-­threatening complication during l­ abor, doctors perform an emergency Cesarean section. Her experience is similar to that of many incarcerated, pregnant w ­ omen, primarily black and Latina, who are held in jails and prisons while pregnant and forced to give birth while shackled.51 In her autobiography, Assata Shakur describes her experience giving birth in prison and having her ­daughter taken away shortly afterward. Shakur also writes of the other black and Puerto Rican ­women who experience similar terror and trauma: “They brought in this s­ ister shortly ­after I arrived who was eight months

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pregnant and had been sentenced to a month for shoplifting something that cost less than twenty dollars.”52 Baxter’s video and her lyr­ics shift between the prison and the streets, public housing, public schools, and neighborhoods where she lived, but not as juxtapositions. Instead, the video frames ­these vari­ous settings as carceral geographies that place a stranglehold on the life possibilities of black ­people. She raps: Must I remind y’all. When we w ­ ere held on the coast of West Africa, at the point of no return, we ­were in prison. And when we awaited ­those first ships, and when we boarded, we continued that journey in prison. And then that bondage, it continued when we reached the plantation. Then ­after the plantation, ­after we ­were ­free . . . ​we ­were forced to be sharecroppers and had to work back at ­those same plantations or was arrested for loitering, vagrancy, [pause] ’cause we ­were poor. And then that’s when we got the prisons for profit and forced ­labor. . . . ​It’s not a school to prison pipeline. It’s a prison to prison pipeline, and it begins and ends with your mind.53

Baxter’s commentary resonates with Assata Shakur’s analy­sis and Angela Davis’s writings from prison, as well with historian Sarah Haley’s study of black ­women’s experience in prison and its connection to the long history of racial and gender oppression and captivity.54 While Baxter’s video provides a vivid account of the carceral continuum, it also sets up an impor­tant tension that many artists in this study have described: that art-­making in prison serves as acts of freedom that cannot be completely governed by prison regulation—­and yet ­these articulations of freedom dreams, to borrow a phrase from Robin D. G. Kelley, remain bounded by the very institution that holds them as captives.55 Much of the work of incarcerated artists is framed from the viewpoint of the interior of prisons: being held within walls, ­behind bars, beyond metal doors, where one’s vision is severely ­limited by penal structures. They make art from positions of being state property, held captive and immobilized. Several socially engaged nonincarcerated artists, including Ashley Hunt, Duron Jackson, Josh Begley, and Maria Gaspar, have been making art from vari­ous positions on the outside, often focusing on prison exteriors and engaging with a

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framework of carceral geographies, an area of inquiry pioneered by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and other scholars and activists.

The Art of Carceral Geographies Con­temporary US prisons, where over two million incarcerated p ­ eople are h ­ oused, and the detention centers, where countless individuals are detained, span far beyond the foreboding architecture of Eastern State Penitentiary. Modern carceral facilities are often unrecognizable as such from their outside appearance; some are highly technologized buildings with surveillance and automation equipment that resemble a ware­house. O ­ thers are large and expansive facilities in remote communities; and many are hidden in plain sight in urban centers like Chicago, Newark, and Washington, DC.56 Carcerality extends beyond prison walls, a phenomenon explored by the field of study known as carceral geographies. Gilmore writes, “The modern prison is a central but by no means singularly defining institution of carceral geographies in the United States and beyond, geographies that signify regional accumulation strategies and upheavals, immensities and fragmentations, that reconstitute in space-­time (even if geometrically the coordinates are unchanged) to run another round of accumulation.”57 Scholars and activists question how the carceral state has reshaped social life and the political-­economic under­pinnings of this transformation. Sharon Luk writes that Gilmore’s conception “locates the prison’s place within the broader fabric of public life and infrastructure; in this sense, the identified object of study, or the prob­lem, is not restricted to prisons or the p ­ eople ­housed ­there but instead stretches across scales to name and investigate the fuller articulation of social relations that drive, and are driven by, contradictions of cap­i­tal­ist development and racialized apartheid as they have defined modern civilization.”58 Scholars, artists, and activists investigate the vast carceral network, from black sites to sprawling prison “campuses” to isolation cells, to ­house arrest and indefinite monitoring through probation, to the vari­ous extractive pro­cesses that reproduce systems of capture and immobilization. Much of the work of nonincarcerated artists involves the use of media and technologies that generally are unavailable to incarcerated artists, like photography, video, and mapping tools. Brett Story’s film The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016)

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is a visual narrative investigating the vast and diffusive ways that prisons have ­shaped modern life. Story focuses on “landscapes” and narratives that on first appearance seem to have l­ittle to do with prisons but in which the carceral is embedded in ways that are both undetectable and ever pre­sent. In one vignette, we hear a chess player, formerly incarcerated, in a park in New York City comment on the hyperincarceration of black men and their precarious economic survival: “If you see any black man out h ­ ere in the streets hustling, he has prob­ ably been locked up before.” Another vignette features the voices, but not the ­faces, of members of an incarcerated ­women’s firefighting crew who put out wildfires in California. The vari­ous landscapes of the carceral state in Story’s film weaves through cities, industrial stretches, rural communities, and public spaces, through wide-­ranging economies based on penality, and through the interior lives of directly impacted p ­ eople, ­those who have been incarcerated and ­those whose livelihoods depend on incarcerating ­others.59 In a related fashion, vari­ous photographic and mapping proj­ects by artists have emerged that visualize the expansiveness of the US prison regime, domestically and beyond the borders of the nation-­state. ­These works range from aerial photography to landscape photography to geographic and conceptual maps of carceral compounds nationally and internationally. Posing the question “What does the geography of incarceration in the United States look like?” Josh Begley, through his ongoing Prison Map proj­ect, makes prison and carceral sites vis­i­ble through algorithms and snapshots of the earth surface using Google Maps satellite images.60 Artist Duron Jackson pursues issues of scale and mapping, focusing on states with high populations of imprisoned black ­people, like Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, and Florida. From a distance, the works in his Blackboard Series appear as abstract shapes on canvas. They emphasize geometric dimensions—­ angles, lines, and patterns—­and appear to explore spatial relations between shapes contrasted by textured silver on black surface. The title of each painting provides context: State Correctional Institute, PA (2012); Rikers Island Jail, NY (2010); Northern State Prison, NJ (2010); Iberia Parish Jail, LA (2008). Jackson constructed them based on blueprints and aerial photo­graphs of prison sites. On top of the black surface, Jackson outlined and painted with silver graphite the prison’s structures, following the details of the architectural plans.61 In this series, Jackson turns penal architecture into abstraction. By decontextualizing prison, he asks his audience

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to defamiliarize what they take for granted, or aspects of carcerality, that have become normalized, such as the ways in which prison sites shape landscape in modern US life and render invisible certain populations contained within. Working within the genre of landscape photography, Stephen Tourlentes has spent over two de­cades photographing prisons in the United States. Photo­graphs in his series Of Length and Mea­sures: Prison and the American Landscape are all taken at night, rarely using lighting equipment. Instead, they focus on illuminated structures of carceral facilities and prison towns, reflecting the incarcerated and nonincarcerated populations around which prisons are built and the economic structures of penality. They also visualize the environmental toll of prisons: the lights represent the vast amounts of energy and resources needed to maintain the facilities. His images are printed in large format so that viewers experience the massive scale of prisons in American society. Mabel O. Wilson writes, “Tourlentes strategically shoots the exteriors of prisons at night in order to capture the radiant glow of the high-­intensity LED lights that render the fa­cil­ i­ty grounds vis­i­ble to the armed guards on night duty. The mechanistic 24-7 control of incarcerated bodies produces in its wake an illumination that lights up the night sky and slices across the rural horizon.”62 Tourlentes’s photo­ graph Lucasville, Ohio, State Death House (2004) depicts a residential street with several homes where prison employees live. In the distance, the bright lights from the death-­row unit illuminate the night sky. Pete Brook, creator of the blog Prison Photography, writes, “Tourlentes’ lurking architectures are embodiments of our shared fears. In the world Tourlentes proposes, light haunts; it is meta­phor for our psycho-­social fears and denial. Prisons are our bogeyman.”63 Also in the tradition of landscape photography is the series Degrees of Visibility (2010–2018), by Ashley Hunt, about which art critic and curator Risa Puleo writes, “Hunt traveled to 250 prisons, jails, penitentiaries, and detention

Duron Jackson, Rikers Island Jail, NY, 2010. Graphite and blackboard paint on wood panel, 36 × 24 inches.

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Stephen Tourlentes, Lucasville, Ohio, State Death House, from the series Of Length and Mea­sures, 2004. Photo­graph, digital ink jet print, 32 × 40.75 inches.

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centers across all fifty states, photographing each institution from the nearest public road. He aimed to represent the prison-­industrial complex as the average passerby would see it.”64 Hunt’s proj­ect, in its title and series of images, makes apparent how prisons are commonplace in modern society while also revealing how the carceral state structures what the public can see and not see regarding prisons. Focusing on the concentrated and dense scale of carcerality in cities and its impact on multiracial and multiethnic working-­class communities, conceptual artist Maria Gaspar’s solo and collaborative art examines the impact of Cook County Jail, one of the largest jails in the nation, on the Chicago community where she was raised. The jail is located in the working-­class neighborhood of South Lawndale, the majority of whose residents are Latino.65 Her works explore the massive and imposing structure of the jail’s fortresslike buildings, which are a mile in dia­meter and serve as a hovering presence over daily life for South Lawndale residents. Her art also tracks the mostly black visitors who travel in and out of the neighborhood to visit relatives and loved ones detained at Cook County. Gaspar’s art meditates on the social, economic, cultural, and psychic dimensions of living in the shadow of the jail. Most of the ­people held in Cook County are pretrial detainees who cannot afford bail; the jail averages nine thousand detainees per day. In 2016, 73 ­percent of the jail’s population was black, compared with the county’s black population of 32 ­percent.66 The landmass of the jail’s site, sprawling over eight city blocks and comprising ninety-­six acres, inspired the name of an arts-­based initiative Gaspar co-­created called 96 Acres Proj­ect. The practices of 96 Acres Proj­ect are pro­ cess driven and begin with a series of conversations among a diverse range of participants, including professional artists, community leaders, educators, students, and formerly incarcerated ­people. Through dialogue around mass incarceration and community needs, 96 Acres Proj­ect has created site-­specific art that butts up against or gets projected onto—­and sometimes through—­the fortress walls surrounding the jail.

​Maria Gaspar, Wretched and Paramount I (Extreme Landscapes Series; Google study of Cook County Jail in Chicago), 2014.

In Wretched and Paramount (2014), Gaspar digitally manipulates the walls surrounding the jail’s compounds, removing the sharp ­angles and barbed wire and creating openings so that neighbors on both sides of the wall can see the other. About Wretched and Paramount, she writes, “I use Google Earth to tour the largest jail in the country (located in my childhood community), revealing a simultaneous visibility / invisibility. While some of the 3-­D mapping renders the architecture vis­i­ble, this screenshot captures what is left out in the modeling algorithm, an ambiguity and erasure paralleling Amer­i­ca’s relationship to over-­ incarceration.”67 Gaspar has also projected photo­graphs and messages from residents of Lawndale onto the walls of the jail as another way to create porosity in carceral structures. The socially engaged art practices of 96 Acres Project connect the specificity of the neighborhood’s location adjacent to Cook County Jail to the rise in military and prison regimes in other nations. The proj­ect’s description says that Wretched and Paramount “uses the wall of Cook County Jail to look at architectures of power and incarceration. The proj­ect investigates the wall as a social,

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po­liti­cal, psychological and physical frame, imagines and reflects on new alternatives, and grapples with personal stories from both sides of the wall.”68 Cook County Jail and other carceral sites operating in Chicago have been the focus of other socially engaged, relational art practices by artists and activists working to abolish prisons and to create spaces of dialogue and interaction between incarcerated and nonincarcerated ­people. Some of this work reveals how deeply embedded the carceral network is in the lives of black, brown, and working-­ poor ­people in the Chicago area. In 2015, the Guardian newspaper began reporting on Homan Square, a secret interrogation and detention fa­cil­i­ty located in an old ware­house in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood. Over two de­ cades, thousands are estimated to have been detained at Homan Square; the Guardian reported that 82 ­percent of ­those detained over the previous de­cade ­were black. ­Those held at Homan Square ­were “dis­appeared,” meaning they “existed largely outside Chicago’s police electronic rec­ords system.”69 Detainees ­were isolated, tortured, and prevented from contacting ­legal advocates, ­family, or friends. Spencer Ackerman, the journalist who wrote the story, described at least two deaths at the site and interviewed former detainees who spoke of being sexually abused. In addition to holding detainees without due pro­cess and inflicting rampant abuse, officers at the site would transfer detainees to dif­fer­ent facilities to keep them hidden and “to deny them access to ­legal counsel.”70 In response to Homan Square, Chicago-­based artists, activists, and community members or­ga­nized several forms of protest. One notable proj­ect is Freedom Square, in which hundreds occupied a lot across from the fa­cil­i­ty and renamed Homan Square as Freedom Square. The occupation involved vari­ous allies, including the Black Youth Proj­ect, Black Lives M ­ atter, and the #LetUsBreathe Collective, and grew organically ­after a day of or­ga­nized protest by the Black Youth Proj­ect 100. Within days, the campsite included a ­free medical center, a bike repair fa­cil­it­ y, ­free meals, and a collaborative art canvas. In the words of one journalist, “The protest was part of a nationwide effort called #FreedomNow Day, where young, black activists staged similar protests in cities throughout the country to call for more humane policing and investment into black communities. Similar actions w ­ ere 71 taking place in Detroit, New Orleans and elsewhere, the groups said.” ­These protest gatherings and emergent collectivities to reimagine Freedom Square have led to another large-­scale and long-­term proj­ect called the Breathing

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Room, in which a co­ali­tion of artists, poets, activists, and journalists has transformed another ware­house into a center that responds to community needs. With no bud­get or income source, the Breathing Room is a largely black-­led initiative to transform the fa­cil­i­ty through the l­abor of the collective and other volunteers into a coworking space, with an Activist-­in-­Residence / Design Lab, a recording studio to train and employ formerly incarcerated youth, a ­Free Library and Reading Room, and a M ­ ental Health Lounge. Artist and or­ga­nizer Kristiana Rae Colón, who was involved in Freedom Square and is a cofounder of the Breathing Room, writes, “Freedom Square is not only a protest occupation, a pop-up neighborhood engagement center and a laboratory for nation-­building; it’s where abolitionist politics are tested and applied ­every moment of ­every day. We stumble Sarah Jane Rhee, “Bomba Con Buya,” at Freedom Square, Day 10, 31 July 2016.

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and sometimes hurt each other on our journey ­toward braver relationships and visions of liberation. We stay committed to healing together. We ­don’t call the police.”72 Together, members of the co­ali­tion are building what Gilmore calls “abolition geography,” which “starts from the homely premise that freedom is a place. Place-­making is normal h ­ uman activity: we figure out how to combine ­people, and land, and other resources with our social capacity to or­ga­nize ourselves in a variety of ways, ­whether to stay put or to go wandering.”73 Abolition geography is “the antagonistic contradiction of carceral geographies.”74 From their dif­fer­ent positions and across states of un / freedom, incarcerated and nonincarcerated artists engage in carceral aesthetics as they redeploy penal ­matter, penal space, and penal time to expose the vast reaches of the carceral state into everyday lives. They also work ­toward a radical imagining of what communities might look like based in place-­making that emphasizes collective care, belonging, and freedom, instead of extraction and punitive captivity.

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2

S TAT E G O O D S CLANDESTINE PRACTICES AND PRISON ART COLLECTIVES

I met Dean Gillispie in August 2014, inside a cramped conference room in an administrative building at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC), located in Columbus. I was ­there with several aunts, an u ­ ncle, and my cousin Cassandra. We had driven for two hours from our hometown in Butler County for the parole hearing of my cousin Allen, the son of Aunt Sharon and younger ­brother to Cassandra. Aunt Sharon, ­Uncle Michael, Allen’s attorney, and I w ­ ere scheduled to speak in support of his parole. By then, Allen was thirty-­nine years old and had spent his entire adult life in prison, having received an indefinite sentence of fifteen years to life at the age of eigh­teen. ­After clearing the metal detectors, our f­ amily was led into the conference room by an employee of the department. We w ­ ere told in explicit terms how to behave: to keep our voices low, what to do when we w ­ ere called before the parole board, and when and where to go to the rest­room. Then we waited. ­Uncle Michael led us in prayer. Aunt Sharon introduced us to the attorney that she had hired months

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e­ arlier to review Allen’s initial conviction. She had spent two de­cades of his incarceration supporting Allen in e­ very way she could think of. Her efforts, including hiring the attorney, had led to this special hearing, a promising sign given that Allen had been denied parole in his previous two hearings. As Sharon and the attorney went over the expected proceedings, in walked a tall, burly white man. I assumed that he worked for the department and had come to deliver some information. A ­couple of us stared at him with a distant formality, a par­tic­ul­ ar look that my f­ amily reserves for white ­people who assume they have some authority over black lives. But Aunt Sharon burst into laughter and screamed, “You made it.” This was Dean Gillispie, not an officer or employee of the state, but a formerly incarcerated person and a friend of Allen, who had come to support our ­family. Allen and Dean Gillispie had spent twelve years together, first at Warren and then ­later at London, both state prisons in Ohio.1 Gillispie, who had been imprisoned two years prior to Allen, was one of the first p ­ eople Allen met in prison. Gillispie was from a rural, working-­class white community about ninety minutes away from where my f­amily had lived for generations in a black, working-­class industrial town. Knowing of the racial tensions and segregation that existed in many prisons, I was curious about how they became friends. I asked them about it, separately and together. Neither offered details. They just said ­things like, “He’s a good guy,” or “He’s a trustworthy dude.” Gillispie adds, “Ghetto is all heart.” Ghetto, Allen’s street and prison nickname, is not what our f­ amily calls him. Neither is Henry, his birth name, which appears on all his prison documents. Not only had the two men become good friends, but their families had gotten to know each other during visits to the prisons. Aunt Sharon had even visited Gillispie and his parents at their home once he was released in 2012. I would l­ater learn that Gillispie’s imprisonment was a high-­profile case of wrongful conviction for rape, kidnapping, and aggravated burglary that had received national media coverage. He spent twenty years in prison, during which time his working-­class parents went into major debt, refinancing their home twice, while fighting for his release. Eventually, ­because of his ­mother’s per­sis­tence, the newly formed Ohio Innocence Proj­ect, ­under the direction of law professor Mark Godsey, took on Gillispie as its inaugural case. A ­ fter ten years of fighting to have his initial conviction overturned on multiple grounds, they ­were eventually able to secure his release.2 I would also learn that Gillispie made art while in prison,

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and how his experience and understanding of his imprisonment for crimes he ­didn’t commit fueled his creative work. During Allen’s hearing on that August morning, Gillispie sat in the back of the room, fidgeting restlessly and mumbling ­under his breath that he despised ODRC, sarcastically calling them “Ohio’s finest.” Despite Gillispie’s discomfort with ODRC and the fact that at the time of the hearing the state’s prosecutors ­were attempting to overturn his release and send him back to prison, he showed up that morning to support Allen and our f­ amily. He had secured a job for Allen through one of his friends, and this endorsement would prove very useful in presenting Allen’s case for parole. ­After the hearing, the board convened in a private room for a few minutes and then returned to let us know that Allen had been granted parole with very restrictive conditions. We held our cries and shouts of joy ­until the board had left. Over the course of that day, Gillispie and I chatted about his case, his time in prison, and what he had been d ­ oing since his release, including his volunteer work with the Ohio Innocence Proj­ect and his involvement with Healing Justice, a restorative-­justice program for wrongfully convicted ­people and their families. I told him that I was working on a study of prison art and was organ­izing a conference on prison art and activism at Rutgers that autumn. He responded, “Well, howdy-­do! I made a ton of art while I was in prison.” He pulled out his cell phone and flipped through several images: detailed, colorful, wistful dioramas and miniatures of Americana. For each piece, Gillispie had a story about how he had acquired contraband items, experimented with making paints and dyes, and rigged tools to construct his art. Most of the works w ­ ere made from materials that he acquired clandestinely over a period of time, partly through friendships and social networks that he had built with incarcerated ­people and some prison staff. I invited Gillispie to pre­sent at the conference; two months ­later, he was at Rutgers, sharing his art with an audience made up of hundreds of scholars, students, formerly incarcerated artists, and nonprofit administrators. Gillispie’s art-­making in prison and his friendship with Allen highlight the key themes of this chapter: how artists acquire state property to make art; how getting possession of material is based on relationships among incarcerated p ­ eople; and how both art-­making and the friendships that art can facilitate refuse the punitive codes, social isolation, and racial divisions that govern prison life.

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To make art in prison is to create ­under the conditions of scarcity of resources, lack of control over one’s environment, immobility, constant surveillance, and a combination of sensory deprivation and sensory overload, depending on where one is h ­ oused. The institution so rigorously governs what one can access that any work of art that emerges in prison is an example of an artist’s attempt to manipulate and work within or around penal constraint. The conditions of artistic practice are s­ haped by penal limitations and austerity to such a degree that Jesse Krimes, a formerly incarcerated artist, mentioned how he strug­gled to make art ­after he was released from prison ­because the restrictive par­ameters of making art inside had fueled his creativity. As mentioned in the Introduction, in most US jails and prisons, incarcerated artists can gain access to ­limited art supplies through hobby shops and craft rooms, through established art programs and classes (though t­ hese are not available in all facilities), or by purchasing them in the commissary or through approved state vendors. The art materials that are available vary greatly from prison to prison, and even within a prison depending on one’s security level. But in addition to using materials that are authorized and permissible, incarcerated artists are involved in vari­ous modes of clandestine art-­making and bricolage, or “making do,” through their acquisition of organic m ­ atter, found items, and contraband material. They do this at personal risk, ­because the repurposing of state property is a violation that can result in a disciplinary infraction, leading to an extended sentence or disciplinary isolation (i.e., solitary confinement). ­Here I set out to explore penal ­matter, a concept that I briefly introduced in Chapter 1, as foundational to prison art. As previously discussed, penal space, time, and ­matter are the conditions that shape art-­making in prison. ­Because acquiring material for the purpose of art is a central preoccupation for incarcerated artists and a requirement for the production of visual art, it necessitates further exploration. My intention ­here is to analyze how artists creatively appropriate penal ­matter and transform it into art that often violates written and unwritten prison codes and regulations, and how the pro­cess of acquiring material and making art create new social relations both among incarcerated ­people and between incarcerated ­people and a broader public. While incarcerated artists might have l­ ittle or no say over where they are ­housed (penal space) or for how long they are ­housed (penal time), they are creatively involved in acquiring and appropriating material to make

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art, thus giving them more control over material exploration than the other conditions that shape aesthetic production.3 Yet penal m ­ atter is produced and exists within the economy of the carceral state. The term “state goods” refers to property, ser­vices, and commodities that fuel the prison industrial complex. At times I use the term interchangeably with “penal ­matter” since they both refer to the appropriation and repurposing of carceral property by incarcerated artists and the material deprivation inside prison that leads to innovation, experimentation, and community formation among the imprisoned. Incarcerated artists share resources and mentor each other in acquiring new skills; often their relationships cross racial, gender, regional, po­liti­cal, and linguistic bound­aries that typically keep ­people separated in penal spaces. They often produce art from penal m ­ atter and then turn that art into a form of prison currency that they use to barter for more material or other commodities, like coffee, food, and toiletries. “State goods” also signifies the stigma of being marked as criminal, as a ward of the state, as a number ware­housed among millions of o ­ thers ­under penal captivity. As much as it is about the appropriation of penal ­matter for creative expression and economic survival among incarcerated p ­ eople, the concept of state goods also registers the extractive pro­cesses of the prison industrial complex, in which the accounting of black, Latino, indigenous, immigrant, and poor and working-­class white bodies manifests as economic, cultural, and other forms of deprivation and loss in the communities from which they are taken. T ­ hese populations are exploited as prison l­abor to produce a range of consumer goods while being paid a fraction of what nonincarcerated laborers in the United States earn. But t­ here are many other ways in which extraction as a carceral pro­cess functions. In her book Carceral Capitalism, abolition scholar and poet Jackie Wang theorizes various mechanisms of “predatory lending and parasitic governance,” such as municipal fee and fine collection and algorithmic policing, as carceral technologies of the state shaped by extractive global capitalism.4 Capitalization (2018), by Kenneth Reams, an artist currently on death row in Arkansas, examines the extraction of life, time, resources, and capital from the imprisoned and their families and communities by carceral economies. Reams describes the impetus ­behind his collage:

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My central motivation b ­ ehind creating this collage was to highlight the wrongful exploitation and millions in profits made annually by one of the main commercial prison package vendors in Amer­i­ca. Founded in 1991, Union Supply Group is a privately owned California-­based com­pany that provides low-­quality and over-­priced commissary goods to state, federal, and county corrections institutions in the United States. The com­pany’s main customers are supporters, friends, and loved ones of incarcerated ­people, who hail primarily from low-­income communities. The millions of dollars exploited annually from this targeted cross-­section of our society should be considered unjust, immoral, and a shame.5

Reams was sentenced to capital punishment in 1993 and has been in solitary confinement on death row since. He has become a well-known activist from captivity. His collage positions the punitive warehousing of p ­ eople as state property in relation to the creative capacity of incarcerated individuals to reimagine and repurpose penal m ­ atter to produce new aesthetic formations and social relations. These aesthetic strategies are framed by the state’s capacity to take his life. Many formerly incarcerated artists continue to experiment with penal ­matter once they have been released. The conceptual art practice of Daniel McCarthy Clifford, who was formerly imprisoned in a federal fa­cil­i­ty, explores common items and structures of prisons “as entry points into broader conversations about social control, race, class, and sexuality.”6 Through his artistic practice, he also investigates materials and ideologies that are forbidden in carceral institutions. A ­ fter prison, Clifford was admitted to the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, where he created an installation called Section of Disapproved Books (2018), which displays books banned in many prisons and jails. They include texts about liberation movements, radical imprisoned intellectuals, black studies, and civil rights, as well as seemingly arbitrary choices like Grant Writing for Dummies. He states, “­People who visit the Section of Disapproved Books are exposed to an Orwellian real­ity where institutions limit access to specific histories and forms of knowledge—­thousands upon thousands of banned books, right ­here in the U.S.”7 Clifford considers how such censorship shapes the security concerns and disciplinary regulations of prisons in the con­temporary era; he also notes arbitrary

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Kenneth Reams, Capitalization, 2018. Collage.

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regulations that keep certain materials out of the hands of the incarcerated. Federal Prison Inmate Activity Book (2016) is a collaboration between Clifford and a currently incarcerated associate (who remains unnamed to protect him from retaliation). It is a humorous pamphlet that appears to be a prison document. Each page is interactive and asks for readers to decode prison rules, identify items in a shakedown, and choose their crew on a new prison yard. The book has been confiscated or banned by most federal prisons that he attempted to send it to.8 Clifford’s The Leavenworth Proj­ect (2018) is a research-­intensive art study that mines the history of Leavenworth federal prison and the United States Disciplinary Barracks, a military prison also located in Leavenworth, Kansas. Leavenworth is a carceral site where many po­liti­cal activists and radical dissenters have been imprisoned, both in the federal and military prisons. On food trays like ­those used in the mess halls of prisons (and school cafeterias), Clifford has created memorials to antiwar activists and dissenters imprisoned during World War I. Called Memorial Trays, he has mailed them to the warden of Leavenworth federal prison asking that they be displayed to honor po­liti­cal dissenters previously incarcerated ­there. In the center of the installation is large sculpture of stacked trays in a metal frame titled One Ton Ježek (2018) that he calls an “anti-­monument”; it serves as a critique of militarism, censorship, and the prison industrial complex.9 Penal ­matter has also been taken up by con­temporary nonincarcerated artists.10 Cameron Rowland’s installation 91020000 consists of products made by incarcerated ­people, including an office desk, wooden benches, and firefighting suits. In the context of an art gallery, the exhibit challenges viewers to consider not only the designation of an object or ­thing as art but also the role of authorship in commodity production of which art is encompassed. His installation D37 explores the extractive practices of asset forfeiture on working-­class and poor black communities and forfeiture’s connection to the impoverishment and criminalization of black p ­ eople. Asset forfeiture is a type of predatory policing in which law enforcement can seize, then keep or sell, property that officers allege has been involved in a crime; property can also be seized for an unpaid debt.11 Rowland’s installation includes c­ hildren’s bikes and a stroller that the artist purchased through a police auction of seized property.12 Wang writes that Rowland’s “work grapples with the continuities between slavery and incarceration, as well as with the commodification of prisoners themselves through the development of new financial

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Daniel McCarthy Clifford, One Ton Ježek from The Leavenworth Proj­ect, 2018.

instruments.”13 His art is in direct conversation with and shares an aesthetic relationship with the exploration of “state goods” as a mode of art-­making and a critique of carcerality among imprisoned artists.

Mushfake and Procurement “Mushfake” and “procurement” are two terms used by incarcerated p ­ eople to describe the pro­cesses of turning penal m ­ atter into art. “Mushfake” refers to “do-­it-­ yourself” objects made from materials acquired in prison, especially contraband objects. They tend to be versions of items found outside prison, like knives, screwdrivers, picture frames, or cigarette lighters. Thomas Foster, a social psychologist who conducted research in Ohio prisons, offers two definitions of the term from his observations and interviews with imprisoned populations: “a prison-­made copy of something that was available ‘on the streets’ but which residents of the

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institution w ­ ere not allowed to own.”14 Mushfake also describes “any object that an inmate (or inmates) voluntarily constructs, using the materials and techniques available within the institution, but whose construction and owner­ship are not proscribed by institutional regulations. At Chillicothe [prison], the manufacture of hobby items, e­ ither for personal use or to sell to visitors through a prison store, fit this category: e.g., leathercraft [sic], wood carvings, games, paintings, e­ tc.”15 Mushfake is a type of bricolage in which imprisoned artists reinvent penal ­matter to create possibilities and experiences connected to their lives outside prison. It functions both to provide incarcerated ­people with items of which they other­wise would be deprived and as imaginative practices that assert agency against prison authority. Formerly incarcerated artist Moliere Dimanche’s construction of a tattoo gun while serving time in a Florida prison demonstrates the type of experimentation and innovation typical of mushfake. Offering instructions on how to build one, he writes: Take the springs out of the lighter head and heat them up (springs from a stapler or insulin cartridges ­will work also). Heat it up while two pairs of nail clippers are used to stretch it out from ­either side. Once it pops, you ­will have two fresh n ­ eedles in each pair of nail clippers. Next, you have to dissect an ink pen. Remove the ink cartridge and let it drain overnight into toilet paper tucked in a cup. Take the ballpoint and remove the ball with nail clippers so that the needle can get through and act as a substitute. Melt the tip of the empty plastic ink cartridge and press the end of the needle without the point into it while it’s hot so that when the plastic cools, the needle has a ­handle. Melt the opposite end of the plastic cartridge and mold it to the motor. Once this is done, use the floss loops to hold it in place. Take the toothbrush, heat it in the ­middle and bend it into an “L” shape. Use the floss loops to secure the ink pen to the “L” so that you have a comfortable grip (by this time, the ink pen should be put back together with the ballpoint missing and the needle ­going through it). If you ­don’t have an electric razor, you’ll have to make a battery pack by rolling paper into a cylinder, and making caps out of paper to fit onto each end of the cylinder. The paper caps ­will each have paper clips in them to give a pack of batteries a charge. Simply connect one wire to a paper clip 64

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marked “positive” and the other to one marked “negative” and connect ­those wires to the corresponding charges on your motor (with the batteries placed properly) and you have a fully functioning tattoo machine.16

Dimanche’s instructions include disassembling ready-­made items that he can access in a prison commissary, like nail clippers. He also describes making tattoo ink in a technique that includes tissue paper, cooking oil, and collecting the soot from melting plastic. Dimanche learned ­these methods from other incarcerated artists as examples of the peer sharing and collective knowledge building that take place in prison. Like other incarcerated artists, Dimanche used knowledge acquired through experimenting with the l­imited materials available to create an instrument in the ser­vice of his art and a tool of economic survival. Mushfake may involve months of creative planning and organ­izing to acquire material or state goods—­for example, tools, wood, organic ­matter, textiles, electrical equipment—­and to find a place to store them. Gillispie introduced me to the term “procurement,” language appropriated from the state, where it is used to describe contractual relationships with vendors to purchase goods and ser­vices. The business of incarceration is a multibillion-­dollar industry that involves federal, state, and county employees as well as numerous corporations and in­de­ pen­dent contractors, all relying on the caging of ­humans to circulate money. Incarcerated artists redefine the term “procurement” to refer to prisoners’ unauthorized acquisition of state goods for art-­making, survival, and challenging prison authority. For Gillispie, procurement also involved making friends and building networks across differences. His friendships in prison with p ­ eople of dif­fer­ent races and social sectors, men who worked in vari­ous parts of the fa­cil­it­ y, garnered him access to materials that he could not other­wise have acquired. Fellow incarcerated men brought him bits of material—­like sewing pins, small lights, beads, wire, and mixing compound—­that they would store in their underwear, socks, and in crevices of their bodies and clothing. Other prisoners conspired with him, asking what he needed, checking on the pro­gress of his work, and celebrating each small victory. The efforts ­were reciprocated through a bartering system, looking out for each other, and mutual assistance. Working primarily at night, when he was less likely to be detected, Gillispie built dozens of miniatures of structures like diners, soda pop stands, gas stations, S tate G oods

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movie houses—­nostalgic models of Americana—­based on what he i­ magined he would have seen if traveling along Route 66 in the early and mid-­twentieth ­century. Influenced by his childhood hobby of constructing toy railroad sets, all his works bear titles that include some variation on “Spiz,” the nickname given to him by his ­father. He also points out, “One ­thing you w ­ ill notice is almost all this stuff is [labeled with the number] 276. I believe all the addresses are 276, and that was the cell I was living in [at Warren], which was about eight cells down from Allen.”17 Procurement also served as a way for Gillispie to manage penal time. He reasoned that for each year of his life stolen by prison, he would obtain state materials and create proj­ects that kept him occupied for months. The dental compound that he acquired in small increments over many months from the highly secure medical unit was among his most meaningful acquisitions. He turned the compound into hundreds of bricks to construct First Date (2004), a model of a midcentury movie theater that was one of his most time-­consuming works. The accumulation of the dental compound required substantial effort, and he revels in thinking about the thousands of dollars that he recouped from the carceral state. First Date also features nostalgic, miniature film posters that he cut out of craft magazines, and a marquis constructed from discarded objects, including cigarette-­pack foil. In addition to procuring state goods, Gillispie refashioned authorized items that he ordered from commissary and discarded objects from other prisoners. Foil wrappers from cigarette packs, soda cans, plastic cases from cassette tapes, cardboard packaging, and the backs of notebooks ­were staple materials ­because of their versatility and ease of access: “I got into using that foil for a while; I used a lot of that in some of ­these other proj­ects. It has a ­really good, shiny look to it. You know, chrome, a stainless steel look.”18 Spiz’s Dinette (1998), a mini replica of a 1960s Airstream camper, has become his signature piece: a nostalgic, rustic, and joyful repre­sen­ta­tion of rural, working-­ class culture. The shiny exterior he created on such a small scale is stunning. Mounted on a frame made from the backs of notebooks, what he calls “tablet backs,” the outside of the camper is wrapped in cigarette-­pack foil. The curtains in the win­dow are made from used teabags, and the vehicle’s structure is held together by what look like tiny rivets but in fact are sewing pins procured for Gillispie by a fellow prisoner who worked in the sewing room. On top of the vehicle is a wooden sign that reads “Spiz’s Dinette.” Using minuscule penmanship, he

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Dean Gillispie, First Date, 2004. Tablet backs, chipboard, popsicle sticks, dental casting stone material, 16 × 16 × 8 inches.

Dean Gillispie, Spiz’s Dinette, 1998. Tablet backs, stick pins, popsicle sticks, cigarette foil, 16 × 8 × 5 inches.

Dean Gillispie, Spiz’s Diner, 1996. Chipboard, popsicle sticks, soda cans, cassette tape cases, flashlight bulbs, seed beads, paint, glue, 16 × 24 × 12 inches.

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has constructed a hand-­printed menu. From his collection of magazines, many on folk culture and collecting, he found a classic Coca-­Cola sign that he affixed to the exterior. The sign looks perfectly sized for the scale of his camper, although he jokes that his mea­sure­ments are in “see scale,” meaning he would eye what he thought would fit and experiment with the best way to work the details into his dioramas. On the door of the camper is a handwritten sign that reads, “Closed. Gone fishing,” gesturing to life off the grid, leisure, and an unboundedness unavailable to ­those held in punitive captivity. Gillispie is aware that being white and from rural southwest Ohio allowed him relative access and privilege within the racial stratification of Ohio prisons. His artwork pulls from symbols of rural white childhood and what he refers to as a “redneck” and “hillbilly” culture that many of the white prison guards identified with. He was trusted by prison administration and often asked to work on proj­ ects around the prison facilities. For nonprofits and charitable ­causes like ­children’s hospitals, anti–­domestic vio­lence campaigns, and after-­school programs, he was asked to make art as a “community ser­vice,” what prison administration framed as “volunteering” his l­ abor and time as a way of giving back. He eventually began to collaborate with landscapers in regional, national, and international garden shows, where his work garnered prestigious awards. T ­ hese proj­ects gained f­ avor among prison staff and made it easier for him to take risks with some of his larger and more ambitious artistic proj­ects. The recognition helped get him access to tools and equipment that he would other­wise be forbidden to use. He explains, “I had got away with several ­things ­later on, you know, in the prison. I got away with more and more stuff, as my art became more known in the prison and p ­ eople ­were ­really seeing what I was ­doing with what I was stealing—uh, procuring, not stealing [giggles], procuring—­from the state. . . . ​You know, they ­were procuring my life and I was procuring product from them.”19 Spiz’s Diner (1996) is one of his most ambitious and riskiest pieces. It is over two feet wide and comprises many contraband items. The roof is removable so that p ­ eople can see the intricate detail of the interior. The floor is a checkerboard pattern. The miniature gumball machine appears half filled with colorful treats that are in fact mini craft beads. The cooking grill is made to look worn and greasy due to the application of a stain that Gillispie developed in prison; he used it in many of his buildings to give them an aged appearance. He is especially proud of

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the fact that he was able to add electricity to this structure. The completion of the work involved the clandestine assistance of other incarcerated p ­ eople, in this case his cellmate: Well my cellie [cell mate], he was an electronic genius. He was absolutely phenomenal with electronics. So t­hose are just l­ittle LED lights, way before LED became a lighting staple in Amer­i­ca. . . . ​So my cellie made up a soldering iron out of a piece of copper wire on a metal rod, a short l­ittle metal rod, and he soldered the wires together for me. . . . ​He hooked it up for the electrical parts of it. Then I had to design around it, you know, to get all that stuff to fit in this building.20

Gillispie was able to send many of his works out of prison during visits with his parents, who came regularly. They stored them in their home garage. When his conviction was overturned in 2012, Gillispie returned to his ­family’s home to find shelves filled with the art that he had made during his two de­cades away. While researching for this book, I visited Gillispie and his f­ amily several times, spending many hours in the ­family’s garage, where most of his art is stored. Collectors have sought out his work, but he has no interest in selling. ­These works are his c­ hildren; they are what he produced during his imprisonment and remain among his most cherished possessions in his postprison life. He continues to create works based on some of the aesthetic experimentations he conducted in prison. In 2016, he acquired a 1965 Airstream that he found in the backyard of an el­derly neighbor in southwest Ohio. Gillispie purchased the camper and spent the next year restoring it with his girlfriend, Pam, including building coffee t­ ables from the nosetips of antique Cessna airplanes. Gillispie continues to build community among criminalized and incarcerated ­people, showing up for Allen’s parole hearing and ­those of other incarcerated allies. Now a member of the board of the Ohio Innocence Proj­ect, he has become one of its most vis­i­ble ­faces, and he works to help others get released from prison. He states, “It ­doesn’t m ­ atter, innocence or guilt, ­they’re still coming out. T ­ hey’re still ­humans. ­They’re still ­people. Why are we treating ­people so wrongly in Amer­ i­ca?”21 Gillispie and Raymond Towler, another formerly incarcerated artist discussed in Chapter 1, are among a growing group of exonerees working to support

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­ eople reentering communities. Gillispie’s m p ­ other also advocates regarding issues surrounding reentry.

Art Collectives in Prison Prison art collectives provide modes of organ­izing around art, education, and politics that plant the seeds for new aesthetic and po­liti­cal imaginaries to challenge, if not eradicate, the carceral state. They borrow from ­earlier traditions of prison organ­izing, largely the 1960s and 1970s prisoners’ rights movements, and from more recent prison strikes over exploitive ­labor practices and inhumane conditions inside carceral facilities.22 The 2016 national strike against prison slavery, or­ga­nized by incarcerated ­people across the nation, is one such example, as is the 2013 hunger strike staged at Pelican Bay, in California, against the brutal conditions of solitary confinement ­there. Undergirding some of the po­liti­cal and educational organ­izing and art collectives in prison is a po­liti­cal evolution rooted in black radical thought and a revolutionary understanding of collectivism and forms of oppression structured through racial capitalism. Prison newsletters, such as The Angolite and El Aztlán de Leavenworth, historically have been impor­tant, prisoner-­led vehicles for organ­ izing, consciousness raising, sharing information on prison conditions, and also for distributing art. T ­ hese influences are part of what I loosely call “a pedagogy of the incarcerated,” which includes forms of peer education, reading groups, l­ abor and rights organ­izing, and dialogues among incarcerated p ­ eople that cross the bound­aries used by prison administrators to manage and segregate populations. Con­temporary prison art collectives, like the literary and art journal Prison Re­ nais­sance, published by incarcerated p ­ eople at San Quentin State Prison and their nonincarcerated allies, grow out of t­ hese traditions. They or­ga­nize and operate to resist the enforced racial segregation in US prisons and to work around the barriers that separate prisoners from the general public. Formerly incarcerated writer and visual artist Emile DeWeaver, cofounder of Prison Re­nais­sance, explains: Prison culture is deeply layered by patterns of disconnect. Art is often a bridging medium. . . . ​California prisons are racially segregated . . . ​[but]

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the economic exchanges that happen around art are sanctioned events that permit interracial interactions. . . . Art mentorships exist, and in my experience, ­they’re the primary way artists or p ­ eople [who] want to be artists learn. In my experience mentorships are always f­ ree: one guy passing his knowledge to another and asking nothing in return.23

The Fairton collective, a multiracial group of artists consisting of Gilberto Rivera, Jesse Krimes, and Jared Owens, came together to support each other in their artistic and intellectual growth while serving time at Fairton Federal Correction Institution in New Jersey. They created a dynamic and rigorous conceptual-­art workshop and political-­theory and philosophy reading group that emphasized multiracial collaboration and peer teaching. In a small art studio in the recreational area of the prison, they engaged in hours-­long debates about form, aesthetics, and their favorite artists. They also read and discussed George Jackson, Michel Foucault, and other po­liti­cal theorists and imprisoned intellectuals. They saw their space as a radical break from prison rules and all the spoken and unspoken codes that govern life ­behind bars. Owens, who is black and grew up in Rockland County, north of New York City, spent his entire sentence (2000–2013) at Fairton. By the time Rivera, who is Puerto Rican, and Krimes, who is white, w ­ ere transferred ­there from other prisons, in 2010 and 2011 respectively, Owens had been r­ unning the art studio for years and had the authority to approve who got access to the space. Anyone who wanted to work in the studio had to go through him. Owens had met many incarcerated artists who w ­ ere transferred in and out of the institution, noting that among the first t­ hings incarcerated artists do is seek out other artists and find spaces to create: “They ­were ­doing their time by just making art. That’s what they w ­ ere used to. So anytime someone comes into the prison, that’s where they gravitate to. . . . ​ When you are locking up such a large percentage of the population, you are ­going to get some diamonds in ­there.”24 When Owens met Rivera and then ­later Krimes, both stood out: Rivera ­because of the large collection of art supplies that he brought to Fairton, and Krimes ­because of his stacks of art magazines and philosophy books. Owens recalls that the supplies Rivera arrived with included materials that ­were not allowed at Fairton

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but ­were approved in other prisons. From that introduction, Owens knew that Rivera was serious about art, so he made space for him in the small studio. Krimes, who was transferred to Fairton from a federal prison in North Carolina, describes first meeting Owens: What ­really piqued my interest is that I saw Art in Amer­i­ca sitting next to one of his easels. I d ­ idn’t meet him [Owens] the first day that I got t­ here. I think it was the second day. We started to talking about art. I asked him what I needed to get a spot in ­there. . . . ​He pretty much got me one. . . . ​ In a way, he had more power t­ here than the guards. I think he made their lives ­really easy. He ran all the programs t­ here. He taught all the classes. He ordered all the supplies. He handled all the mailings when t­hings needed to be sent out. ­After ­doing that for almost ten years, he had developed a good relationship with every­one. He knew every­one’s personalities. He was like the mediator for every­one.25

Owens recalls, “I came in one day and Krimes was sitting in front of my painting. He said, ‘Are you “O,” ’ and I said yes. . . . ​He was the only one t­here who knew the names of the big con­temporary artists. We ­were like investigative agents. We knew where they went to school and what galleries represented them.”26 Connected by the ­laser focus that each brought to art-­making, the three became friends, in part to drown out the sounds and distractions of prison life. They spent most of their days inside the cramped quarters of the studio working alongside one another. Each brought dif­f er­ent styles and strategies to their exchanges. Owens notes, “I quickly understood that Jesse was a conceptual artist and was an introvert. My style is that I like to question every­thing. Rivera was more argumentative with his style. He would try to convince us to see t­hings like he did.” They ­were together for about three years, but for part of that time Rivera was in the SHU (secure housing unit, a form of solitary confinement).27 They enjoyed critiquing each other’s art, debating styles, and arguing the merits of well-­known artists. They pooled their resources by sharing supplies and art publications. Owens explains how the group worked: “We would critique [art] together and then argue together about the merits of our positions. We would share the load with getting subscriptions ­because our money was tight. I was respon-

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sible for getting Art News and Art in Amer­i­ca. Krimes was responsible for Artforum. Rivera was responsible for Artists Magazine.”28 Although they had dif­fer­ent styles and techniques, they w ­ ere all interested in conceptualism. Creating conceptual art and abstract paintings involves par­tic­ul­ ar challenges inside prison ­because of the severe limitation around color palettes and materials. Penal m ­ atter served as the source of their exploration. Abstractionism also involved staking claim to an artistic legacy not associated with prison and confinement—­that is, abstract expressionist paintings, among the most revered and exclusive aesthetic terrains in modern art. Their conversations and experiments forged their bonds and fostered their creative life inside penal space, pushing the bound­aries of color, material access, and modes of circulating art within prison. From as early as thirteen years old, Rivera, who grew up in Brooklyn, had been ­doing graffiti: “When I was a kid, I used to do a l­ittle graffiti ­here and ­there, but I ­didn’t take art seriously ­until I was in prison.”29 He was active in New York City in the 1980s, during a period when the city’s administration criminalized graffiti art and issued harsh punishments for artists arrested for practicing it. Graffiti became one of the central preoccupations of the city’s evolving “quality-­of-­life crimes” policing, which morphed into the implementation of “Broken Win­dows” and “stop and frisk” policing in the 1990s, u ­ nder former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. ­Later, in his teens, Rivera became active in the Latin Kings, which he considers a po­liti­cal affiliation, not a gang. Rivera r­ ose to a leadership position in the New York branch of the organ­ization. By the mid 1990s, he had been arrested and convicted in a high-­profile case that involved other Latin King leaders and that resulted in his sentencing in the federal system. Like many incarcerated p ­ eople who are affiliated with or suspected of being affiliated with organ­izations that the state labels “gangs,” Rivera was subjected to harsh and extreme punitive treatment by prison authorities. He was moved from prison to prison over the course of his eigh­teen years b ­ ehind bars; it is a type of punishment in the federal prison system called “diesel therapy,” in which incarcerated ­people are loaded into a vehicle and driven around, often for days, without any explanation of why or where they are being transferred.30 Even though frequent movement of an incarcerated person is meant to be a form of punitive management that prevents the person from establishing strong networks with o ­ thers

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who are held captive, Rivera saw his vari­ous transfers as opportunities to acquire new art skills and gain access to art supplies. As he explains, e­ very fa­cil­i­ty had dif­fer­ent rules about what kind of art supplies one could possess. Moreover, through peer mentoring in vari­ous prisons, he learned new artistic styles and techniques: ­ oing to places and dif­fer­ent hobby shops, that’s how I learned. Like I met G this one guy who did abstract; he was awesome with mixing colors. I would go back to my cell and mix the colors and see what they did. I’m the kind of person who learns when I’m d ­ oing it. I need to make errors and stuff. I then met this guy who was ­doing impressionism in Lompoc [ federal prison in California]. I learned to appreciate impressionism through him. And when I was in Allenwood [ federal prison in Pennsylvania], I learned how to do ceramics.31

While at Leavenworth federal prison (known for housing many black, Latino, and indigenous po­liti­cal activists), Rivera met indigenous activist Leonard Peltier (of the Anishinaabe, Dakota, and Lakota Nations), known for his leadership within the American Indian Movement.32 Peltier had become a highly regarded oil painter during his de­cades in prison. Rivera learned oil-­painting techniques by observing Peltier at work. He recalls: I would sit t­here and watch him mix his oils. I would watch him mix his palette. Leavenworth is an old prison so they could use resin oils and stuff that they ­couldn’t use in other places. I would sit t­here and talk to him. ­There ­were maybe ten artists, old school. T ­ here was this guy named Richard. ­There was a guy named Shoe Shine, who was Native too. ­There was this white guy named Billy, who would do photorealism. He would do still life. They would talk to me. It w ­ asn’t like I would be intruding. . . . ​Then when I went to Louisiana, I got some oils and I start mixing with oils.33

Rivera sees his movement from prison to prison as beneficial to his development as an artist and to his management of penal time: “It was a good ­thing for me moving around b ­ ecause I got to see a lot of hobby shops. I got to see a lot of

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policy statements [about what materials and resources he could have]. I got to talk to a lot of COs [correction officers] who run ­these shops.” He states that in many places he knew more about the rules that governed art supplies than many of the correction officers who supervised the shops. He continues, “They changed t­ hings, like they ­didn’t let us take photos of our artwork to send to our ­family or to keep in our profiles. . . . ​I got that changed. I talked to the new warden, and he said that he was ­going to change that policy.”34 At times, ­because of disciplinary infractions, like talking back to correction officers about his rights or being targeted b ­ ecause of his affiliation, he was put in solitary confinement, where he was not allowed to interact with other prisoners. ­There he would continue to make art with the bare minimal materials available. While he was in solitary confinement, his lunches—­a sandwich and piece of fruit—­were served in brown paper bags. He collected the bags and made crayon drawings on them. Wherever Rivera was transferred, he found artistic community. When he was moved to a federal prison in Louisiana, he said he was shocked by the extreme racial segregation t­ here. He had grown up in Puerto Rican and black communities in Brooklyn and was steeped in the ideology of the Latin Kings—­a group that is multiracial but holds allegiance to ethnic nationalism. Whereas he had been racially and ethnically marked as Puerto Rican growing up, in the context of the rural Louisiana penal system, he was considered white. Still, he refused to associate with white gangs and organ­izations. A black ­woman on the prison staff ­there taught him how to sew during a textile class. At the end of the class, he thanked her: “You taught me something that I w ­ ill use for the rest of my life in my artwork.”35 He gifted her with a painting, which he said she was very uncomfortable receiving, in part ­because of the crossing of the color line. Eventually she took it and hung it in her office. In Fairton, working with Owens and Krimes, Rivera grew more interested in abstract art. As he had done in other facilities, he expanded his aesthetic horizons and art skills by learning from and experimenting with artists ­housed t­ here. For Rivera, abstraction—in par­tic­u­lar the play of color and form—­was a strug­gle ­because of his affiliation with the Latin Kings. Guards scrutinized his works more closely, suspecting him of using gang symbols. Rivera says that early in his prison sentence, he became inactive with the Latin Kings, but his original involvement

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remained a label that followed him wherever he was incarcerated. The top of his painting Walking It (2012), made while he was at Fairton, employs yellow and black, colors associated with the Latin Kings. In one section are black and yellow bars, a common symbol of imprisonment. Next to the bars is a yellow rectangle marked with faint white abstract shapes. In the lower half of the painting are two color-­saturated rectangles, one red with yellow hues and the other a deep forest green. The painting uses primary colors and both elemental and abstract shapes. It gestures at forms of affiliation and modes of captivity, experiences that are segmented but occupy the same space. The title can be read similarly: how our affiliations, past and pre­sent, never quite leave us. It can also be read si­mul­ta­neously as an insistence of self-­assertion and a recognition of the precarity of life ­under penal captivity. ­After one frustrating exchange with a guard, Rivera de­cided to challenge the stigma of the labels ­under which he served penal time—as both gang member and criminal—­even more explic­itly by breaking prison rules and turning state goods into a work of art. He shredded the brown state-­issued clothing that identified him as a “federal inmate” and used floor wax he obtained from his job mopping floors to create a three-­dimensional, mixed-­media collage painting titled An Institutional Nightmare (2012). It consists of his prison uniform, a federal prison drop cloth, a commissary list, Bureau of Prison forms, paint, and modeling paste. He dedicated and gifted the work to Krimes, who had encouraged him to experiment and take more conceptual risks in his art. To disrupt the stigma of criminal, gang member, and prisoner—­labels he cannot escape—­Rivera reappropriates penal ­matter to offer a critique of how the institution itself produces such labels and to assert an identification as an artist held in punitive captivity, forced to experience this institutional nightmare. Krimes grew up in a white, working-­class community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art when he was sentenced to five years in federal prison. Around the time of his arrest, he had completed a commission to create a public art proj­ect in Lancaster, so his arrest received a ­great deal of local media attention, and he was publicly shamed. He explored the social stigma of imprisonment as his understanding of racialized and class-­ based criminalization deepened while serving penal time. Krimes spent three years of his five-­year sentence at Fairton, where he conceived of and created his large-­scale work Apokaluptein 16389067 (2010–2013), 76

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Gilberto Rivera, An Institutional Nightmare, 2012. Federal prison uniform, commissary papers, floor wax, prison reports, newspaper, acrylic paint, 32.25 × 24.25 inches.

made on thirty-­nine prison bedsheets that he turned into canvases. Using his art education and combining it with prison art traditions of repurposing state goods—­such as pillowcases, bedsheets, handkerchiefs, and other state-­issued materials—­Krimes began to focus on making artwork that interwove penal ­matter with po­liti­cal theory, philosophy, and conceptions of aesthetics and value. Textiles are among the most common materials that artists repurpose to make art. Paños, collaged illustrations on handkerchiefs and pillowcases, are popu­lar in prisons in the US Southwest and the Pacific regions and among Mexican and S tate G oods

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Mexican American incarcerated artists. They blend spiritual, ethnic, regional, and gender themes with scenes from street life and vernacular culture. Stylistically, they grow out of Mexican mural art, urban and street arts, Latino / Chicano power movements, and religious art. Krimes or­ga­nized Apokaluptein 16389067 into three parts representing heaven, earth, and hell to visualize and critique dominant notions of recognition and social value. The work is influenced by his readings in prison, namely Dante’s Divine Comedy and Giorgio Agamben. He explains, “I was ­doing a lot of philosophical research and reading, and I came across the term apokaluptein in Giorgio Agamben’s text The Kingdom and the Glory, and I looked it up. . . . ​I found out that it meant to reveal and uncover, and it’s also the Greek origin of the word ‘apocalypse.’ ” Krimes connected the concept with destruction on a mass scale, and used it to reflect on his “loss of identity and this kind of stripping away of all societal markers and this destruction that happened on a very personal level, which is why I paired it with my Federal Bureau of Prisons identification number, which was my stand-in. You lose your name; you become this number.”36 In becoming a number, imprisoned p ­ eople are rendered state property whose l­ abor is exploited to produce state goods. Using apokaluptein as both a title and a method “to uncover and reveal,” Krimes notes that “the materiality of the sheets” represents exploited prison ­labor, as the sheets are made by prison workers through a government-­initiated program called UNICOR.37 Krimes initially thought of his panels as individual works, but over time the proj­ect grew into thirteen panels for each realm. “I still had a lot of time left, so I de­cided to represent that three-­tiered system by making hell panels, which had image transfers over the entire sheet, and the earth panels had image transfers just along the bottom third, and then it was sky, and then the heaven panels w ­ ere just the absence of the image transfer.”38 The proj­ect grew so large that it became impossible for him to assem­ble it inside prison. He had to hold onto a vision of the final piece while working on individual panels. He developed a method to keep track of the larger work by using the edge of his desk to align the horizon on each sheet; that way, he knew that the panels would line up once they w ­ ere all complete. A ­ fter he finished a panel, he would find a way to send it out of prison without being detected by the authorities. He used his network of incarcerated friends working in the mailroom and a ­couple of sympathetic guards to hide the panels.

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Some went out in UNICOR boxes with the label “Escape-­Proof Guarantee”; the boxes have since become part of the exhibition of the work. Apokaluptein 16389067 is fifteen feet tall and forty feet wide. Krimes used hair gel and a spoon to transfer images from print media to the bedsheets. The majority of the images came from commercial advertisements he found in newspapers, especially the New York Times. A ­ fter transferring the images to the sheets, he drew and painted on them. One figure he repeats is a nude, muscular, white ballerina; each version has a dif­fer­ent head located on top of the body. Apokaluptein 16389067’s landscape is also dotted by larger images of white models, transferred from fashion advertisements, who tower above earth. For Krimes, the figure of the idealized white w ­ oman became a way of exploring consumerism, white masculinity, class, and the penal markings that aligned him primarily with men of color in the context of US prisons. He reflects on media-­saturated con­temporary life, systems of value, and notions of beauty that are reinforced in public culture, and on how deeply impacted he was by ­these messages as a young person, growing up without a f­ather and with a young, single m ­ other in a working-­class white community:

Jesse Krimes, Apokaluptein 16389067, 2010–2013. Prison bed sheets, newsprint transfers, gouache, color pencil, graphite, 15 feet  × 40 feet.

So, the majority of that imagery is of skinny white w ­ omen, which is being advertised to other skinny white w ­ omen. ­These vari­ous repre­sen­ta­tions

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end up creating artificial values systems for what we view as beautiful and therefore valuable. That was part of the reason why I transferred them as ­these large demigods who w ­ ere trampling all over the chaos represented within the earth section’s photojournalistic images. T ­ hese consumerist advertisements ­were much larger than life and kind of removed from it. . . . ​ For the ballerina figures, I began transferring the heads of celebrity figures and politicians, and putting ­these public figures and cultural value creators on t­hese idealized ballerina figures, which, again, w ­ ere, like, floating in space, very disconnected from the real­ity and the ­actual day-­ to-­day existence of what was represented in the earth and hell panels.39

Krimes was unable to assem­ble and see Apokaluptein 16389067 in its entirety ­ ntil he was released from prison in 2014. It was first installed at the Church Stuu dios in Philadelphia, a collective artist-­run space. Upon his release, he secured a studio t­ here and began working as a teaching artist with Mural Arts Philadelphia, a nonprofit organ­ization that runs art programs in prisons, jails, and with young adults ­under vari­ous forms of penal supervision. I visited Krimes at the Church Studios a few months a­ fter his release, having read a local news story about his art. What struck me most upon first seeing the work was its massive scale, and the fact that it had been constructed in such tight quarters u ­ nder penal captivity. During that initial visit, Krimes told me about Owens and Rivera; he ­later introduced me to Russell Craig, another artist who appears in ­these pages. Over the past few years, Apokaluptein 16389067 has had multiple showings, and a version of it, titled Apokaluptein 16389067: II, is permanently installed in one of the cells of the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site. Around 2004, Jared Owens got serious about art a­ fter reading an article about an incarcerated artist in another state who made “paints using the dye and shell of the M&M’s and his hair as a paint brush.”40 Owens began to make portraits and ceramics to sell to other imprisoned ­people. ­After years of building relationships through creating art, he was entrusted by prison staff to manage the art studio and to order supplies with a perfunctory signature from an officer or administrator. From drawing portraits and making ceramic objects, he transitioned into painting, eventually focusing on abstract expressionism, which involved not only

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Jesse Krimes, Apokaluptein 16389067: II, installation at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, 2015.

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learning new painting techniques but also recalibrating his sense of time. Owens says that abstraction was part of his practice of staying in the pre­sent while being held in penal captivity; it was a tool to manage penal time by using his imprisonment as a vehicle for creative expression. He explains that to fixate on the past or to focus on the time remaining on his sentence was to succumb to rage and depression. Such thoughts would make him angry about the years spent away from his two sons, both very young when he went away. Owens, who, like Rivera, learned art through self-­training and in peer-­led spaces, also began to study art history. His favorite and most influential artists include Irving Petlin, Francis Bacon, Caravaggio, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock. He is especially fond of the work of Thornton Dial, whose expressive assemblages of found material on canvas resonate with the practices of many incarcerated artists. He grew interested in exploring how he could use his knowledge of art history and po­liti­cal theory to take certain aesthetic risks in prison, especially against the spatial constraints and ­limited range of colors available for paint­ers. Not only was he held captive, but his art was constrained by the prison’s cramped art studio and the small canvas sizes available ­there. One day he eyed a piece of wood lying just outside the artist studio in the wood shop. It was from a discarded pallet used to deliver supplies. Acquiring the wood would allow him to create a frame on which he could stretch larger canvases. To get it, he would have to walk down a hall heavi­ly patrolled by correction officers. He watched the comings and ­goings of the staff ­until he found a moment when he could casually leave the room, walk to the plank, and bring it back to the studio undetected. Owens told me, “That was the longest three yards of my life.” Another strategy that he used to work around the spatial limits of prison was to create triptychs, including one he titled Bêtes Noire (2012). Bêtes Noire depicts his psychological journey in prison, from depression, to realizing how prisons dispossess and confine poor and racially marginalized groups, to his emergence as an artist. The work encompasses what he calls “failed paintings” and a quote from Foucault that he came across in the study group. Similar to how Krimes and Rivera worked while in prison, Owens improvised by incorporating penal m ­ atter into his art. He collected soil from the prison yard and used it as material on his canvases, where it added texture and three-­ dimensionality. It grounded his experiments with abstraction and marked his time

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in captivity. When he was released from prison, he left with jars of prison soil that he continues to use in his paintings. Using the soil was also a way of taking possession of his experience of dispossession and imprisonment by turning the ground on which the prison stood into art ­matter. Carceral geography—­captivity, land, dispossession, capital—­became source material for his artistic production. He also mixed the soil into paints and dyes, giving him a way to work around the ­limited color options available to paint­ers in most prisons. At Fairton, it was difficult to make a vibrant red ­because it is forbidden in most prisons to order paints that contain toxins or metals—­like the cadmium used in most reds. Owens laments, “­There are certain tints and shades that you are never g ­ oing to get in prison. . . . ​Hues are less vibrant than straight colors.”41 Owens was deeply aware of how color symbolized power relations in prisons, which inspired his exploration of color on canvas. The walls at Fairton w ­ ere painted in dull greens and blues to subdue the imprisoned, who wore brown, “a neutral color.” By contrast, orange, which was used to mark spaces where incarcerated ­people w ­ ere forbidden, was glaring and alarming on the muted prison walls. It was the color of punitive vio­lence. For ­those held captive, orange on the walls or floor means “Do not cross.” Orange demarcated the boundary between prisoner and prison staff. It directs the guards to enforce the color line and the prisoners to submit or be punished. No prisoner enters an orange zone by accident. To do so would be reckless abandon. To cross into orange is considered a willful and deliberate act, one that could get a prisoner killed. “Orange is the new black,” according to the title of a popu­lar prison memoir.42 Tens of thousands of black p ­ eople are forced to wear orange jumpsuits in prisons across this land. In some prisons, it announces a newly sentenced person; in o ­ thers, it marks one’s felony or age status. Prisoners make t­ hese uniforms; they stitch their own fate. For t­ hese reasons, Owens considers orange a “stress color,” noting that “anyone who has been incarcerated would know that.”43 It is a color of bound­aries and risks, on and off the canvas. In Ellapsium I Descent of the Nephilim (2013), made in Fairton, Owens engages his study of po­liti­cal philosophy, Western aesthetics, and my­thol­ogy through the chromatic scheme of prison, in which orange asserts power over the lives of the incarcerated and governs their movement. But due to the limitations placed on supplies, he was unable to mix an orange that had the saturation and intensity that appears on the walls and floors of the prison. In Oculus (2014), which he

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created while on parole, blue strokes swirl diagonally across a partially orange backdrop. Blue is the color of the uniforms worn by correction officers at Fairton. The dark blue strokes intermingle with black, causing a stormy disruption. Since his release, Owens continues to explore the power of orange as a symbol of penal captivity and fugitive risk. In his 2016 triptych Ellapsium: master & Helm (2016), made while he was on parole and living in South Carolina, he overlaps a famous diagram of the Brookes slave ship (1788), what art historian Cheryl Finley calls “the slave ship icon,” with a blueprint of Fairton Federal Correctional Institution.44 The repre­sen­ta­tion of the ship, taken from Description of a Slave Ship (1789), is one of the most widely circulated images related to the transatlantic slave trade and was used by British slave abolitionists in the late eigh­teenth ­century and the nineteenth c­ entury to garner po­liti­cal and public support for ending the trade.45 Finley analyzes the history and circulation of the icon and describes how con­temporary black diasporic artists reimagine and reclaim the image in what she calls “a mnemonic aesthetics” of “remembering as a creative strategy.”46 ­These practices not only memorialize the transatlantic slave trade but also connect it to the long history of black subjugation and re­sis­tance. Owens’s triptych invokes a multitextured and multisited history of architectures of confinement and black captivity. Ellapsium: master & Helm (2016) also invokes the 1840 painting Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and D ­ ying), by British artist and abolitionist Joseph Mallord William Turner, especially in the use of orange and yellow. In both Owens’s and Turner’s works, the ship that holds captives is abstracted and surrounded by foreboding torrents of color. Turner’s painting depicts slavers disposing of captive Africans so that the ship’s owner can claim insurance for property losses as a storm approaches. Both works are shrouded in horror and vio­lence. While using the slave ship as a means to memorialize black enslaved ancestors, Owens also represents the ship as a power­ful, symbolically laden vessel that continues to operate in the current moment through the structures of carcerality and the mass captivity of black working-­class and poor men and ­women. The title of the piece reinforces this connection and resonates with Dylan Rodríguez’s analy­sis: “The ­Middle Passage marked a carceral condition that overlapped—­and was irreversibly entangled with—­vari­ous states and sites of oppression, h ­ uman 47 disarticulation, and programmatic death.”

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Jared Owens, Oculus, 2014. Mixed media on canvas, 47.5 × 53 inches.

The slave ship / prison floats in gold and yellow hues; an orange line runs along the bottom, marking a boundary—­a forbidden space. The cells of the prison merge with the ship’s hold, making vis­i­ble the links that Christina Sharpe theorizes between the hold of the slave ship and the prison, and how “the prison repeats the logics, architectural and other­wise, of the slave ship.”48 Owens’s tryptich insists on the presence of modern captives. Glaring white spaces with the remnants of gridlines haunt the carceral structure, both cargo hold and ware­house of captive bodies. In other grids of the hold, abstract black, brown, and yellow figures cluster, signs of forbidden organ­izing, planning, and forming relationships in conditions of unfreedom.

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Rivera, Krimes, and Owens continue to support each other’s artistic development and c­ areers in their postprison lives. They have exhibited the work that they made at Fairton, both together in group shows and in solo exhibitions. Owens, based in South Carolina, has expanded the scale of his paintings and has created mixed-­media sculptures as he continues to explore how abstractionism can be used to investigate racial history and po­liti­cal theory. Krimes, working out of Philadelphia, has become involved in several local and national initiatives to bring visibility to incarcerated and reentering artists while continuing a solo ­career that has been supported by several fellowships. Months a­ fter his release from prison, Rivera lost one of his hands on a construction site in New York City where he was working. He has since trained himself to paint, illustrate, and assem­ble mixed-­ media art with one hand. All three speak of the influence that their time together continues to have on their aesthetic visions and practices.

Jared Owens, Ellapsium: master & Helm, 2016. Mixed media on birch panel, each panel 48 × 31 inches.

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3

CAPTURED BY THE FRAME PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIES OF PRISONERS

For ­e very person in prison ­there is a portrait, perhaps more than one, that accompanies them. T ­ here is usually a mug shot, also known as an arrest photo, which documents a criminal suspect, and if a person is sentenced, t­ here is a prison ID photo, which is taken as part of the pro­cessing of a person who has been ordered to serve penal time. T ­ hese indexes date back to the mid-­nineteenth ­century. They are examples of the rise of photographic technology and the bureaucracies of the state, and they reflect the power of the state to dictate and enforce the narrative of the criminal by deploying the tools of photographic repre­sen­ta­tion against certain populations, largely the poor, dispossessed, mi­grant, indigenous, and racialized o ­ thers. ­These photo­graphs are repre­sen­ta­tions of carceral visuality, the state’s power to mark and isolate certain p ­ eople as lawbreakers, criminals, and prisoners. Penal portraits appear in local, state, and federal databases of the suspected and convicted and are searchable on many online sites of criminal rec­ords. Carceral visuality takes many forms in prison, from photographic indexes to surveillance cameras to guard booths and watchtowers. It primarily functions to maintain the category of the prisoner as a subject removed from civil society and one deserving

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of state-­sanctioned punishment, confinement, and incapacitation. The term “criminal index” refers to a range of data collected by the state to mark, register, classify, and surveil subjects labeled as criminals. The criminal index works in tandem with what theorist and historian Tina Campt calls “the racialized index,” which produces “subjects to be seen, read, touched, and consumed as available and abject flesh objects and commodities, rather than as individual bodies, agents, or actors.”1 Photo­graphs of imprisoned ­people by the state partly shape society’s perception of criminalized subjects and serve as visual stigmas that incarcerated ­people cannot escape. In this regard, incarcerated ­people are captured by the punitive framings of the carceral state. The images in turn impact how society more broadly represents arrested and incarcerated p ­ eople in news media, scholarship, po­liti­cal discourse, and cultural repre­sen­ta­tions. Photo­graphs are so embedded in the discourse and structures of criminalization and imprisonment that federal public defender Cristi A. Charpentier states that much of her work to defend imprisoned and condemned ­people is to create other images and alternative profiles of her clients, ones that work against mug shots and prison ID photos.2 Not only are state-­issued photos key to how society envisions incarcerated ­people, but they also remain attached to carceral subjects even ­after their release from prison. Recent studies, for example, expose how difficult it is for formerly incarcerated ­people to secure other forms of government IDs like a driver’s license or a passport ­after their imprisonment, making it even more difficult to get housing, employment, and social ser­vices.3 In 2016, recognizing the vestiges of the criminal index and its lingering stigma, Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked states “to provide state-­issued IDs for newly released federal inmates.”4 Criminal indexes not only affect the life possibilities of currently and formerly incarcerated ­people; they accumulate as part of local, state, and national archives of ­those banished from public life and civil society through criminalization and imprisonment. The significance of photography to maintaining and documenting the prison system is the subject of Pete Brook’s widely read website, Prison Photography. Brook has amassed thousands of photo­graphs and written several hundred informative blog posts and essays about them. The site, which archives historical and con­temporary photos of prisons and incarcerated and detained p ­ eople, serves as an impor­tant public resource by providing a visual account of the history of US prisons, with special attention paid to largely overlooked photo collections and

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current photo studies of mass incarceration. Brook writes, “Never before in the history of humankind has a society, during peacetime, locked up such a large proportion of citizens. What does that even look like? What is our visual memory of past de­cades of mass incarceration? How do antiprison campaigners wield images for con­temporary b ­ attles? The longer one looks at the prison system, the clearer one sees its failings.”5 Relatedly, in 2018 I collaborated with Aperture Foundation on Prison Nation, a proj­ect that encompassed a special issue of Aperture magazine, a traveling exhibition, and public programs on photography, carceral aesthetics, and the prison system. Several photog­raphers who document prisons participated, as did writers and activists. Included ­were portrait studies of incarcerated ­people, documentary photography, and the photo­graphs of Jamel Shabazz and Lorenzo Steele, two black photog­raphers and activists who worked as correction officers at Rikers Island, where they documented detained and imprisoned p ­ eople. A series of documentary photo­graphs by Joseph Rodríguez on the challenges of reentry ­after incarceration was also featured; Rodríguez, now a highly accomplished photojournalist and documentary photographer, served a sentence at Rikers when he was a young adult. The artist Nigel Poor curated a group of photo­graphs of San Quentin prison from the 1970s and 1980s, taken by prison staff, that captured the institution in quotidian and often mundane ways. ­There ­were images of the San Quentin Rock Band, whose members w ­ ere incarcerated p ­ eople, of the football team, and of a Christmas tree. But t­ here ­were also images of a stitched face ­after an assault, failed escape attempts, prison weddings, and other ceremonies. Prison Nation featured a wide range of both artistic and institutional photographic proj­ects that documented ­people held in punitive captivity. Photography’s role in maintaining criminal indexes and shaping perceptions of incarcerated p ­ eople and prison life is the subject of this chapter. It focuses on the history and significance of photo­graphs to criminal indexes and on more recent photo studies by nonincarcerated photog­raphers as they work to create visual indexes of incarcerated ­people that move away from penal profiles. Although they use the same technology that the state uses, photo studies of incarcerated ­people often complicate, if not challenge, the dehumanization of prison and the stigma of mug shots and prison ID cards. Photo studies of incarcerated ­people by nonincarcerated photog­raphers are often composed and staged in ways that

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speak to, work through, or incorporate the ever-­looming presence of the carceral state. They also meditate on the possibility of envisioning the incarcerated outside or beyond the logic and lens of the prison. Are the lenses of the photog­raphers already framed through the prison? Are they subordinate to the lenses of the omnipresent watchfulness of carceral optics, even while insisting upon other modes of representing the imprisoned? My answer to both questions is yes. The very fact that the photo­graph is taken and circulated highlights the entanglement between photography and carcerality, between imprisoned subject and nonincarcerated photographer. At the same time, ­these photo proj­ects have the capacity to forge new sets of relations and ways of looking that can challenge carceral visuality. The captive / captured subject and the mobile photographer temporarily both occupy penal space in a series of exchanges, yet they remain unequal by status, and their relationship is mediated through the camera lens and prison authority. Yet even within ­these relational possibilities, prison photo studies are of ­people who cannot consent to be photographed ­whether they desire to be photographed or not; the status of the prisoner is one in which consent is impossible. Prisoners have little authority over their body, their mobility, or their space. Their w ­ ill or desire is subjugated by the state, and any decision they make is conditioned by their status of confinement, captivity, and lack of freedom. So photos of the imprisoned are always negotiations between p ­ eople who are captives of the state and photog­ raphers who enter prisons with the purpose of documenting their captivity. This is not an argument that photog­raphers should refuse to engage the prison. It is more a consideration of the messy terrain such work entails. Considering some of the ethical and repre­sen­ta­tional challenges of photographing incarcerated ­women, Ruby Tapia writes, “The nature of the vio­lences that ­women undergo while incarcerated makes full articulation impossible. Still, ­those concerned with rendering the atrocities of the prison must and do make articulating gestures. We must and do paint pictures of the prison—in art, activism, and scholarship—as well as in the narratives we construct about this art, activism, and scholarship.”6 Tapia makes clear that repre­sen­ta­tional implications should be the concern not only of the photographer, but also of the activist, the scholar, the attorney—of all who represent, advocate for, and engage with imprisoned ­people. ­Couple ­these considerations with the desire, and demand, of many incarcerated ­people to be represented in ways that challenge or complicate their criminal 90

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indexes, as expressed in a letter to attorney Bryan Stevenson from Ian, one of Stevenson’s clients who was photographed for a campaign to bring attention to juvenile lifers. Ian had been in solitary confinement for over fourteen years. ­After the photo shoot, he wrote to Stevenson to request images of himself: “I ­don’t know how to make you feel the emotion and importance of ­those photos, but to be real, I want to show the world I’m alive! I want to look at t­hose photos and feel alive! It would r­ eally help with my pain. I felt joyful t­ oday during the photo shoot. I wanted it to never end. . . . ​I want ­those photos of myself, almost as bad as I want my freedom.”7 Ian recognizes the power of photography to alter repre­sen­ta­ tion, even if the camera cannot grant him his freedom. He expresses the significance of being recognized and valued by the photographic lens in ways that the mandate of prison denies. He speaks of a desire by t­hose held in punitive captivity to be seen other than how the state has framed them. I close the chapter by turning to photo workshops conducted in prisons, which teach incarcerated ­people the history and techniques of the medium. Though rare, ­these are critically impor­tant examples of incarcerated ­people using a technology that is overwhelmingly meant to surveil and punish them as an alternative practice to provide images from the perspective of the punished and stigmatized.8

Historicizing Carceral Identification One of the oldest archives of mug shots is the rogues’ gallery collection at Missouri History Museum, which dates between 1857 and 1867. The mug shot used to be called a “rogues’ gallery photo,” a reference to “the room in the police station where photo­graphs of suspects and criminals ­were displayed in the 19th ­century.”9 The museum’s collection reflects the rise of photography as the dominant visual regime for identifying and indexing criminal types beginning in the nineteenth c­ entury.10 It is an early example of what became common practice soon a­ fter the advent of photography: the use of photographic images as a part of law enforcement and prison administrators’ rec­ords of criminalized and incarcerated ­people. As Allan Sekula theorizes, soon ­after the advent of photographic technology, photography was used as a double system, both aspirational and repressive. He details how photo portraits became a tool of biomedical discourse and governance.11 As such, photography became an impor­tant device C aptured b y the Frame

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for the emergent field of criminology, which took shape in the late nineteenth ­century, and for the criminalization of certain bodies, types, classes, nationalities, and races. Alphonse Bertillon, a French criminologist who is credited with developing the mug shot, considered the body and physical traits of the criminal as identifiable and mea­sur­able; in 1888 he developed a system of identification called Bertillonage, which was soon widely ­adopted by police departments in several nations. Photographing criminal suspects had been common practice for three de­cades before Bertillon systematized a pro­cess of recording and classifying criminal types, largely through rogues’ gallery photos. The mug shot would serve as a tool not only for police officers but for the broader public to manage and self-­surveil their be­hav­ior and also to watch o ­ thers. While we associate mug shots with jails and prison settings, Campt points out that early mug shots ­were not taken in t­hese institutional settings: “The convicted w ­ ere initially brought to photographic studios and shot by professionals.”12 She notes that early photos of criminal suspects ­were similar to ­those taken of the private studios’ clients, down to “the sartorial wardrobe and postures of respectability that included props such as columns and ­tables,” as well as ornate frames.13 As police departments in Eu­rope and the United States ­adopted Bertillon’s system, it led to “standardizing and controlling the photographic image, coupled with a desire to delineate convict photos from respectable photographic portraits.”14 While many of Bertillon’s theories and methods have been debunked, his research led to the growth of biometrics, techniques of mea­sur­ing and identifying p ­ eople that are commonly used by law enforcement, military divisions, security forces, and corporations.15 Moreover, Bertillon’s most notable contribution, the mug shot, is still by and large how local, national, and international policing represents subjects identified as suspects, illegal, and criminal. Photography scholar Shawn Michelle Smith examines the impact of the mug shot on US popu­lar culture in the nineteenth ­century and how the genre served to extend “the domain of criminal observation outside the limits of expertise to a broad range of viewers.”16 Smith connects the early history of mug shots from their invention to the rise in criminology in the late nineteenth c­ entury and their use by Cesare Lombroso, one of the found­ers of modern criminology. She cites Lombroso, who claimed, “The criminal was knowable, mea­sur­able and

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predictable, largely on the basis of cranial, facial and bodily mea­sure­ments.”17 Smith connects Lombroso’s use of photography and other methods to classify criminal typology to the rise in pseudoscientific racism, including the use of photography to support biological racialism.18 The developments in photographic technology and the emergence of criminology and race-­based scientific theories worked in tandem with the criminalization of black Americans during the post-­Reconstruction era. As Khalil Gibran Muhammad observes, newly emergent social science fields and the use of technology and administrative bureaucracy ­were among the forces that created a pernicious and long-­lasting mark on American society of associating blackness with crime. According to Muhammad, late nineteenth-­century social scientists used statistical data to support theories and policies of black criminality. He writes, “The absolute and relative growth of the black prison population in the 1890 census” was interpreted “as definitive proof of blacks’ true criminal nature. Such empirical evidence could then justify a range of discriminatory laws, first targeting blacks, then punishing them more harshly than whites.”19 Muhammad and other historians of race, gender, and incarceration, namely Sarah Haley, Kali Nicole Gross, and Cheryl D. Hicks, have brought to light how laws, policies, and academic and social science discourses ­were employed to restructure the ­labor exploitation and forced confinement of blacks in the postemancipation era, practices that led to ongoing systems of black criminalization and imprisonment into the modern era, and to a visual archive of associating blackness with the imprisoned.20 In writing about the par­tic­ul­ar vulnerabilities of black working-­class ­women throughout history, Haley and Hicks use archival prison photos to demonstrate how the medium was used in support of racial and gender discourses that targeted black ­women. In her study of how urban reform and criminal justice initiatives impacted working-­class and poor black ­women, Hicks reproduces several mug shots of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to examine how reform programs and urban policing targeted black ­women as breeders of immorality and embodiments of criminality. She documents how black w ­ omen w ­ ere targeted by police officers who suspected them of prostitution, and how si­mul­ta­ neously black ­women ­were not afforded police protection when needed: “Many black ­women believed they had no recourse when harassed by police officers. Officers could arrest ­women on mere suspicion. If a ­woman did not have someone

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to vouch for her in court, she was likely to be imprisoned in the local jail, work­ house, reformatory, or state prison.”21 Hicks uses mug shots of black w ­ omen suspected of crimes to demonstrate the power of the visual rec­ord in tethering black ­women to state narratives and to a public perception of their inherent criminality. An enduring genre in public culture, the mug shot has been used since its inception as a method of surveillance and state control of vari­ous minoritized and targeted groups. It functions differently than the prisoner identification portrait, or prison ID photo, which is the visual rec­ord that marks the incarcerated subject as a custodian of the state—­that is, a criminal in violation of the law who has been sentenced to punitive captivity. Whereas mug shots circulate broadly among police precincts, journalists, and in public culture, the prison ID photo serves as an administrative tool of the state. It is meant to circulate primarily among prison bureaucracies to identify and take account of t­ hose in confinement. Prison ID photos accompany prisoners’ files as they move through vari­ous levels of imprisonment and supervision. Since the 1960s, documentarian and scholar Bruce Jackson has documented prisons through photography, film, audiorecording, and writing. Distinguishing between the mug shot and the prison ID photo, Jackson writes that mug shots tend to capture suspects in their own clothing, and the “­faces evince the transient condition of a person just taken into custody”; their ­future is uncertain ­because they have not been convicted and sentenced. In contrast, “All possibility is foreclosed in prisoner identification photo­graphs, and the ­faces in them are almost uniformly tranquil. The individuals sitting for ­those photo­graphs have already been in jail, through trial, and unambiguously removed from ordinary life.”22 Prison ID photos do not circulate like mug shots, though their power to attach the subject to the status of prisoner is unquestionable. While photographing and documenting prison life at Cummins Prison Farm in Arkansas in 1975, Jackson acquired a set of archival prison ID photos taken between 1915 and 1945.23 Jackson learned about the photos from an imprisoned man who led him into an abandoned room where the photos w ­ ere ­housed. Jackson stuffed his jacket with as many as he could without being detected by prison staff. Ironically, given their function, the majority of the images he confiscated w ­ ere absent of identifying information except for prison numbers. He surmises that ­these must have been “unneeded duplicates of photo­graphs in files that ­hadn’t been opened for de­

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Left: Unidentified man, Arkansas prison identification photo, Cummins Prison Farm, edited by Bruce Jackson, date unknown.

Right: Callie Brown, Arkansas prison identification photo, Cummins Prison Farm, edited by Bruce Jackson, date unknown.

cades.”24 He reads the prison portraits within their original contexts, and also as material objects—­yellowing, stained, curving paper imprinted with images of the dead. He also connects penal institutional photography to the genre of portraiture: “Prisoner identification photo­graphs are a subset of the genre of photography known as identification photos, which are in turn a subset of the genre of art known as portraits.”25 In one photo from his collection, a young black man with scars on his face looks into the camera; his mouth is slightly open. He wears the prison stripes associated with early and mid-­twentieth-­century penal farms and chain gangs. Among the 178 unidentified images that Jackson acquired, the photo of Callie Brown is an outlier. She was the only black ­woman in the photos he collected and one of the few who was identified by name. A slip attached to the back of Brown’s photo­graph stated her name, that her two front teeth w ­ ere gold, that the lobe on her left ear had been cut, that ­there was a scar over her left brow, and that she had once escaped. Brown’s photo­graph was also anomalous among the pool of

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images in that her identifying number was inconsistent with the numbers typically assigned to w ­ omen, and her photo was not enclosed in the envelope where he found photo­graphs of white w ­ omen. Instead, it was loose among the photo­ graphs of men. Jackson queries: Did the black w ­ omen have a dif­fer­ent set of numbers assigned to them? ­Were they assigned numbers in the same series as the men, which would be about right for Callie Brown? Callie Brown wears free-­world clothes. Perhaps t­ hese front and profile images ­were taken when she was admitted, and she lost the earlobe and got the scar between the time that photo was taken and her escape.26

Brown’s gaze is cast downward, her jaw is tense, and her hair covers her right ear. Her stare is somber, and her nonsmile is distinct from what Jackson reads as the possibly flirtatious smiles of the white female prisoners t­ oward the male prison photographer whose job it was to pro­cess photos of incoming prisoners. A heaviness clouds Brown. Her shoulders are slumped. She is captured. Brown’s image displays the par­tic­u­lar vulnerabilities of black w ­ omen in prison, even as it is part of a massive archive of the history of prison portraiture and the larger archive of criminalization and imprisonment in the nation. Such archival documents are impor­tant source material for analyzing the history of carceral visuality and interpreting the repre­sen­ta­tional work of con­temporary photo studies of incarcerated ­people.

Documenting Captive Subjects Photography has served as a tool to document both the reform efforts embedded in the invention of the penitentiary system and the par­tic­u­lar forms of brutality and austerity for which the system would become known. The tension between notions of rehabilitation and the retributive vio­lence of the prison is perhaps most enduringly conveyed by the tradition of social documentary photography, recognized for aesthetic conventions of realism and veracity in efforts to capture squalor, hardship, and the conditions of society’s most vulnerable and marginalized

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­ eople. But social documentary has long been critiqued for rehearsing narratives p of difference and exploiting power disparities between the documentarian and the documented. Dating back to Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890), social documentarians tend to pre­sent photographic subjects who have less access to power and resources to audiences who are more educated, affluent, and po­liti­ cally power­ful than ­those photographed. John Tagg writes that social documentary photography conventionally has been directed “not only to experts but also to specific sectors of a broader lay audience, in a concerted effort to recruit them to the discourse of paternalistic, state-­directed reform.”27 In this regard, the origins of social documentary photography adhere to the state’s mandate of the reform of the prisoner and other vulnerable, poor, and marginalized populations. Social documentary’s conventions raise par­tic­ul­ar concerns in the context of prisons. Among them are the access and mobility of the photographer compared with the immobility and the l­egal status of the prisoner as unfree; the relationship between the photographer who needs the state’s approval to shoot and the carceral state; and how overlapping ideologies and practices of social reform and retribution infuse ­these works. Bruce Jackson, who is a white man, visited prisons in Arkansas and Texas several times in the 1960s and 1970s. He was often given ­free rein to move around the facilities without supervision ­because of the friendly relationships he had built with wardens, who also tended to be white men. Over the course of his visits, he took more than four thousand photo­graphs. He recalls, “I stayed a few days, wandering around the building, driving around the farm, talking with prisoners.”28 His associations with prison administrators and the imprisoned allowed him access that many l­ater photog­raphers w ­ ere denied for vari­ous reasons, largely having to do with race, gender, changes in prison policies ­under mass incarceration, and the “War on Terror,” which has led to prisons becoming more closed and austere.29 Jackson used his access to document the racial segregation and ­labor exploitation prevalent in Southern prisons, making explicit connections between criminalization, imprisonment, and slavery. His photo­graphs depict segregated ­labor camps where imprisoned p ­ eople pick cotton by hand on the fields of penal farms—­penitentiaries that ­were former slave plantations. He is also known for a film and sound recordings that he made of work songs by black prisoners in Texas in the 1960s.30 The majority of Jackson’s work documents racial

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apartheid in US prisons in the 1960s and 1970s, and how the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow continued to structure penal institutions. Several con­temporary photog­raphers, following in the social documentary tradition, have focused on the expansive reaches of the carceral state in the con­ temporary era and the system’s criminalization and imprisonment of millions of ­people. Sara Bennett’s photography, which investigates ­women as one of the fastest-­growing populations in US prisons, focuses on w ­ omen who have received long prison sentences and on t­ hose who have been released from life sentences, many of them ­mothers and grand­mothers.31 Bennett’s photography grew out of her work as a defense attorney representing accused and convicted w ­ omen. In one image from her series Life After Life in Prison (2014), Bennett photo­graphs Keila, three weeks after her release from a life sentence, taking her first subway ­ride in over twenty years. She clutches her purse and looks upward in anticipation, as the passenger next to her covers his face. Life After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Project (2017) focuses on the precarity of housing and employment and other challenges facing ­women who are reentering communities ­after long prison sentences. She photo­ graphs ­ women in their bedrooms—­ located in private homes, halfway ­houses, and shelters—­following their release from prison. The bedroom represents intimate space, self-­presentation, and also continued systemic vulnerability and carceral surveillance. In most cases, Bennett invites the ­women to write captions for their images. Tracy, from the series, sits on her bed next to a wall display of photos of her loved ones and a collection of stuffed animals. ­Under her photo, Tracy has written: I ­imagined coming home, living in a one-­or two-­bedroom apartment, where one was a master and an extra room for guests. H ­ ere I have that. I call this room my “doll h ­ ouse,” my safe haven. I feel at peace. I’ve fi­nally unpacked. I spend a lot of time in ­here. I take pride in every­thing. I put more into this room than into the kitchen. I know I need to eat, but my room is my nourishment.

Other photog­raphers turn their cameras on how incarceration affects e­ very life stage by focusing on individuals and groups at vari­ous ages. Some photo studies depict youth in detention, whose numbers have grown in the last few de­cades,

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Sara Bennett, Keila on the Subway, Life After Life in Prison, 2014. Sara Bennett, Tracy, Life After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Project, 2017.

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largely due to policies that criminalize youth and that lower the age at which young ­people are sentenced as adults. In the 1990s, several states enacted harsh criminal laws against “youth offenders,” which led to an exponential growth in the number of ­people ­under age eigh­teen who are in juvenile detention facilities, jails, adult prisons, and other carceral institutions. Michelle Alexander discusses how racial bias against youth on prosecutorial and judicial levels in addition to aggressive policing have led to longer and harsher sentences for black c­ hildren and youths. Alexander writes that studies of racial bias in prosecutorial and judicial decisions “have shown that youth of color are more likely to be arrested, detained, formally charged, transferred to adult court, and confined to secure residential facilities than their white counter­parts.” Citing a 2007 study, she continues, “the impact of the biased treatment is magnified with each additional step into the criminal justice system. African American youth account for 16 ­percent of all youth, 28 ­percent of all juvenile arrests, 35 ­percent of the youth waived to adult criminal court, and 58 ­percent of youth admitted to state adult prison.”32 Photog­raphers Richard Ross and Zora Murff focus on c­ hildren and youth held in carceral facilities or punitively tracked by the state through ankle monitors and probation. Ross’s series Juvenile InJustice, widely circulated online and through exhibits, has been connected to campaigns to end the incarceration of youth. Murff, who at one time worked as a “tracker” for Linn County Juvenile Detention and Diversion Ser­vices, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, photo­graphs teen­agers u ­ nder custodial supervision, many wearing ankle monitors. Both Murff and Ross photo­ graph their subjects without revealing their f­ aces, due to ­legal restrictions against publishing identifying photos of ­people ­under eigh­teen who are in penal custody. Murff’s series Corrections consists of photo­graphs that combine portraits of directly impacted youth with images of institutional markers: cameras monitoring classrooms, prison jumpsuits, a bed and the sparse belongings of a child ware­ housed in a cell. In one photo­graph, a young black teen stands on a ­running track wearing shorts and a shirt. His face is turned away from the camera, a method used to hide his identity that Ruby Tapia calls “ghosting.” On his ankle is a monitoring device. Tapia writes of the contradictory relationship that Murff acknowledges in this series, between his effort to build trust with the young ­people and his position as a tracker to make sure they followed court o ­ rders, while securing their willingness to be photographed. The categories of willingness and consent become even more charged when considering ­people who are legally prevented 100

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from giving consent ­because of their age, ­whether incarcerated or not.33 Other photog­raphers have focused on the par­tic­ u­lar features of the US prison system, with its high rates of imprisonment, long sentences, brutal facilities, and enduring use of capital punishment in many states. Photographer Lou Jones’s series and book Final Exposure: Portraits from Death Row (1996) features individual portraits and interviews with men and w ­ omen on death row in vari­ous facilities.34 Artist Taryn Simon is well known for her series The Innocents (2002) in which she photo­graphs wrongfully convicted individuals at scenes that hold significance to the cases for which they ­were convicted. Photog­ raphers Jessica Earnshaw and Ron Levine focus on aging prison populations, many infirm and facing death. Most of their photo- Zora J Murff, Jerome at 15, graphic subjects ­will die incarcerated and w ­ ill be buried on prison grounds. 2014. Some scholars and activists, in par­tic­u­lar abolitionists, critique the focus on specific groups like c­ hildren, immigrants, the el­derly, or the wrongfully convicted as supporting exceptional categories of deserving subjects, meaning p ­ eople who ­don’t deserve to be or s­ houldn’t be incarcerated. The argument h ­ ere is that focusing on exceptional subjects reinforces carceral logics that prisons exist to incapacitate bad ­people.35 Veering from the realist documentary tradition, photographer Deborah Luster creates portraits of imprisoned p ­ eople in Louisiana that can be called whimsical, playful, and even magical, as in fantastical. Incarcerated men and ­women are depicted with theater masks and in clown costumes, with beloved possessions, posing in ways that challenge the very system that defines them as confined subjects. ­Others engage the camera while standing in black-­and-­white striped prison gear, working in fields, wearing cowboy hats, or clad in cooking attire. In one of Luster’s portraits, Donald Garringer, a young white man, poses in a cotton field with a sack for collecting crops secured across his chest. Then ­there are Luster’s photos of prison intimacy: a group of black men, some shirtless, huddled close together to squeeze inside the frame; the white hand of a ­father ­gently holding the photo of his young son. C aptured b y the Frame

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From 1998 to 2002, Luster photographed numerous p ­ eople in Louisiana, including some who ­were ­housed at the notorious state penitentiary known as Angola, a penal farm built on a former slave plantation where con­temporary prisoners are conscripted to pick cotton by hand, as did former generations of captives. For the portrait series titled One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, Luster worked with the late poet and professor C. D. Wright. Luster and Wright, both white ­women from Arkansas, created portraits of primarily black men and ­women ­housed in one of the most barbaric penal systems in modern time. Luster frames the imaginative portraits within the context of the grim and brutal facts of the state’s prison system, noting in her cata­log essay that 75 ­percent of prisoners at East Carroll Parish Prison Farm are black men, and the majority are in for drug possession or parole violation. She states that 65 ­percent of the w ­ omen at Louisiana Correctional Institute for ­Women, where she also photographed, are black, and the vast majority are in for drug-­related charges. About Angola, Luster tells her readers that most are ­there for violent crimes, over three-­quarters of the population is black, and 88 ­percent of the ­people incarcerated at Angola ­will die ­there.36 Like Bruce Jackson, Luster was allowed into prisons with relative ease. She recounts that she was one of a group of photog­raphers commissioned in the fall of 1998 by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities to document the state’s northeast parishes. She writes that she was driving around on Delta roads looking for inspiration. I was rounding a long curve and wondering where all the p ­ eople ­were when I saw a small prison. Maybe this is where the p ­ eople live, I thought. I parked the truck, got out, and knocked on the gate. Large birds circled high overhead. Warden Ray Dixon walked out of his office. “Fine with me,” said the warden. I photographed at the East Carroll Parish Farm. I developed and printed the portraits. Convergence.37

Many of Luster’s prison portraits are theatrical and deliberately avoid representing signs of the penal setting, such as bars, wires, chains, and guards, other than the striped state-­issued clothing that some wear. The backdrops are ­either black cloth or areas of the prison farm where the punitive architecture and brutal spaces of enforcement are not foregrounded. The settings are temporally and spa-

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tially indecipherable. Images of imprisoned ­people in stripes working a field appear to be from the early twentieth c­ entury, but the hairstyles are more con­ temporary. Art scholar Mark Dean Johnson points out how Luster borrows from the Civil War–­era photography of Alexander Gardner.38 The antiquated backdrops also suggest a bygone time. Yet the proj­ect’s title provides the context—­that is, the discursive backdrop—of the institution of the prison as an ever-­looming presence, and the era of mass incarceration. In one of Luster’s portraits, Annette Rose, a young black ­woman who is also a ­mother, appears in prison stripes. Rose’s portrait is among the most widely circulated photo­graphs from Luster’s series. Her hair is wrapped in a bandana. She holds a pair of work gloves in one hand and places the other hand on her hip. Her striped shirt is unbuttoned to the waist; ­under it is a long white shirt. She is in a field; rows of greens are lined up ­behind her. Trees are seen in the distance. ­There are no bars or guards in the frame. She looks directly into the camera; ­there are creases around her mouth. From her caption, we learn that she is from New Orleans, has three ­children, and works in the field as penal ­labor. In collaboration with her photo subjects, Luster repurposes criminal indexes as fragmented data in penal archives and as assertions of the lived experience of ­people in punitive captivity. The subject chooses what details w ­ ill be included. Portraiture production in this proj­ect is a momentary relationship in which freedom and captivity, mobility and confinement, artistic recognition and social and po­ liti­cal devaluation are the conditions u ­ nder which photographer and prisoner create together. Luster reflects, “I chose to photo­graph each person as they presented their very own selves before my camera. . . . ​I took my chances. I wanted this to be as collaborative an enterprise as pos­si­ble.”39 In exchange for their participation, incarcerated sitters received multiple wallet-­sized copies of their portraits. She also notes that the portraits are impor­tant ­because they allow her sitters to see themselves in ways other than how they appear in their state IDs. ­After she gave copies of portraits to one participant, he was astonished and commented that he looked so old.40 It was a profound recognition of how penal time had affected him and his sense of self. When I visited Angola prison in November 2017, I met an incarcerated artist ­there who had been one of Luster’s photographic subjects in 1999. He brought up the photo proj­ect ­because it had left such an indelible impact on him, almost twenty years l­ ater. What struck him most was that he

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had recently seen the portraits on display at the Angola prison museum. He could not locate the portrait of himself, even though it was included in the exhibit. Prison had changed him in ways that made him visibly unrecognizable to himself. In another portrait of intimate belonging, the photographic subject is only partially vis­i­ble. Luster’s camera frames a white male prisoner’s extended forearm bearing a tattooed outline of a ­woman’s body. ­There are no vis­i­ble signs of his incarceration. In his hand, he holds a school portrait of his son. Working with Luster, he staged the photo to convey to his son that he is always with him, that he holds him near, and that his touch is a gesture of protection. Both f­ather and son are framed through institutional photography—­prison and school—­through which they l­abor as disciplined subjects to communicate to the other. They touch feeling, to paraphrase Eve Sedgwick. They feel touched. They touch and are felt by the other. To produce an intimacy between viewers and photographic subjects, Luster exhibits the portraits inside a cabinet. The images are small—­palm-­sized, “like my ­family’s photo­graphs,” writes Luster.41 By design, viewers must commit to seeing by opening drawers, choosing images, removing them from the bureau, and holding them close. One must bring the portrait ­toward one’s face. The series is also a haptic invitation—­one that involves the sensory experience of touching.

Visualizing from within Directly Impacted Communities Also focusing on prisons and the imprisoned in Louisiana, Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick document the long-­term impact of prisons on black communities from the perspectives of t­ hose who have been directly impacted. Their photo­graphs capture the carceral state’s diffusive reach into the everyday lives of black ­people. Calhoun and McCormick, who have worked together as collaborators and as a ­couple since the early 1980s, ­were both born and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, a multigenerational black neighborhood known for a long history of black ­music and culture. Lower Ninth Ward is also associated with harrowing video and photos of black residents stranded on roofs during Hurricane Katrina. And their photography makes links between dispossession, resource extraction, ­labor exploitation, and astronomical numbers of

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Deborah Luster, L.C.I.W. St. Gabriel, Louisiana, Annette Rose, doc # 391605, dob. 1.31.74, pob. New Orleans, sentence 5 years, 3 ­children, work. field, 2000, 5 × 4 inches.

Deborah Luster, E.C.P.P.F., Transylvania, Louisiana, doc # 216042, pob. New Orleans, sentence. 3 ½ years, 1999, 5 × 4 inches.

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black residents in the state’s prisons and jails. They consider their work “social activism through photography.”42 ­Until 2017, Louisiana was labeled the prison capital of the world ­because it incarcerated more ­people per capita than any other state. (The United States incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other nation.)43 Calhoun and McCormick document both the urban communities, like New Orleans, that have been restructured by incarceration and the rural environments where most prisons in Louisiana are located. Their work connects criminal indexes to the history of racialization and black subjugation in the state. It also reveals the politics of access, which largely depends on the race and gender of the photographer. In 1980, Calhoun first visited Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, with a white French photographer, Bernard Hermann, who had received a grant to create a photo study of black life in New Orleans.44 Calhoun had met Hermann at a jazz club in New Orleans and suggested that the photographer visit Angola to get another perspective on the conditions of black life and the per­sis­tence of racial captivity in the region. Calhoun offered to go with Hermann if he could get permission to photo­graph at the prison. They w ­ ere able to get access to vari­ous units, including the hole. Calhoun believes that the access they w ­ ere granted was 45 partly due to Hermann’s position as a white Eu­ro­pean man. One of the most infamous prisons in the world, Angola sprawls across eigh­ teen thousand acres and is located on a former slave plantation. It is the largest maximum-­security prison in the nation, housing nearly six thousand ­people identified by the state as men.46 It is also the oldest prison in the state; it has been in operation as a penal farm since 1880.47 Prisoners are forced to work the fields and in husbandry. According to prison staff, newcomers to the prison work the cotton fields and other crops for as l­ ittle as two cents per hour.48 In 2012, about 75 ­percent of the incarcerated population at Angola was black while the majority of the staff was white.49 Many of the staff come from families who have worked at Angola for generations, and they live in a separate community on the penal farm or in neighboring rural towns. The vast majority of p ­ eople in Angola have been sentenced to life in a state that has the highest percentage of people sentenced to life without parole in the nation. In other words, a life sentence means in most cases that a prisoner w ­ ill die in prison.50 ­Because of its direct link to plantation slavery

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and its history of brutality, Angola is widely documented and discussed among photog­raphers and scholars of imprisonment in the United States. Calhoun had known about Angola his entire life. Many of his neighbors had dis­appeared from the streets of his community and had ended up ­there. When he visited Angola with Hermann, Calhoun came across several men from the Ninth Ward who had been locked away for years. He recalls one neighbor saying, “Tell my mamma I’m ­here.” At that moment, he knew that he was not documenting as a journalist. He was photographing his friends, neighbors, and childhood playmates. Recognizing himself and some of his incarcerated relatives in the prisoners, Calhoun states, “It could have been me back t­here. Some of the ­things that I ran with and played with, now I’m facing them with my Nikon camera. It was like an opportunity to get beyond Bernard’s power to get inside the prison, ya know? And he was an incredible photographer, too, Bernard.”51 Among Calhoun’s earliest photo­graphs documenting the prison are two taken during that trip in 1980: one of Glenn Demourelle in his cell in the solitary confinement unit at Angola, called CCR for closed cell restricted, and another of a chess game happening in the hallway of CCR. (CCR is also where the Angola Three ­were held captive for de­cades, discussed in Chapter 6.) In Glenn Demourelle, Angola State Prison CCR Lockdown (1980), the incarcerated man looks between the bars. He directs his gaze at Calhoun’s camera, insisting upon having his presence recorded in a space of deprivation. From that initial experience, Calhoun and McCormick have dedicated their lives to portraying how their neighbors and community have been enfolded into the carceral state. They photo­graph black p ­ eople as they enter and exit, or exit and enter, prisons. They have also photographed funerals of relatives of incarcerated people. Calhoun explains: I think our main focus was on how families had to deal with an incarcerated person in the f­ amily, you know, the effect that incarceration had on families as a w ­ hole. The families are just as incarcerated when their p ­ eople are incarcerated b ­ ecause they have to deal with all of t­hose issues from the outside, worrying about [them]. . . . ​So, I think our photos just went a ­little more in-­depth, ­because we w ­ ere looking at dif­fer­ent points of view. The families, as well as the inmate in the prison.52

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​Chandra McCormick, Young Man, 2013.

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Calhoun and McCormick work in a tradition of black documentary photog­raphers who are immersed in the community they are documenting.53 Their photos are a combination of portraits, environmental shots, and documents of institutions of racial capitalism and captivity. In a 2004 portrait, McCormick photo­graphs ­Daddy’O, who at the time was the oldest incarcerated person at Angola. And while they create portraits of incarcerated ­people, the images for them need to be seen in a larger context of black life and the subjugation of black ­people in their state. Young Man (2013), by McCormick, depicts an incarcerated black man in stripes standing against a chain-­link fence. He wears beads around his neck. His eyes meet her camera. She took this photo b ­ ecause she identified with the young man, who is about the same age as her son, and she recognized his sadness. In one of the ­couple’s well-­known photo­graphs, Men ­Going to Work (2004), four black men with hoes over their shoulder walk in one of Angola’s fields; in the background is a white prison guard on ­horse­back, holding a gun angled upward, who oversees the laborers. An art critic writes, “Calhoun and McCormick’s photo­graphs find a visual pitch that can stand against the United States’ most brutal example of prison ­labor in existence ­today and the horrific slavery-­like conditions ­these men are forced to endure.”54 In 2016, their work was included in the Venice Biennale; they chose to exhibit the photos ­under the title Slavery: The Prison Industrial Complex. In so ­doing, they link to a larger body of scholarship, journalism, and activism that makes explicit the connections between vari­ous forms of subjugation of black ­people. Calhoun and McCormick also use the title to address the specific conditions of being incarcerated in rural Louisiana, where large percentages of imprisoned p ­ eople are conscripted to penal farms. The title has not been well received by the administrators at Angola, which has made it more challenging for the photog­raphers to get access to prison.55

Over the years, Calhoun and McCormick have collaborated with several New Orleans artists and musicians on installations, exhibitions, and community interventions. One of their longest collaborations has been with Chief Darryl Montana, known for his elaborate suits, masking, and per­for­mances during Mardi Gras. While this work might seem quite dif­fer­ent from their studies of prison life, the two are interlinked in demonstrating how the carceral landscape goes beyond the built environment of the prison. All of black New Orleans life is disrupted by the carceral state. Montana’s b ­ rother died while imprisoned at Angola.

Collaborative Portraits of the Profiled Like Calhoun and McCormick, other con­temporary black photog­raphers and artists, including Bayeté Ross Smith, Dread Scott, and Ruddy Roye, have explored racial profiling and the hyperincarceration of black youth and young adults. Some of t­hese proj­ects focus on the surveillance technologies and aggressive policing that plague communities of color, not only in urban settings but also in small and midsize towns, such as Ferguson, Missouri. Like the scholars Elizabeth Hinton, Victor Rios, Donna Murch, and ­others, ­these photog­raphers bring awareness to how resource scarcity, racist public discourse, and local policing practices make vulnerable the lives of the profiled and hyperincarcerated and put them at high risk to be arrested and imprisoned. Dread Scott’s use of portraiture in his solo and collaborative work falls in line with the social documentary tradition of using photography to portray injustice. But Scott also deviates from the conventions of social documentary through his incorporation of per­for­mance, staging, and multiple artistic disciplines. He has created several proj­ects that explore American racial history and criminalization through portraiture, audio interviews, and collaborative multimedia proj­ects. His artistic practice turns a con­temporary lens on the history of black subjugation and freedom strug­gles. Scott states, “I make revolutionary art to propel history forward.”56 His series Lockdown (2000–2004) consists of visual and audio portraits of imprisoned ­people and “tells the story of a society that imprisons over 2 million p ­ eople from the viewpoint of t­ hose locked down. I work with inmates—­photographing them and hearing their stories.”57

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In Postcode Criminals (2011–2012), Scott collaborated with the British artist Joanne Kushner and youth participants from New York and E ­ ngland in a multitiered critique of stop-­and-­frisk policing. The show, which exhibited at Rush Arts Gallery in New York City, engaged the practice by focusing on the populations most targeted by it. As criminologists have long noted, disproportionate numbers of incarcerated ­people in US state prisons and local jails are teenage boys and young black and Latino men from urban communities. However, as Jonathan Simon notes in “Rise of the Carceral State,” in many state prisons, the majority of prisoners come from a few aggressively policed and overly surveilled neighborhoods. The hyperincarceration of ­people from targeted postal or zip codes inspired the title of the exhibition.58 Moreover, formerly incarcerated activists like Eddie Ellis have demonstrated how the hyperincarceration of black and brown ­people benefits rural and mainly white communities, where many prisons are located, by giving them more electoral power than communities from where imprisoned ­people are removed, a practice called “prison gerrymandering.”59 Made popu­lar by former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, stop-­and-­frisk is an aggressive, highly vis­i­ble mode of policing in which subjects are searched and patted down on street corners, subway platforms, and other public areas.60 It is an example of what sociologist Victor Rios calls the hypercriminalization of black and Latino boys and young men: “the pro­cess by which an individual’s everyday be­hav­ iors and styles become ubiquitously treated as deviant, risky, threatening, or criminal, across social contexts.”61 In light of incidents of extreme vio­lence against and murders of unarmed black p ­ eople by police—­like the cases of Eric Garner and Freddie Gray—­stop-­and-­frisk is one area of carcerality for which activists have been able to gain support from broader co­ali­tions and politicians. Although high-­profile cases attract national media attention, scholars and activists fighting against mass incarceration highlight the negative toll taken by the everyday practice of stop-­and-­ frisk on the psychic, emotional, social, economic, and physical condition of the neighborhoods targeted by such practices. Scott and Kushner’s collaboration focuses on the routine vio­lence the policy endorses: police harassment, stalking, verbal assaults, planting evidence, and unjustified arrests that make ­those targeted more susceptible to incarceration based on the frequency of their contact with law enforcement. Scott explains, “Postcode Criminals is the name we chose ­because we understood that p ­ eople ­were criminalized based on where they live.”62

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In working-­class neighborhoods in E ­ ngland, profiled groups are largely black and Muslim young men and teens, as well as poor and working-­class white young men. Postcode Criminals came about in direct response to a meeting between the New York Police Department and the police force in Liverpool, ­England; the meeting was initiated by Liverpool to consult with NYPD about how to implement stop-­and-­frisk ­there.63 Scott states, “Stop-­and-­frisk is a policy that originated in New York and has spread across the country and the world like a virus where youth are s­ topped all the time. . . . ​This is profoundly racist policy, and the same ­thing is happening in Liverpool.”64 Developing Postcode Criminals involved an eighteen-­month pro­cess during which Kushner and Scott visited each other’s cities, and youth participants brainstormed and communicated via Skype. Kushner and Scott also held workshops with youth—­primarily young men from poor and nonwhite neighborhoods—in Brooklyn and Liverpool to have conversations about the conditions they ­were facing. The young participants ­were given training in photography. Scott explains, “So the youth made some work using cell phones, which is the way that uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt became known to the world, through very inexpensive technology. And that was a technology that t­ hese young p ­ eople had, so I said, ‘Let’s use ­these to show what it’s like to live u ­ nder occupation of the NYPD.’ ”65 The exhibition for Postcode Criminals consists of photography and video by Kushner, Scott, and the youth contributors. The young participants made photo­ graphs and video stills of the urban landscapes of both cities, with par­tic­u­lar emphasis on neighborhoods and sites where profiling most frequently takes place. In one of the videos produced by Scott, titled Stop (2012), three life-­size panels of young men in New York face panels of young men in Liverpool in a two-­channel projection on the gallery walls. In the full-­body video portraits, the young men speak to the camera, across the gallery space and across geographic and temporal distance. Through their body language and short responses, the video subjects express the commonplace terror of racial profiling. Each participant states how many times he has been the victim of stop-­and-­frisk policing. They speak to each other in recognition and solidarity, while also speaking to local and international audiences. A young man in the m ­ iddle is the first to speak: “I’ve been s­ topped by the cops 60 times or more.” Another from Brooklyn responds, “I’ve been ­stopped about 150 times, prob­ably a ­little bit more,” followed by a young man

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from Liverpool, who says, “I’ve been ­stopped and searched more than 100 times.” The video loops their testimonies. The redundancy of their encounters with police is largely the point of the video, yet hearing their testimonies more than once, or being familiar with such statistics, does not lessen the impact of observing how they are routinely terrorized in their own neighborhoods. The collaboration is a po­liti­cal and aesthetic way to document the links between local policing, racial profiling, and mass incarceration in both nations. The work also alludes to the rise of penality as a common form of governance in marginalized neighborhoods in Western nations. Video portraits attempt to complicate the singularity and stillness of the photographic portrait: being directly addressed by the subject’s voice asserts an authority often absent from photographic portraiture.

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Dread Scott, Stop, 2012. Video still.

The Prisoner as Photographer This chapter has mostly focused on the work of nonincarcerated photog­raphers who take photos of imprisoned p ­ eople, given the general ban against incarcerated ­people having access to photographic and video-­recording technologies. A few carceral facilities allow or have previously allowed photo workshops onsite, proj­ects that require approval and oversight and that tend to be framed as forms of rehabilitation. In Lorton’s Dark Room is a short documentary about a photography program that took place in Lorton Correctional Fa­cil­i­ty, located in ­Virginia, from 1981 to 1988. It was taught by photographer and educator Karen Ruckman. Most of the

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Calvin Gorham, Self-­Portrait, 1983.

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men imprisoned in Lorton w ­ ere from Washington, DC, a city radically remapped and depopulated by mass incarceration and the War on Drugs during the period that the workshop took place. The film documents the proliferation of photo­graphs produced by the workshop participants and the community that formed around imprisoned self-­representation in a po­liti­cal era that intensified the demonization and criminalization of young, poor black men.66 The images themselves show individual strug­gle and isolation as well as forms of community and solidarity, with the prison as the omniscient backdrop. Karen Ruckman explains that she was able to get the program approved and funded ­under a mandate to bring vocational ser­vices into local carceral facilities. At the time, cameras w ­ ere not allowed in the prison, not even by the press. Ruckman built the program from scratch, purchasing equipment and setting up a dark room. Participants ­were taught all aspects of photography and development and ­were able to use the equipment to document events at the prison and to take portraits. They held regular exhibitions inside Lorton and in the DC metro area. Some of the program’s gradu­ates have gone on to develop ­careers in photography, but Ruckman states that they have faced discrimination and institutional barriers ­because of their prior convictions: “For example, Michael Moses El was hired by US News and World Report to photo­graph for an article on the underclass. His photo­graph was selected for the cover, but his image was removed when it was discovered by editors that he was newly released from Lorton Prison.”67 Currently, photography professor Joan O’Beirne runs a course at the Greenfield Jail in Mas­sa­chu­setts that she models on the courses she teaches at Greenfield Community College. Incarcerated men have access to digital cameras and

Michael Moses El, Self-­Portrait with Desi, 1985.

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learn photographic technique. Occasionally, she receives permission for the men to go outdoors to take part in exercises. They also mount regular exhibits in the prison fa­cil­it­ y and outside it. In the tradition of rehabilitative arts is the Cook County Jail Photo Workshop, in Chicago, which teaches photography skills using point-­and-­shoot digital cameras to detained men ­housed in the ­mental health unit. Founded by photographer Christopher Jacobs, the Cook County Jail Photo Workshop has received considerable media attention, in part b ­ ecause in 2015 Nneka Jones Tapia, a black psychologist who is also the ­daughter of a formerly incarcerated ­father, was appointed to direct the entire jail a­ fter having overseen its m ­ ental health unit. Inspired by Tapia’s leadership, Jacobs began volunteering at the jail, which led to a full-­time position. Cook County is one of the largest jails in the nation, and it ­houses one of the nation’s largest public psychiatric facilities.68 It also has a notorious history of vio­lence and abuse of detainees. Many of the detainees ­housed in the jail, by some estimates one-­third of the jail’s population, are houseless and poor ­people with ­mental illness.69 Although I was allowed to tour the workshop, ­because of patient confidentiality I was unable to meet with the detainees or to document any of the photography. From the photos on the walls, I surmised that the majority of the participants are black, and they range in age from their teens to their sixties and seventies. The images, which are printed on regular office paper for reasons of cost, number in the thousands. They are taped along most of the walls and bulletin boards throughout the three buildings that I toured. They are colorful and the topics are varied; ­there ­were several photocollages and sculptural works based on photo­ graphs. I ask Jacobs about the audiences for the work, since most of the images have not circulated outside the ­mental health unit. The works are on display for jail administrators, staff, the detainees, and their families. One photocollage, called Priceless Moments in a Blink, consists of several snippets of photos arranged in a narrative form that speaks to the detainee’s life before ­going to prison. In another room of the unit, three colorful and surreal photo­graphs made from inside a fish bowl are on display. In the winter, when it’s too cold to visit the jail’s garden, Jacobs brings in small tanks of goldfish, and the detainees use their cameras, which are waterproof, to photo­graph inside the tanks. Abolitionist activists and critics of Cook County Jail have raised impor­tant concerns about how

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positive news coverage of the jail’s ­mental health unit obscures the conditions that lead to ­people with m ­ ental health illnesses being criminalized and incarcerated. A statement appears on the website of the Chicago Community Bond Fund, a volunteer-­driven organ­ization that raises funds to post bail for ­people detained in Cook County: “Meaningful m ­ ental health care c­ an’t happen inside a cage. Shame on the media for continuing to peddle this narrative, which allowed jailers to reshape incarceration as a form of care or a ser­vice.”70 Moving beyond the rehabilitative model, Humanize the Numbers is another con­temporary photo-­based workshop and collaboration in Michigan state prisons. Facilitator Isaac Wingard of the University of Michigan, along with formerly incarcerated collaborator Corey Scales, works with incarcerated participants to build themes and produce images that directly address mass incarceration. The workshop aims to c­ ounter the anonymity and dehumanization of the carceral state and work with incarcerated p ­ eople to codocument and coauthor proj­ects that bring photo­graphs and text together. The collaboration does not exhibit or show the work without the permission of participants.71 ­These photographic practices among incarcerated ­people, rare as they are, are alternatives to the historical usage of photography by prisons to visualize and index incarcerated p ­ eople as punitive mea­sures. They are photographic rec­ords of penal space and markers of penal time by t­ hose held as captive subjects. The photos also demonstrate experimentation and the skillful manipulation of repre­sen­ta­ tional technologies that offer numerous, yet subordinated, perspectives on the prison as a legislated and regulated site of ­human caging and captivity. In ­later chapters I ­will examine clandestine video footage shot from solitary confinement and another photographic practice allowed by the state: vernacular studio photos of ­family members who are visiting their incarcerated loved ones. In recent years, with the proliferation of smart phones, which have entered prisons as contraband items, often smuggled in by correction officers, photos that refute or violate the state’s oversight have been recorded by imprisoned ­people.72 They are all attempts to wrestle with the overwhelming power of the carceral state to provide and fix visual rec­ords of the criminalized and incarcerated. While they do not share the same agenda or a unifying perspective, they complicate criminal indexes by offering dif­fer­ent a­ ngles of looking in, looking through, and looking out of prisons.

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4

INTERIOR SUBJECTS P O R T R A I T S B Y I N C A R C E R AT E D A R T I S T S

On a wall in a home in northeast Ohio are three painted portraits. One is of a young man named DeCarrio, who is in his early twenties. In the second, a ­woman, dressed formally, poses in a dark blazer with her hand to her cheek; she is DeCarrio’s maternal grand­mother, Mary Alice. The third painting is a group portrait of DeCarrio with his m ­ other, his s­ ister, and his young son. In the solo portrait, DeCarrio looks to the side and is illuminated by a radiant light entering the frame from the left. His brown skin appears golden, and his dark eyes are shiny marbles; he leans ­toward us as if reaching out of the frame. In the f­ amily portrait, he appears in the traditional stance of the patriarch, positioned in the center and ­behind the rest of the ­family, surrounded by the ­women and child. Doris, DeCarrio’s ­mother, who works as a correction officer at an Ohio state prison, commissioned the paintings from incarcerated artists ­after DeCarrio was killed in their hometown. As a way of honoring his memory and creating a visual lineage of their f­ amily, Doris, like many ­people who work in prisons or who are incarcerated, hired an incarcerated artist to memorialize a loved one through portraiture. I came to know of t­ hese portraits through learning about the loss endured by Doris and DeCarrio’s ­father, the artist and filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson. Kevin 118

Edward, Portrait of Doris, DeCarrio, and ­Family, 2010.

Cleveland, Portrait of DeCarrio, 2010.

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photographed t­ hese painted portraits so that I could include them in this book. I also have come to know ­these portraits through a lineage of black ­family portraiture, the felt experience of the precarity of our everyday lives, and our tethering to carcerality due to ­limited employment options or forced captivity. I mourn with DeCarrio’s parents and the incarcerated artists who painted the portraits. I mourn for all they represent. Portraits, often laden with loss, death, separation, and love—­like the ones hanging in Doris’s home—­populate the walls in the homes and offices of p ­ eople who work in prisons and who have incarcerated loved ones. Portraiture is one of the most common genres of art-­making inside prisons and one of the most frequently collected forms of prison art, on both the inside and the outside. It is a genre of primary significance to, for, and about incarcerated ­people. For many incarcerated artists, portraiture is an entry into the world of art-­ making. Jared Owens describes how in the early stages of his artistic development in prison, he drew portraits before moving on to ceramics and then abstract painting. Portraiture is also a genre for which highly skilled incarcerated artists receive recognition and re­spect from other incarcerated p ­ eople, prison staff, and sometimes a larger public. The making of portraits in prison is ­shaped by material limitations that impact artists of all genres. B ­ ecause they involve the fewest resources, graphite portraits are often drawn on everyday materials, like brown paper bags, lined notebook pages, office paper, pillowcases, even prison documents. The series Mugs (2010–2011), created by Daniel McCarthy Clifford during his time in federal prison, comprises graphite renditions of p ­ eople who served time with him. He drew them on the brown paper bags in which lunches w ­ ere served. Artists in prison who have access to art studios, workshops, and art supplies create portraits in vari­ous media, including lithographs, oil paintings, and sculpture. The styles range from gel-­pen drawings to acrylic paintings to collages to mixed-­media depictions. The subject ­matter varies as well: some focus on self-­ portraits; many use photo­graphs of celebrities or public figures as subjects of study, tracing images from newspapers and magazines. O ­ thers create intimate portraits of ­family members, friends, and loved ones based on photo­graphs, and some, like Clifford, paint or draw other incarcerated ­people. If, as we have seen in the previous chapters, art made in prison is largely pos­ si­ble through the creative use of state goods, then prison art, more often than not,

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Daniel McCarthy Clifford, Mugs, 2010–2011.

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is an expression of defiance t­ oward the state. This is especially the case when artists incorporate criminal indexes, like mug shots and prison ID cards, into their art. Portraits made in prison manifest carceral aesthetics rendered from the perspective, imagination, and craftsmanship of artists held in punitive captivity. Through portraiture, the imprisoned claim the right not only to look but also to represent themselves and ­others. Not only do they sense and observe within the confines of penal space and time; they also discern and manifest meaning about subjectivity through the creative use of penal m ­ atter to make their art. They take creative license to produce repre­sen­ta­tions of o ­ thers, even while held captive as prisoners, a status rendering them vulnerable, othered, and unfree. Portraiture is a form of veneration with a long tradition in art and visual culture. Its form, relationship to historical subjects, and reception have preoccupied artists, critics, and audiences for centuries. A portrait, within the domain of art and art history, is not merely the repre­sen­ta­tion of an individual but an image that reflects vari­ous details that extend beyond the person represented, such as class, lineage, gender, racial categorization, social status, and so on. Within the Western art tradition, portraiture dates back to the Greco-­Roman period and takes many forms—­painting, sculpture, photography, ­etc. A portrait is most often meant to be honorific and aspirational. Art historian Richard Brilliant explains that part of the power of portraiture is how it oscillates “between art object and h ­ uman subject.”1 He continues, “Portraits exist at the interface between art and social life and the pressure to conform to social norms enters into their composition b ­ ecause both the artist and the subject are enmeshed in the value system of their society.”2 This interface between the value systems governing society and the shifting roles of art grows more complex when considering portraits of and made by ­people with ­little social value and capital, notably the imprisoned, the enslaved, the criminalized. Wealth, accumulation, and social status are symbolic ele­ments on display in the dominant Western tradition of portraiture, an art form that ­people of means commission to memorialize their personhood and often their ­family lineage. Portraits ­were and have been a visualization of privilege and personhood, and also of property. Art historian Adrienne Childs writes, “Since the Italian Re­nais­sance, black servants in Eu­ro­pean h ­ ouse­holds ­were considered worldly, exotic possessions and their repre­sen­ta­tion signified wealth and status in portraiture. Aesthetically, the dark skin of the servant was thought to enhance the whiteness, and

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therefore the beauty, of the Eu­ro­pean female being portrayed.”3 Childs’s analy­sis reveals the role of portraiture in racial capitalism, with black and nonwhite subjects rendered as nonhuman property owned by the white sitter at the center of the portrait, whose whiteness also symbolized an aesthetic ideal of beauty in Eu­ ro­pean paintings. Imprisoned artists fundamentally challenge the value systems and racialization that are embedded in the portrait tradition. Instead, they take a revered art tradition and turn it on its head by centering the perspective, creativity, and subjects of socially devalued, marginalized, and captive ­people. Some of them, like formerly incarcerated artist George Anthony Morton, have received international acclaim for their portraits. During his nine years in federal prison, Morton focused on his development as a portrait artist in large part by studying Western art traditions of “the old masters” and using his studies as a way to manage penal time and as a rebuke for his punitive sentence. “So basically, the irony of this ­whole t­hing was, like, I went to the feds at nineteen, twenty years old, and they got all of my twenties. . . . ​I got out right on time for my thirtieth birthday. And the ­whole time I was in t­here, I had this spirit of redemption, this spirit of payback. I was g ­ oing to 4 make the society regret throwing me to the wolves in that way.” By the time he was released, the laws that had led to his conviction “have since been ruled racially motivated, unconstitutional, biased, every­thing just wrong.”5 A New York Times profile describes Morton’s reimagining of penal time and penal space as such: “Mr. Morton said t­ here was a ‘monastic quality’ to prison. He also said he had figured, ­going in, that it was ‘the closest t­ hing I would ever get to college.’ ”6 A ­ fter his release, he was accepted to the Florence Acad­emy of Art US, located in Jersey City, which emphasizes classical Eu­ro­pean aesthetic traditions.7 He is also the only student from the school’s American branch to have been accepted to the acad­emy in Florence, Italy. Morton was awarded “best portrait of the year” by the acad­emy in 2016, for Mars, a charcoal rendition of a young black w ­ oman.8 Her natu­ral hair takes up much of the upper canvas and provides shadow and halo to her illuminated features. Morton explains the title and what led him to make the work: “ ‘Mars’ is actually her nickname. Short for Maryum. The inspiration in short ties into what inspires me on a broader level in my work. And that is to give proper repre­sen­ta­tion to a part of the population who has not been seen or represented in this way. I prefer to paint p ­ eople from my own life and community who I believe have ­great dignity.”9

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As Morton elucidates, the significance of portraiture by and among incarcerated artists is historically weighted and richly symbolic. No ­matter how abstract, fantastical, or realistic in style, portraits by currently and formerly incarcerated artists serve as practices of countervisuality, or as Nicholas Mirzoeff writes, “the assertion of the right to look, challenging the law that sustains visuality’s authority in order to justify its own sense of ‘right.’ The right to look refuses to allow authority to suture its interpretation of the sensible to power, first as law and then as the aesthetic.”10

The Uses of Portraiture in Prisons More than just disrupting the value system embedded in the Western art tradition, portraits by incarcerated artists serve other purposes—­aesthetic, material, and symbolic. They memorialize loved ones, fellow incarcerated p ­ eople, and ­others impacted by punitive governance and carceral structures. The portraits of Doris and DeCarrio’s f­amily reflect many of the issues that emerge in art made in prison. Even as the paintings memorialize the life of young DeCarrio and a black ­family’s legacy, they also mark the captivity and creative ­labor of the incarcerated artists, as well as the vulnerability and the truncated lives of the disproportionate number of black men who are ware­housed in prisons. Through Doris’s work as a correction officer, we also see the ­limited employment options for ­people in declining mill towns, rural communities, and postindustrial zones who staff carceral facilities. Portraits by incarcerated artists counterpose against the large state archive of mug shots and criminal indexes. They are cherished and collected by relatives, prison staff, and incarcerated collectors. Moreover, prison portrait traditions are nurtured and shared by relationships built among incarcerated artists that involve mentoring, collaborating, distributing works, and sharing techniques and resources. Portraits provide aesthetic stimulation inside monochromatic and austere carceral settings, and imagery for daydreaming, fantasizing, and projecting outside the confines of prison. They offer recognizable ­faces, taped to the walls of prison cells, alongside memorabilia and reminders of life outside prison. They are tucked ­under pillowcases and mattresses, in drawers and books. In the common spaces

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of prisons, like visiting rooms and entry­ways, framed portraits made by incarcerated p ­eople are often displayed. Beyond aesthetic value, portraiture is a type of prison currency as well. Portrait artists are highly valued by imprisoned people of dif­fer­ent races, ethnicities, and affiliations who commission their work. ­Because of the demand for their work within the culture and economy of prisons, portrait artists have relative economic and cultural power. Based on many years of teaching art in prisons, Phyllis Kornfeld writes, “Artists are hounded by inmate patrons clamoring to buy. Portraits are in greatest demand; enlargements of snapshots of lovers, ­children, mom and dad, even pets, or the ­faces of musicians, sports stars, beautiful ­women, ethnic and comic-­book heroes. The artist who is most admired and well paid in prison can produce an expert rendering of a face, shaded to a meticulous degree.”11 Many of the artists I interviewed for this book spoke of how impor­tant their portraiture skills ­were to surviving in prison. Morton stated, “I survived by painting portraits of other inmate’s ­family members, the inmates themselves, friends. . . . ​It became a good gift for t­hose inmates in the institution who actually had the means to pay for a portrait.”12 Similarly for Russell Craig, who received no financial support from ­family or friends when he was imprisoned in Pennsylvania, making portraits was his primary way of getting commissary items and necessities not provided by the institution. In exchange for his art, incarcerated ­people would pay him in stamps, food, and other goods purchased through state vendors. They also bartered ser­vices like haircuts. In some states, for example, Ohio, where incarcerated artists can receive payment, money is exchanged for a work of art. Typically, the portrait economy in prison involves a buyer commissioning a painting or drawing. Photo­graphs of portrait subjects are often provided as reference material. Portraits are sometimes folded into handmade greeting cards or

George Anthony Morton, Mars, 2016. Charcoal on paper, 24 × 18 inches.

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placed in frames constructed in prison. They tend to remain in the private collections of the poor and working-­class blacks, Latinos, and whites whose lives are most directly impacted by the carceral state. However, in some cases, prison portraits are sold or auctioned to support charity groups or nonprofit organ­izations that provide art instruction and other educational ser­vices to prisons. Along with other artwork, portraits often circulate within prison systems and social ser­vice agencies as examples of rehabilitative activities provided in carceral settings. Tyra Patterson and James “Yaya” Hough, among other artists I interviewed, commented on their portraits being auctioned to support campaigns against domestic vio­ lence, nonprofit arts groups, and ­children and youth ser­vices. Incarcerated artists are encouraged to donate their art to ­these sorts of fund­rais­ing campaigns as a type of community ser­vice. When their works are auctioned as a part of such campaigns, the artists tend to know very ­little about the organ­ization benefiting from their donation, the financial transactions, or where their work ends up. In addition to the economics involved, prison portraits are part of relational practices built among incarcerated ­people. During her three years in New York state prisons, Gaynel Sheffield created portraits of historic ­women, like Harriet Tubman, and of fellow incarcerated ­women, on ripped bed sheets using pastel. She gave t­hese works away to w ­ omen imprisoned with her as “a ‘pick me up,’ ­because a lot of ­people become depressed in prison, not seeing their families and ­things like that. I would try to think of ­things to cheer them up.”13 When she was released, she left without her art. All her work had been gifted to ­others. Moreover, Hough taught other incarcerated p ­ eople techniques of portraiture and other genres during his twenty-seven years in prison; he was released in August 2019. As discussed in Chapter 1, he mentored Craig when they w ­ ere incarcerated together at Graterford State Prison in Pennsylvania. Hough creates portraits of his friends in prison, other artists (whom he considers part of his community), and public leaders he admires, like Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. Hough often incorporates miniature portraits into letters that he writes to friends and loved ones. In a 2015 letter that Hough wrote to Craig ­after Craig’s release from prison, Hough included a portrait of Craig’s infant d ­ aughter, reinterpreted from a photo­graph, and wrote text around the image. For many incarcerated artists, as for Hough, the relational practices of portraiture connect them to their nonincarcerated loved ones. They visualize kinship and

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forms of intimate belonging that have been disrupted by the carceral state. Portraits are tangible items that incarcerated artists can send home. During the nearly two de­cades that Emile DeWeaver was incarcerated, he made portraits of his young ­daughter as an anime character: “The character looks like my ­daughter except her wooly hair is green and she has small angel wings.”14 He used her interest in anime to build a relationship with her; he had been incarcerated for her entire childhood. Portraits also document the expansive and deep reach of the carceral state in disrupting and restructuring ­family life and kinship for many millions of p ­ eople. From the time Russell Craig was age five, he and his two older s­ isters spent much of their childhood in foster care and group homes, and he l­ ater spent time in youth detention centers, jails, and prisons. Craig and his ­sisters are representative of how seamlessly c­ hildren in foster care often end up ­under carceral supervision in what some reformers, activists, and educators call the “foster care to prison

Letter from James “Yaya” Hough to Russell Craig with a portrait of Craig’s infant ­daughter, 2015.

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pipeline.” Research suggests that a significant percentage of c­ hildren in foster care end up incarcerated within the first few years of “aging out” of the system.15 For many years while ­under foster care supervision, Craig had ­little contact with his ­sisters or other relatives. At the time that he was incarcerated at Graterford State Prison, one of his s­ isters was incarcerated in a federal prison. Craig’s portrait In the Yard (2012) is a pastel rendition of his s­ ister posing in the yard of the prison where she was ­housed. It is based on a photo­graph that she sent him. The portrait is an exploration of pastels as a realist figurative medium. He works to capture the hues of her brown skin and dark hair, and the glimmer in her eyes. The portrait also demonstrates attachment and belonging across the carceral archipelago. Prison portraits serve as an impor­tant form of po­liti­cal alliance and identification for many incarcerated ­people. Kenneth Reams, who has been on death row in Arkansas since 1993, creates historical portraits of other black men who have been condemned to death, such as Rainey Beathea, the last person executed by public hanging in the United States, and George Stinney Jr., the youn­gest person legally executed by death sentence, at the age of fourteen.16 Radical po­liti­cal figures are popu­lar subject m ­ atter. Incarcerated artist and activist Kevin “Rashid” Johnson identifies as a po­liti­cal prisoner following the tradition of e­ arlier generations of incarcerated black and radical prison activists. Many of his pieces are collage portraits of radical and civil rights icons from vari­ous traditions and eras. He shares his art through a website in his name that is managed by “­free world allies.”17 Johnson’s works combine photorealist techniques for rendering the portrait subject with collage backgrounds incorporating text and historic scenes that provide context for the person’s activism. His portrait of Japa­nese American activist Yuri Kochiyama is based on a well-­known archival photo­graph of Kochiyama talking on a portable speaker at an antiwar protest in New York City. In the backdrop is an illustration of the assassination of Malcolm X, with Kochiyama, who was a friend and ally of the slain leader, bent over his body as she helps to provide emergency care to him. A curved border at the top of the portrait states Kochiyama’s name and her birth and death years: 1921–2014. Johnson’s signature and website address appear in the lower right corner. Similarly, Korean American incarcerated artist Todd (Hyung-­Rae) Tarselli creates portraits of many of his po­ liti­cal heroes, notably black radical activists and leaders in the prisoners’ rights

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movement. Johnson’s and Tarselli’s art shows how the genre can visualize cross-­ racial solidarities and po­liti­cal lineages for activism among incarcerated ­people.

Race, Criminal Indexes, and Counterposing Prison portraiture connects with a vibrant tradition of black, brown, and indigenous artists and activists creating portraits to visualize their humanity, aspirations, and collective strug­gles throughout the longue durée of racial subjugation in this country. Over the course of centuries, black American and diasporic artists and activists have reenvisioned portraiture to ­counter and critique dominant systems of valuation u ­ nder racial capitalism. Scholars Deborah Willis, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Jasmine Nichole Cobb, and Maurice Wallace have noted that the portrait for many emancipated black ­people in the nineteenth c­ entury provided the possibility of countering racist logics of black inferiority. Cobb’s research reveals how, even prior to the US Civil War, ­free blacks and enslaved blacks visualized freedom through portraiture in the early nineteenth c­ entury.18 ­After the advent of the daguerreotype, posing for a studio portrait served as an impor­tant counteraction for blacks against criminalization and other dehumanizing discourses used to subjugate emancipated blacks in the late nineteenth ­century and onward. Frederick Douglass, among the most photographed ­people of the nineteenth ­century, used portraiture as part of his public persona and activism.19 Art historian Richard Powell has provided insightful context for the significance of black portraiture in challenging and transforming Western art traditions. In theorizing black portraiture as “cutting a figure,” Powell describes black self-­representation and image-­making as strategic and aesthetic deployments of artistic innovation and discursive transgression. Powell argues that cutting a figure for black artists is a way of performing or executing transgressively while navigating the history of portraiture as a genre of honorific valuation alongside “blackness’s historic undervaluation and black ­people’s lengthy climb ­toward . . . ​ self-­esteem and pride.”20 Such aesthetic and discursive strategies can be seen in the portraits of internationally acclaimed black American artist Kehinde Wiley, known for creating ornate, large-­scale, and color-­saturated photorealist paintings of black everyday

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­ eople. Wiley repurposes portraiture to endow a type of richness to ­those most p criminalized, demeaned, and in many re­spects undervalued: young black men and w ­ omen, such as in his Mugshot Study (2006). As scholar Simone Drake notes, the work was inspired by a “Wanted” poster of a young black man in Harlem that Wiley encountered while an artist in residence at the Studio Museum.21 Wiley was transfixed by the photo­graph of the suspected man, whose personal data was stated on the poster as public rec­ord, including his name, address, and a description of him. Noting that his encounter with the poster transformed his thinking about portraiture, Wiley recognized the mug shot as a version of the genre, but one whose production or circulation the subject has no control over.22 The suspect’s criminal index became the source material for Wiley as he applied eighteenth-­century-­style symbolism to create a majestic, color-­saturated portrait of the young man, turning him from black criminalized being to black saint.23 Drake writes, “Wiley pushes his audience to reimagine a type of portraiture for young black men that is illegible—­that of sainthood.24 Wiley’s engagement with criminal indexes such as mug shots connects him directly with the aesthetic practices of incarcerated artists who make portraits. Wiley is among con­temporary, nonincarcerated black and socially engaged artists, like Duron Jackson, Sable Elyse Smith, Deana Lawson, and Cameron Rowland, whose art offers systemic critiques of the carceral state and the toll of incarceration on the most vulnerable populations. Their art practices are part of a larger movement that I describe as carceral aesthetics: forms of art-­making by incarcerated and nonincarcerated p ­ eople that visualize and interrogate states of captivity and unfreedom ­under punitive governance. Like some incarcerated artists, Wiley and the artist Titus Kaphar appropriate or reenvision criminal indexes into their art. Kaphar’s series The Jerome Proj­ect (2014) explores the relationship between the hypercriminalization of black men and social value. He began his portrait series ­after searching online prison databases for his estranged biological ­father. He learned that t­ here are many incarcerated black men who share his biological ­father’s name, Jerome. Using their prison ID photos, which w ­ ere made available through the databases, Kaphar re­imagined ­these criminal indexes using Byzantine iconography. In naming the series, Kaphar also invoked Saint Jerome, the patron saint of scholars, libraries, and translation. Journalist Vikki Tobak writes, “He painted tar-­covered mug shots of ­these men in the style of Byzantine holy

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Titus Kaphar, The Jerome Proj­ect (My Loss), 2014. Oil, gold leaf, and tar on wood panel.

portraits, specifically ­those depicting Saint Jerome. Gold-­leaf paint covers portions of their f­ aces in correlation to the length of their prison sentences.”25 Initially, Kaphar used tar to cover their ­faces to correlate with the length of their sentences, but abandoned that technique out of concern that it continued a type of erasure. Instead, his series attempts to individuate each Jerome through facial details and traits that visualize the toll of carcerality more broadly on con­temporary life. Kaphar states, “I’m deeply interested in portraiture as a form, and when you look at mug shots as a form, that kind of portraiture only has a single purpose. It’s to memorialize criminality. It ­really has no other real aesthetic function. T ­ here are no aesthetic questions about lighting, about composition, about pose . . . ​three-­ quarter, portrait, profile . . . ​in a way that would attempt to uplift or glorify the sitter.”26 Instead, Kaphar seeks another register and set of symbols to memorialize the complex humanity of ­these subjects so that they become part of the archive of art history and not just of the carceral state. The Jerome Proj­ect and other works by Kaphar, such as Destiny (2016), explore serialization conceptually to visualize imprisoned populations. In Destiny, Kaphar

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creates a series of portraits of incarcerated black w ­ omen who appear in online 27 prison databases ­under the name Destiny. He layers their portraits on top of each other, resulting in an unsettling amalgamation of facial features as an accumulation of racialized and gendered captivity. Serialization through portraiture is also practiced by Jesse Krimes and Mark Loughney. Krimes, a formerly incarcerated artist from a white working-­class community in Pennsylvania, explores how criminalization functions in relation to social value, wherein t­hose who are labeled “criminals” are tarnished, devalued, and permanently stigmatized. Krimes’s artistic investigation puts him in conversation and solidarity with other incarcerated ­people who have crossed racial lines in prison to or­ga­nize and protest. This sort of po­liti­cal and social consciousness is an example of the notion of “convict race,” in which incarcerated ­people form a sense of identity and cohesion across racial and ethnic differences based on a shared strug­gle against the authority, brutality, and institution(alization) of prisons. During the 1992 prison uprising in Lucasville, Ohio, for example, protestors wrote “convict unity” and “convict race” on the prison walls.28 More recently, prison abolitionist and geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore has theorized “convict race” as a framework for the consciousness and organ­izing that take place across vari­ous categories of difference, such as race, and as crucial tools for prison abolitionism.29 Krimes’s series Purgatory (2009), a visual repre­sen­ta­tion of the concept of convict race, consists of 292 repurposed mug shots and other carceral portraits that he has rendered on bars of prison soap. He created the series during his first year in federal prison in North Carolina, where he was held in isolation b ­ ecause he was unwilling to serve as a government in­for­mant. Krimes used the very ­limited resources he had available to create alternative repre­sen­ta­tions of ­those held in punitive captivity.30 Like most ­people in solitary confinement, he spent twenty-­three hours per day locked in his cell and had almost no access to art supplies. He also had very l­ittle access to natu­ral light, views of the sky, outdoor air, or the world outside prison. It was ­under ­those conditions that he affirmed his self-­identity as an artist. He explains that his choices w ­ ere “offender” or “artist.” For him, the status of artist was one of the only aspects of his life that prison could not take from him. “I needed to make art work in order to, first and foremost, just maintain my sanity being in this environment, and I think, also, the

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t­hing that was kind of secondary was that making artwork was . . . ​a form of re­sis­tance.”31 Krimes collected criminal indexes from newspapers, legal publications, and other print material and then used hair gel and toothpaste to transfer the images onto bars of soap. In his use of materials, Krimes references the notion of penitence, out of which the first penitentiaries emerged, and also the colonial and racist vio­lence of the government’s mandating the use of soap by forcibly held captive and colonized p ­ eoples. Soap denotes a history of racializing pathologies and imperial and institutional ideas of cleanliness. Citing a Unilever Com­pany Slogan, Anne McClintock, feminist scholar of imperialism, writes, “Soap is civilization.”32 Krimes preserved the portraits by placing them inside decks of playing cards that he transformed into frames. He fashioned a cutting utensil out of the edge of a battery and used it to remove the heads from the face cards, replacing them with portraits of criminal suspects and the convicted. Hiding the portraits in the card decks allowed him to mail them out of the prison to his loved ones. The effect of Krimes’s portraits is haunting. Over time and as a result of light exposure, the details of each portrait have faded. Features like gender and race become indistinguishable as the images turn into sepia tones on ivory. Yet they also remain austere, violent portrayals of penal identification and the power to punish. Barry Malin, principal of Malin Gallery, where Krimes is represented, states, “The ethereality of the images seems like a key part of the work. . . . ​­There is something terribly profound about the way in which the pro­cess of disappearance of f­aces is intrinsically integrated into the physicality of the soap fragments.”33 The framing of the playing cards heightens the effect: card games are one of the most common ways that incarcerated p ­ eople manage penal time. The framing also reflects on hierarchies of value, of taking account, of being “down on luck,” and of the arbitrary and yet systematized rules of imprisonment and punishment. Like Krimes, Mark Loughney is a white incarcerated artist from rural Pennsylvania whose engagement with portraiture is through serialization. He, too, crafts portraits of incarcerated individuals to visualize the collective toll of mass incarceration. Loughney’s series Pyrrhic Defeat: A Visual Study of Mass Incarceration (2014–­pre­sent) comprises nearly five hundred drawings of incarcerated p ­ eople ­housed with him in a Pennsylvania prison, and it continues to grow through his use of penal time. The title is taken from Jeff Reiman and Paul Leighton’s

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Jesse Krimes, Purgatory, 2009. Prison-­issued soap, newsprint transfer, used playing cards, 3.5 × 2.5 inches.

influential study, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison.34 Reiman and Leighton’s theory of “pyrrhic defeat” examines how the wealthy and power­ful benefit from the idea of crime and the criminalization of certain ­people: A “Pyrrhic victory” is a military victory purchased at such a cost in troops and trea­sure that it amounts to a defeat. The Pyrrhic defeat theory argues that the failure of the criminal justice system yields such benefits to ­those in positions of power that it amounts to a victory. . . . ​From the standpoint of t­ hose with the power to make criminal justice policy in Amer­i­ca, nothing succeeds like failure.35

Loughney’s Pyrrhic Defeat highlights the performative dimension of portraiture and its relationship to time in penal settings. He asks each person to sit for twenty minutes as he renders their features using a pencil and the only paper that he can acquire, an inexpensive and low-­quality version.36 To choreograph portrait sittings inside prison is a considerable feat; as Loughney explains, it is difficult to find a space of stillness and calm to draw his sitters.37 And so the drawings are

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improvised when he can find a moment of relative calm in an other­wise chaotic environment. In an interview for an article in the Paris Review, Loughney states, “The irony is that 500 ­faces is not even a drop in the bucket of our 2.4 million ­brothers, ­mothers, ­sisters, and f­athers that are locked away in prisons in our country.” Explaining the importance of visualizing incarcerated p ­ eople to the nonincarcerated public, Loughney says, “The average man on the street prob­ably has not the foggiest idea of what ‘mass incarceration’ means . . . ​so my hope is to just get the attention of at least a few.”38 His series speaks both to a con­temporary moment in which massive numbers of p ­ eople are held in captivity and to the systems and ideology of incarceration that shape culture and society in seen and unseen ways. Portraits by Kaphar, Krimes, Loughney, and Wiley (artists who are differently situated across carceral geographies) disrupt the singular function of criminal indexes to mark certain subjects as criminal, as “offenders” of the state.

Portraits of Fantasy, Flight, and (Im)Mobility In portraiture, incarcerated artists often blur repre­sen­ta­tions of their subjects with landscapes or objects of fantasy and flight to navigate and yet acknowledge how carceral space and time shape identity and aesthetic terrain. Influenced by Van Gogh, Ronnie Goodman’s impressionistic Self-­Portrait with Boots (2005) contains a black-­and-­white lithograph engraving of the artist’s face on one plate, u ­ nder which appears another plate with an engraving of his boots. His head is slightly angled. He wears a skullcap and a ribbed-­neck shirt. His eyes are open and alert and his mouth closed. His features are made vis­i­ble by the white lines of the engraving. Around his head is darkness. His boots, on the other hand, are framed by lines that appear to be wood flooring and by dots in the background that look like stars in the sky. Goodman made the portrait in an Arts in Corrections workshop run by the William James Association, a nonprofit that has offered art classes in California prisons since 1977. It was part of a lesson in making block prints. He explains how the portrait came together: “I did a drawing first. I did drawings of my boots, I did drawings of me. I think it’s a proj­ect we ­were supposed to do for portraits. ­They’re small. I think ­they’re three by four inches. Small blocks. And ­there was

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Mark Loughney, Pyrrhic Defeat: A Visual Study of Mass Incarceration, 2014–­pre­sent. Graphite on paper.

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Mark Loughney, Pyrrhic Defeat: A Visual Study of Mass Incarceration, 2014–­pre­sent (detail).

two of them, together. One was a self-­portrait I did, and the other was the boots I did ­later. And I de­cided . . . ​let me see what they look like together.”39 Mobility and identity appear in many of Goodman’s works. Goodman also incorporates a jazz aesthetic, often placing musical instruments and symbols, like saxophones and musical notes, in the backdrops of his paintings and landscapes. He describes his work as driven not by a theme but by his pursuit of movement and light: I ­really ­don’t have a theme, but my theme is rhythm. I try to find some rhythm. I try to find balance of light, of movement. ­Those are the ­things I try to find. Movement, and t­ hings like that, and [to] create dif­fer­ent textures. . . . ​The subject or theme ­will just come about as I feel that it touches me and I do it. . . . ​It has to have a connection with me, spiritually and physically.40 I nterior S ub j ects

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Goodman made several portraits of other incarcerated ­people; his portraits of imprisoned acquaintances hone in on facial features and often abstract the background. They are dressed in their state-­issued clothes as a marker of penal time and space, and yet they are elevated from the austerity and constraint of their environment as they are illuminated by Goodman, as seen in the photo­graph of one of his portrait sessions. Goodman’s portraits reflect his love of movement and light, along with his commitment to his artistic growth and self-­assertion during his years in California state prisons. He was a long-­distance runner before he entered San Quentin. While h ­ oused ­there, he created the San Quentin Marathon, a race for incarcerated p ­ eople in which participants run around the prison yard for 26.2 miles, the same prison yard where George Jackson, incarcerated po­liti­cal theorist and author of Soledad ­Brother, was shot dead by a prison guard in 1971. ­Running is a highly symbolic activity in prison, beyond physical exertion.41 In his memoir Solitary about surviving over four de­cades in solitary confinement, Albert Woodfox writes that he “ran up and down the tier almost the ­whole hour” that he was let out of his cell once a day when he had no other access to exercise or outdoors.42 For many incarcerated ­people, ­running is an act of re­sis­tance against captivity and penal time, an activity that resonates with George Jackson’s oft-­quoted line, “I may be ­running, but I’m looking for a gun as I go.”43 The San Quentin Marathon has received a g ­ reat deal of publicity in recent years, including as the subject of a documentary film. Goodman, no longer in prison, remains financially vulnerable and ­unhoused, living in a settlement in San Francisco. In 2014, he ran the San Francisco Half Marathon and was featured in many local stories as an unhoused and formerly incarcerated artist, activist, and runner. Fantasy and flight intermix in many portraits by incarcerated ­people. Winged ­humans and other sentient beings are common symbols of escape and freedom. They represent unboundedness. In 2016, an exhibit titled On the Inside was held at Abrons Arts Center in New York City’s Lower East Side. It was coor­ga­nized by Tatiana von Furstenberg and Black and Pink Network, an organ­ization that supports incarcerated LGBTQ and HIV-­positive ­people. The exhibit included several portraits by incarcerated queer artists portraying subjects in flight or staged through orchestrated fantasy, where penal settings enmesh with dreamscapes of

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being unencumbered. In Westley F’s Barbed Wire Angel #2, a black queer person with a muscular chest and defined biceps gazes out quizzically. They are winged and wear red lipstick and purple nail polish. Both ­free and captive, the subject stands against a brick wall with their hands on their hips. E ­ ither painted on the wall or attached to the subject’s shoulders— and also attached to barbed wire—­the wings are most prominent. A tear is painted ­under the subject’s right eye. During her twenty-­ three years in prison, Tyra Patterson developed her artistic skills, becoming an admired jewelry maker and portrait artist. She specialized in elaborate three-­dimensional, composite portraits of w ­ omen in captivity. Using nature as a meta­phor for strug­gle, she created the portraits based on personal experiences and her imagination. She gathered materials and stories to execute each work, incorporating clipped hair, prison textiles, and narratives of incarcerated friends. Each portrait is named ­after an ele­ment of nature, the solar system, or a weather event. Patterson explains: I would consider myself a 3D Artist. I use materials for my canvases. I stitch my own dresses and design them. I use artificial hair as well as real hair and that depends on who I send it to. I also make jewelry which I include as pieces on my Art work, ie earrings, necklaces, beads for the hair. I would describe my signature style as: W ­ omen who believe u ­ nder any disaster / circumstances. I mentioned to you that each one of my paintings has a name . . . ​Storm, Desert, Sky, Thunder, and I just recently done a piece with her coming from the w ­ ater and the woods, where her dress and the ­middle was the waterfall and on this par­tic­u­lar piece I went outside and collected tiny flat rocks and parts of a tree and sticks b ­ ecause we

Ronnie Goodman, Self-­Portrait with Boots, 2005.

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Ronnie Goodman in a portrait session with incarcerated sitter at San Quentin State Prison, instruction by William James Association, 2006.

­ on’t have materials h d ­ ere so I devised my plan, which made it more in­ter­ est­ing and challenging.44

In Moon (2015), Patterson portrays a brown w ­ oman with long dreadlocks. Her hair, made of fiber, provides a three dimensionality to the portrait. She wears an ornate sequin and satin dress and jeweled bracelets; her nails are painted red and her lips dark brown. The ­woman appears with head bowed and eyes closed; her arms are raised in a gesture of prayer or supplication. The backdrop is abstract: shades of brown, gray, red, and yellow. In the upper corner, a moon shines brightly on her. E ­ very component of this portrait involved maneuvering around penal rules about approved and contraband materials, as well as pooling resources and sharing with other incarcerated w ­ omen. The lushness of the ­woman’s dress and jewelry is a visual refusal of the deprivation and scarcity of imprisonment. Her prayer is both a stance of power and a request for intervention.

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I first learned of Patterson in 2016 through an investigative series in the Guardian about a case involving the murder of a white teenage girl for which Patterson and several other black teens and young adults ­were convicted.45 Throughout her imprisonment, Patterson proclaimed her innocence. In 2012, she began working with attorney David Singleton, executive director of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center (OJPC), a nonprofit organ­ ization that provides l­egal advocacy to formerly and currently incarcerated ­people. Singleton, with a team of advocates and volunteers, worked tirelessly to bring attention to Patterson’s case, to have evidence reviewed, and to file an appeal for clemency. He garnered diverse support for her release, including from the ­sister of the teen who was murdered. As part of the campaign to bring visibility to Patterson’s case, the I am Tyra Patterson PSA video, directed by filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu, included several celebrities, activists, and public officials pointing out inconsistencies in the case, voicing support for her release, and claiming, “I am Tyra Patterson.” The efforts to ­free Patterson involved the use of portraiture, including both her own art and photo­graphs of her before and during her incarceration. Some are vernacular photo­graphs of Patterson with her m ­ other and siblings. ­Others are close-­cropped portraits of Patterson in prison, posing in her blue uniform. ­There’s a portrait of a smiling Tyra Patterson, Moon, 2015. Patterson in a dark-­red cap and gown, holding a diploma. What remain unseen Mixed media on canvas. are the signs of prison under­neath the robe and as backdrop. Patterson, who entered prison with a sixth-­grade education, completed her high school degree while incarcerated. One of the most imaginative portraits in the campaign was a vividly colored graphic poster of Patterson based on a prison photo. In it, she appears before a yellow backdrop with flowers decorating the border. She grins brightly; light radiates from her face. Under­neath her image is the hashtag #IAmTyraPatterson. The poster circulated widely and was spread through social media. On December 25, 2017, Patterson was released from prison based on a special appeal to the Ohio Parole Board filed by Singleton and the OJPC team.

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Self-­Making through Portraiture Self-­portraits in par­tic­u­lar are repre­sen­ta­tionally significant works for incarcerated ­people. In making self-­portraits, artists take into account how they have been rendered by the state as criminals, as threats to the public, and as individuals whose primary relationship is with the punitive systems of the state, while refusing the primacy of this state-­enforced identity. Instead, they locate themselves as thinking and breathing subjects with histories, memories, and dreams that exceed their criminal indexes. They self-­fashion. They self-­define. They mark penal time. Leonard Peltier, a legendary Native American po­liti­cal prisoner, is also an accomplished artist, known for his portraits of North American indigenous ­people and landscape scenes of the American plains. Peltier’s works, which he has made over nearly four de­cades in federal prisons, circulate and are distributed through online outlets. In his self-­portrait Down but Not Out (2000), Peltier is in a white T-­shirt and federal prison khaki pants. He is kneeling in a dark cell. One arm is contorted, with the hand fisted ­behind him. He leans his head on the other arm and his eyes are closed. Through the bars of the win­dow above him, sunlight shines in on his back. His long braids hang down. Peltier has been denied parole and clemency on several occasions. As of the writing of this book, he suffers from debilitating health issues that require extensive medical care. Facing the possibility of ­dying in prison, Peltier’s self-­portraits and portraits of indigenous ­people and tribal life serve another purpose. They are “practices of refusal,” to use a concept developed by scholar Tina Campt and other theorists of visual culture, prisons, and freedom strug­gles.46 Lisette Oblitas, during her incarceration at York Correctional Institution in Connecticut, used self-­portraiture to explore issues of criminalization, death, remorse, and transformation. Oblitas caused a car accident that resulted in the death of an elderly woman, Phyllis Porter. In a pre-trial agreement, Oblitas pled guilty to misconduct with a motor vehicle and served four and half years in prison. Struggling with shame, guilt, depression, and isolation, Oblitas turned to art-­ making. She also grew close to the ­family of Ms. Porter and learned about the ­woman who died from her surviving relatives. Oblitas created a space of healing and transformation in a penal space where she had l­ittle control over her life. She worked with very ­limited access to art supplies while in maximum security;

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and ­later, when she was moved to a lower-­security unit, she was able to participate in art workshops and collaborative art-­making with incarcerated and nonincarcerated artists. In her self-­portrait In Your Eyes (2013), Oblitas honors Porter while meditating on how Porter’s death and being incarcerated have transformed her. The drawing depicts Oblitas looking much older than her age at the time she made the portrait. Using graphite and watercolor pencil on Bristol board, she colors her skin the same as the backdrop: a brown, pink, and gray mixture that suggests both the brownness of her skin and her emotional state. Across her face is a shadow. In this imaginary rendition of self, she wears eyeglasses, though she did not at the time. The eyes ­behind the glasses peer out in a disturbing manner; they ­don’t quite fit her face. They are the eyes of Ms. Porter instead of her own. “I used the eyes from the picture frame that I was given on the day of my sentencing by the ­family [of Ms. Porter]. I use her eyes ­because it feels as though my life is no longer mine. It’s also hers. Part of her lives within me. And through her forgiveness and the ­family’s forgiveness, I use her eyes as a lens where I can see now with more compassion t­ oward ­others.”47 Ms. Porter wore glasses similar to the ones on Oblitas’s face in In Your Eyes. Through the glasses, Porter and Oblitas scrutinize perhaps each other: the ­woman serving time and the ­woman who died. Porter appears in many of Oblitas’s works, depicting Oblitas’s strug­gles with the real­ity of being incarcerated and carry­ing the responsibility for Ms. Porter’s death. Hough created Portrait of Yaya (2015) in a workshop put on by Mural Arts Philadelphia, a nonprofit organ­ization that offers art classes in prisons and to directly impacted p ­ eople outside of prison. The self-­portrait is acrylic on parachute cloth, or polytab, a nonwoven fabric used for murals and large-­scale paintings made popu­lar by Mural Arts Philadelphia. The title of the self-­portrait derives from his nickname in prison. Portrait of Yaya reflects Hough’s appreciation of po­liti­cal artist Shepard Fairey’s graphic style. Fairey visited Graterford State Prison as part of a program sponsored by Mural Arts Philadelphia and met with Hough and other incarcerated artists. Hough uses color contrasts, silhouettes, and text in ways that speak to many of Fairey’s signature pieces, such as his widely distributed Hope poster, used in President Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. The self-­portrait depicts Hough at an ­angle, looking out, possibly at a mirror or an audience. He is holding

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a paintbrush away from his body. By the direction of his gaze and the ­angle of the paintbrush, Hough appears to be looking at a reflective surface. The paintbrush is afire. Next to the artist’s head is a large, illuminated light bulb with a fist in the center. The fist is shaded darkly, and a broken chain dangles from its wrist. At the top of the painting is the phrase “Art breaks chains,” followed by “Yaya.” In the bottom panel are the words “I was lost / Art broke all my chains.” Below the text, Hough pays homage to another artist he admires, Jean Michel Basquiat, by incorporating a crown, a signature symbol of the deceased artist. Hough explains:

Lisette Oblitas, In Your Eyes, 2013. Graphite and ­watercolor pencil on Bristol board, 14 × 11 inches.

The symbolism is pretty straightforward: the Promethean creative fire from the brush. The chains being broken thru the power of art. The “X” paintbrushes are “X’s” symbolising Malcolm X’s prison transformation (from Detroit-­Red ­Little to X), ­they’re also visually similar to the spears on the ­ Kenyan national flag (symbolic of strength). The paintbrushes also are created from broken chains symbolising art-­beauty born out of slavery. I chose the text ­because I wanted something spiritual, but not religious. “I was lost” (That’s “Amazing Grace”) taps into something universal. All p ­ eople at some point are lost (yet chained). “Art broke all my chains” is still spiritual / universal but more personal / specific to me / my experience. I believe the only real answers must come from within, but connect w / what is around us.48

Hough’s close reading of his self-­portrait reflects on how each portrait speaks to the tradition of portraiture and the oscillation between individualized subject and collective experience. Hough’s friend and mentee, Craig, uses self-­portraiture to meditate on a type of Du Boisian double consciousness that has emerged among the many millions of black p ­ eople who have spent time in prisons and other carceral facilities. W.  E.  B. Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness, as “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of ­others, of mea­sur­ing one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity,” has been highly influ-

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ential on black American thought, culture, and art for more than a ­century.49 In the con­temporary era of hypercriminalization of young black men, who are arrested and incarcerated at astronomically higher rates than any other group, “double consciousness” takes on another sense, indicating the state of being always looked on as the criminal, as the threat to safety and social order. Statistics on the disproportionate impact of imprisonment on black p ­ eople, and men specifically, vary, but according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2017, black males ages eigh­teen to nineteen are twelve times more likely to be sentenced than white males.50 Black men are incarcerated at a rate of 2,336 per 100,000 compared to the national average of 440 per 100,000 US residents.51 Through an ongoing practice of self-­portraiture, Craig examines the biometric and affective burden of having one’s identity tethered to criminalization in the law and public life. His portraits take account of how data-­ gathering has been used to criminalize black men, and how the toll of t­ hese racializing and criminalizing pro­cesses impacts his subject formation. In some of his self-­portraits, such as Prototype (2013), he poses unsmiling and angry, facial gestures and body language that are criminalized for black men. In Prototype, Craig has exaggerated his features, making his cheeks more angular, widening his nose, and elongating his chin. The portrait is rendered in dark oranges, reds, browns, and black. The title is a practice of double consciousness, referring to black men as the quin­tes­sen­tial ste­reo­type of the criminal. It also speaks to his artistic pro­cess, as it was the first in a series of self-­portraits that he made using his prison documents and playing with negative emotions, like resentment and anger. Craig explains:

James “Yaya” Hough, Portrait of Yaya, 2015. Acrylic on parachute cloth, 60 × 35.5 inches.

It’s ­really weird how y­ ou’ve got to skate on thin ice on stuff that you should be upset about. I should be upset at being in prison, especially when you come to the realization about your situation, what ­you’re in ­because it was a point where I ­didn’t even comprehend what was ­going on. . . . ​You think

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y­ ou’re supposed to be r­ unning from the cops, and it’s natu­ral for them to be chasing you and ­things like that, when it’s ­really not. And then being in prison and stuff like, “Well, why am I ­here? . . . ​Why am I not in college?” That’s the kind of t­hing I used to ask myself, b ­ ecause I always wanted to go to college, and ­things like that. And I’m like, why am I in prison? . . . ​So that’s a part of the anger, b ­ ecause I’m not happy about it. And all the papers are the system, my experience, and I’m not happy. I’m not ­going to smile in that portrait. ­There’s nothing to smile about.52

In 2019, six years after his release from prison, Craig was accepted at and enrolled in Bard College as a first-­year college student. Craig painted Prototype and State ID (see Chapter 1) while residing in a halfway ­house, ­after being released from prison but before being able to move into a private residence. Craig’s status in the penal system during this time was prolonged by his lack of ­family resources. In order to be released, he needed a permanent address, which was unavailable to him. Among his most ambitious works to date is his eight-­foot mixed-­media painting Self Portrait (2016). Whereas his previous portraits are small to medium in size and are on paper, on canvas, and incorporated into mural walls, he chose the vast archive of the US carceral system as the surface for this work. Self Portrait consists of four panels of cardboard on which he has affixed an accumulation of his “prison papers”: state-­issued documents that have flowed from bureaucratic agency to agency, l­egal rec­ords that have kept him moving from one penal institution to another, but always confined. All w ­ ere drafted by administrative agents and are material and discursive ele­ments that work together to maintain his confinement as a ward of the state. He bases Self Portrait on Prototype, in which he began to explore the use of his prison papers and ­legal documents as backdrops to investigate black subjugation and black subjectivity through visual repre­sen­ta­tion. Craig traced his carceral footprint through court documents and sentencing forms. He restructured together his narrative of captivity. To construct this carceral biography, Craig, who was on parole at the time, went to sites that ­house ­legal and criminal rec­ords. He ran into obstacles and erasures; the halfway h ­ ouse where he had been ordered to stay for the first six months ­after release from Graterford was no longer ­there. His journey to accumulate the forms took him to

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crumbling facades and the depleted infrastructure of the ever-­changing carceral system that morphs and expands, keeping him bound to prison legacies. The portrait’s backdrop amounts to a hefty ­legal file of rectangular shapes. Individual documents show fissures and inconsistencies. On one sentencing form, his name is reversed: Russell Craig becomes Craig Russell. On another, a letter “l” is missing from his first name, rendering him “Russel.” Other details are illegible. They can be inferred. He is one of many thousands of young black men moving through the prison system in the Philadelphia area. Across the axis of his l­egal canvas is a large pastel portrait of Craig in soft browns, golds, and blacks. H ­ ere he is serene and unsmiling, self-­arranged and composed across the mass of legislative discourse and actions that have framed him. His rendering of self emphasizes history and state power, as well as light and futurity where he leaves areas ­free of markings. The printed texts create texture and density in his face. His prison ID photo­graph appears as a mole on his lower cheek and again ­under his eye. The panel’s binding creates a deep crease through his forehead and down through his neck. For Craig, ­there is not a time that he recalls when he ­hasn’t been tethered to the penal state, having moved through foster care and group homes, then juvenile detention centers, county jails, and state prisons. As he grew, so did his l­ egal archive, dispersed across the state. When he finished the portrait, he stated, “I’m not completely ­free yet ­because I’m on parole. . . . ​I have a lot of ­things that I want to do, and the parole kind of hinders me from moving forward.”53 In some recent works, postrelease, Craig continues to use portraiture to explore unfreedom, state vio­lence, and black subjectivity. His mixed-­media collage portrait Locks (2017) engages with the criminalization of black hair and laws that uphold discrimination against black p ­ eople based on hair and racially stigmatized style. Focusing on dreadlocks as a case study of antiblackness, the backdrop comprises articles and stories about the history and politics of the hairstyle, recent court rulings allowing employers to ban dreadlocks, social media commentary, and images of appropriation by white p ­ eople. In the center is a w ­ oman, self-­ composed and perhaps smiling, adorned with locks. As Tyra Patterson does in her work, Craig has fashioned hair as a sculptural ele­ment. To construct the locks, Craig collected hair from the floors of beauty salons in his neighborhood. He then sculpted them into tresses on the portrait using gel and epoxy.

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Russell Craig, Self Portrait, 2016. Pastel and paper on canvas, 10 × 8 feet.

Russell Craig, Locks, 2017. Pastel on paper collage and ­human hair, 54 × 47 inches.

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In his portraits Aiyana Jones (2015) and Eric Garner (2016), Craig honors two victims of antiblack state vio­lence, specifically police shootings of unarmed black ­people. On May 16, 2010, the Detroit police killed seven-­year-­old Aiyana Jones, when officers looking for a murder suspect raided the wrong home. She was asleep on her grand­mother’s sofa as the officers threw a grenade into the ­family’s win­dow and then broke down the front door, shooting upon entering. Trailing the officers was a film crew for the investigative news show 48 Hours. Joseph Weekley, the officer who shot Jones, was charged with involuntary manslaughter. The case ended in mistrials. Craig based his portrait of the l­ittle girl on a photo­graph circulated by her ­family in which she poses with a crooked and closed-­mouth smile. She is also memorialized in the 2013 song “Crooked Smile,” by rapper J. Cole. Eric Garner’s murder made international news when footage of him being strangled by New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo went viral. Garner was harassed, detained, and assaulted by officers who suspected him of selling loose cigarettes. Garner asked and protested to be left alone. Police continued their abusive treatment of him, ignoring his words and the condemnation of upstanders. Officers wrestled Garner to the ground, pinning him, while several witnesses demanded his release. A pedestrian, Ramsey Orta, bearing witness, recorded the police harassment and then the murder. The video was replayed, slowed down, debated, and dissected. In Craig’s portrait of Garner, in an extension of artistic practices he developed in prison, he uses Newport cigarette packs he found on the streets to form the backdrop. He describes the medium as “oil on cigarette boxes.” Craig represents an instant captured by Orta’s video in which Garner questions police officers about targeting him, seconds before they force him to the ground. Craig represents Garner alive and in protest before speaking his final words, “I c­ an’t breathe,” eleven times.54 In ­these recent works of black ­people killed by state vio­lence, Craig explic­itly invokes one of the primary functions of the genre of portraiture: as a visual archive of mortality. Portraits throughout history have been made with the idea that the portrayal w ­ ill outlive the portrayed subject. In a painful revision of this idea, Craig paints the already dead in an effort to venerate lives lost due to state vio­lence against blacks. This par­tic­ul­ ar archive to which he contributes is one that memorializes and documents the unrelenting ways in which black p ­ eople are made vulnerable to premature death, and how the state normalizes antiblack vio­lence.

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5

FRAUGHT IMAGINARIES C O L L A B O R AT I V E A R T I N P R I S O N

Shared Dining, an install ation by a group of ­ omen at York Correctional Institution in Connecticut, opened to much fanfare in w the feminist art wing of the Brooklyn Museum in August 2015. The show, which consisted of ten place settings created by incarcerated ­women identified collectively as the ­Women of York, spoke directly to the legacy of feminist art, ­women’s invisibility in recorded history, and the specific lives of the imprisoned artists in the collective. Joseph Lea, York library media specialist at the time, who was instrumental in bringing art and educational programs to the prison over his twenty-­two years on staff, writes in the booklet for the exhibition, “Shared Dining integrates a largely voiceless population into a public dialogue about ­women, history, and incarceration. W ­ omen of York drew on their experiences and turned commonplace objects into art. By telling stories of ­women who inspired them, they ­were empowered to write their own stories, and share them in places where their voices would be heard. In turn, they learned that without sharing stories, we all risk being left out of recorded history.”1 Lea’s statement and the exhibition inserted incarcerated and criminalized w ­ omen into the larger strug­gle to document and make vis­ib ­ le ­women’s histories and w ­ omen’s roles in public and private archives.

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Women of York, Shared Dining, 2015.

The Shared Dining installation at the Brooklyn Museum was on display in a room adjacent to Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party (1974–1979), its minimalism offering a juxtaposition to the ornate plates of Chicago’s installation. The materials used by W ­ omen of York included items commonly found in prison dining halls: plastic cutlery, paper products, and Styrofoam cups. They also included other items that the w ­ omen could access through commissary or prison art programs, such as acrylic paint, white table­cloths, and synthetic yarn. The exhibition was the result of a collaboration between the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, York C ­ orrectional Institution, Three Guineas Foundation, and photographer Susan Meiselas, who documented the proj­ect. The Sackler Center began the collaboration with a one-­day workshop at York on feminist art, featuring Judy Chicago. The proj­ect quickly expanded and transformed into a six-­month collaboration when the incarcerated participants turned the workshop into a peer-­led space that centered around a parallel history of influential ­women in their own lives. A few of them created place settings to honor

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famous p ­ eople, such as race-­car driver Danica Patrick and h ­ uman rights activist Malala Yousafazai. Some chose mythic and religious icons—­Eve and the Virgin Mary. ­Others, like Lisette Oblitas, focused on influential ­women in their personal lives. Oblitas’s place setting consists of a large eye peering out from a paper plate. Unflinching, the dark pupil looks up at the viewer. The plate sits at the center of a placemat decorated with painted flowers. A cherub accompanies the name of the honored: “Phyllis Porter.” Along the border of the placemat are musical notes. Next to the plate lies a white paper napkin with a single “spork” on it, and at the top right corner of the setting is a Styrofoam cup painted with a gold design. Oblitas never met Ms. Porter, but the two are forever connected by a fatal car accident that took Porter’s life. Oblitas pled guilty in a pre-trial agreement (also discussed in Chapter 4). While imprisoned at York, she made the setting to honor the deceased Porter.2 A Peruvian immigrant, Oblitas was working as a nanny in a town north of New York City at the time of the accident. Over the course of her imprisonment, Oblitas exchanged letters with some of Ms. Porter’s c­ hildren; they shared about their m ­ other and offered emotional support. Oblitas used art to honor Porter by incorporating symbols of Porter’s life, like her love of m ­ usic and flowers. The place setting became a sort of meeting space for Oblitas and Porter, across the bound­aries of time, of life and death, of freedom and imprisonment. Oblitas reflects, “I wanted to create a beautiful garden for her. For one, I could feel that I was forgiven and that I was loved, and I loved her back. I knew that I was in a prison but I w ­ asn’t in a prison. I was in this garden with her. ­There was no right or wrong; ­there ­were [no] newspaper articles pointing a fin­ger. T ­ here was no judgment.”3 Working on Shared Dining was a significant part of coming to terms with her role in Porter’s death, personal and collective healing, and her eventual release from prison. Her art honoring Porter was also a way of acknowledging her status as a criminalized and incarcerated person and her relationship with a broader population of imprisoned ­people. The organizers of Shared Dining incorporated Oblitas’s compelling story of redemption and healing through art as a central narrative when publicizing the exhibition. News articles and interviews featured her tale.4 The healing role of art during Oblitas’s imprisonment reemerged as an impor­tant theme in the spring of 2017, almost two years a­ fter she was released from prison, when she was faced

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with deportation u ­ nder the Trump Administration’s aggressive anti-­immigrant policies. Her prior conviction made her among the first group of p ­ eople targeted once Trump took office. Administrators from York and allies from the Brooklyn Museum, along with her ­legal team, cited her participation in Shared Dining and other rehabilitative programs in her defense, as well as her enrollment as an undergraduate student at Columbia University once released from prison. She won her case and remains in the United States. Oblitas and other participants in the collaboration, both incarcerated and nonincarcerated, expressed how they ­were personally transformed by the proj­ect and how it opened them up to new possibilities.5 Shared Dining was also an example of the development of a provisional public that collaborates and forges exchanges between ­people dispersed across carceral geographies. ­These points of contact function as sites where divergently situated p ­ eople—­some incarcerated, some working for prisons, some from neighborhoods where incarcerated p ­ eople are removed, o ­ thers from areas that feel “safe” by the logic of prison—­can encounter, witness, and

Lisette Oblitas, Phyllis Porter Place Setting, from the series Shared Dining, by ­Women of York, 2015.

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discuss how punitive governance and mass imprisonment have s­ haped facets of modern life. Such crossings and exchanges can lead to abolitionist imaginaries—­the vision and commitment to end punitive captivity and caging, but they can also reinforce the logic of incarceration and the divide between public and prison. Prison art collaborations allow for new relational practices to form between incarcerated and nonincarcerated groups as they communicate, work together, and envision through, and often against, the punitive regulations of the state. Collaborations between incarcerated p ­ eople and nonincarcerated artists and organ­izations serve as a significant means by which prison art circulates among nonincarcerated p ­ eople, and show how the concept of carceral aesthetics emerges across vari­ous states of un / freedom. They also involve negotiations of penal space, ­matter, and time. In some facilities, the presence of nonincarcerated artists allows for a type of flexible rule-­bending whereby incarcerated participants can experiment with a variety of materials, have access to dif­fer­ent spaces inside prisons, and spend time d ­ oing immersive creative work in community. Moreover, such collaborations often expand artistic, social, and professional networks for incarcerated ­people that might continue to benefit them once they are released. One such example of how ­these programs can forge new publics is the P ­ eople’s Paper Co-op, based in Philadelphia. The program fosters community-­based artistic initiatives between currently and formerly incarcerated p ­ eople, po­liti­cally engaged artists, and community groups working to reveal some of the long-­term effects of incarceration. The Reentry Bill of Rights (2017), a collaboration between ­People’s Paper Co-op and twelve hundred formerly incarcerated ­people who participated in interviews about the challenges of returning from prison, pronounces the collective voice of t­hose criminalized and currently and formerly held in punitive captivity. The bill of rights begins, “We the p ­ eople . . . ​the 70 million plus with criminal rec­ords. We exist in multitudes. We lead many lives. We are all ages.”6 The statement’s emphasis on the sheer number of ­people who have been criminalized or imprisoned is an effort to render vis­i­ble their shadow presence and to destigmatize them. Pulled from vari­ous voices, it is not singular but collective in announcing the presence of ­those currently and formerly held in punitive captivity and demanding an awakening of the nonincarcerated to acknowledge how public life is structured around the regulation, surveillance, and stigmatization of certain ­people.

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But prison arts collaborations can also turn on power dynamics in which the nonincarcerated are deemed as artists while the incarcerated participants are the subject ­matter or objects of art.7 And in so ­doing, they can rely on and reinforce the ideologies of rehabilitation and punitive correction that are embedded in the origins of the penitentiary and that still continue. In many instances, prison staff choose the participants, and the se­lection pro­cess can reproduce racial and ethnic hierarchies that exist inside carceral facilities. Black ­people, exponentially overrepresented in carceral facilities, are often woefully underrepresented in arts collaborations. Teaching artist Treacy Ziegler, who is white, states, “When you go into prison and you start an art class and it might be 95 ­percent black in the prison, I got 80 ­percent white in my class. . . . ​How can you have a totally black prison h ­ ere and I only have white guys in my art class? . . . ​I think it’s extreme racism, but when I ask them [prison staff], they say, ‘Blacks have more tickets [disciplinary infractions], and they ­don’t get into your class.’ ”8 Prison art collaborations tend to emerge from a model in which outside experts come into prisons temporarily to share knowledge or a skill set. Furthermore, ­because they need to be approved by prisons in order to take place, many collaborations focus on personal exploration and individualized notions of rehabilitation while avoiding or obfuscating po­liti­cal and systemic critiques of incarceration. The concern h ­ ere is that art-­making becomes a tool of the prison to manage and control populations. Baz Dreisinger, founder of John Jay College’s Prison-­to-­College Pipeline program, has taught lit­er­a­ture and creative writing in many prisons and questions the value of prison arts programs for this reason: “Arts-­in-­prison programs are potent agents of individual change, yes. But are they also in some ways a distraction from the w ­ hole social order itself, from the power­ful forces at play in the criminal justice system as a ­whole?”9 While ­these collaborations create im­mense possibility for new forms of relationality and a ­future without ­human caging, many of them depend on carcerality and its enduring justification of imprisonment. The dynamics and politics of collaborating across a multitude of differences (e.g., class, race, gender, education, housing, and ­legal status) are complex and messy in that they forge relations between ­people held in punitive captivity and ­people who are able to enter and exit prisons as a privilege of their artistic or professional status. Differently situated participants may have widely varying notions

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The Reentry Think Tank, Reentry Bill of Rights, Preamble, 2017. Reentry Think Tank Fellows: Hiram Adams, Jym Baker, Faith Bartley, Deanna Bell, Josette Bennett, Russell Craig, Aaron Crump, Alphonso Dashiell, Joshua Glenn, Anthony Hirschbuhl, David Jackson, Anthony Lovett, Sheila Michael, Tarrence Swartz, Colwin Williams, and Romeeka Williams. Poster done in collaboration with Kate DeCiccio. Proj­ect codirectors: Courtney Bowles and Mark Strandquist, 2017.

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and experiences of mobility, freedom, sensory stimulation, racialized and gendered citizenship, and public life. Poet Liza Jessie Peterson reflects on her time teaching poetry to young detainees at Rikers Island compared to her l­ater, more sustained work of being a full-­time high school teacher in the jail: “I bring the magic and the fun. As a teaching artist, I’m in and I’m out, spending no more than an hour and a half, tops, sometimes just forty-­five minutes, in each class. My poetry teaching artist swag is tight. I flow like honey and the kids gravitate to me like bees. I rock that shit.”10 Prison art collaborations are s­ haped by ­these disparities (­free / unfree, mobile / immobile, captive / roaming) and function in tense relation to the institutional frameworks of prison and its divisions of imprisonment versus public life, bad subject versus good subject, captive versus ­free person. When ­these power differences are not carefully considered, and when the collaborative pro­cess reinforces in­equality, the proj­ect itself can contribute to a voy­eur­is­tic fascination with prison life and prisoners as aberrant and even nonhuman, while playing into normative Western aesthetic traditions that link art to freedom, in par­tic­u­lar ideas about freedom of expression and association.11 In prisons and jails across the country, nonincarcerated ­people enter prisons to provide art classes, workshops, and special proj­ects for incarcerated ­people. This pro­cess can take many shapes—­for example, a local, state, or federal department of correction contracting with community, art, and rehabilitative organ­izations as vendors to provide ser­vices inside prisons; a nonprofit ser­vice or arts organ­ ization receiving funds to implement a preconceived program or curriculum inside a carceral institution that is willing to host the proj­ect; individual artists, e­ ither backed by grant support or who are volunteering or self-­funding their work, seeking to collaborate with a prison site or incarcerated artists; incarcerated artists initiating a collaboration with other incarcerated artists or nonincarcerated artists and organ­izations. This last scenario most often occurs without funding from outside sources due to prohibitions against paying and granting awards to convicted ­people, prison regulations, and other logistical and ­legal barriers that make it difficult, if not impossible, for incarcerated p ­ eople to access resources or competitive funds available to nonincarcerated artists. Many of t­ hese collaborations are run by established organ­izations, like the William James Association, Rehabilitation through the Arts, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and Artistic Noise. Some are connected to universities, such as University

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of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Proj­ect and Auburn University’s Alabama Prison Arts + Education Proj­ect. ­These forms of art-­making, exchange, and collaboration have grown over the past de­cade, in part due to an increasing public awareness of mass incarceration and support of prison reform, though how organ­izations and participants envision reform varies widely and ranges across the po­liti­cal spectrum. More grant-­funding targeted at prison reform and arts—by organ­izations like the Art for Justice Fund, Open Philanthropy, Rauschenberg Foundation’s “Artist as Activist” program, PEN Amer­i­ca’s “Writing for Justice” program, the Soze Agency’s Right of Return fellowship, to name a few—­means more frequent exchanges and higher visibility of prison arts collaborations. The collaborations also reflect a shift in art practices in the early twenty-­first c­ entury t­oward a relational aesthetic of socially engaged, multiauthored art proj­ects, part of what art theorist Grant Kester calls “a movement t­ oward participatory, process-­based experience.”12

“Fraught imaginaries” is a concept that I develop to consider the complex dynamics and power structures that shape artistic collaborations between nonincarcerated professional artists, nonprofit arts organ­izations, and incarcerated artists, students, and participants. It is meant to gesture at the possibilities and challenges of collective dreaming and art-­making by ­people who are differently situated across carceral geographies. The concept borrows from a critical investigation of the imaginary by Laura Bieger, Ramón Saldívar, and Johannes Voelz in which they theorize the imaginary as referring “both to the act of creation and to what has been created.”13 Foregrounding its plurality and the vari­ ous ways that thinkers have conceived of the term, they write that imaginaries are “generative pro­cesses that bring forth what does not yet have a social correlative, but they also have the power—­indeed, it is their function—to fix, delimit, and reproduce collectively or­ga­nized subjectivity.”14 In the imaginary resides “the appearance of new possibilities of social organ­ization and po­liti­cal action.”15 Fraught imaginaries incorporate the necessary, messy work of creating art, po­liti­cal action, and new sets of relationships between the incarcerated and nonincarcerated, and ­doing so across forms of penal space, time, and ­matter. In part, I write this chapter ­because of a recurring experience I have had while conducting research for this book. In par­tic­u­lar, when studying grant-­dependent nonprofit organ­izations that provide ser­vices such as art training and workshops 158

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to incarcerated populations, I have had to navigate the territorialism of workers who staff the programs. This has been especially challenging or fraught when dealing with some white w ­ omen who staff ­these organ­izations and who are concerned that I ­will be critical of their work and position. As a result, at times I have experienced a re­sis­tance among nonprofit administrators to share information with me. I have tried to stay attuned to the vulnerability of nonprofit organ­izations that are often underfunded and dependent on annual reviews for ongoing support, as well as the fact that many of ­these collaborations are structured through a racialized and gendered configuration in which the artists and nonprofit workers tend to be overwhelmingly white ­women and the incarcerated population tends to be mostly black, Latino, and white men. Now, in one sense, this racial and gender divide can be understood as part of the feminization and racializing of the fields of social work, education, and nonprofit organ­izations and the long history of the systematic and brutal policing and criminalization of nonwhite and poor men. Yet we must attend to how the structures of nonprofit arts and ser­vice organ­izations and carceral institutions work in tandem to define what collaboration means, who is being served, and how art proj­ects can be instrumentalized to reproduce both institutions as sites of containment where social, cultural, and po­liti­cal value are unequally distributed. While we need forms of public engagement that do not separate incarcerated ­people from the nonincarcerated, we also need to be careful that prison art collaborations do not rely on a notion of art as intrinsically transformative or on a relationship to prisons that reinforces their power and function to dictate who is captive and who is f­ ree. Moreover, we need to interrogate liberal humanist assumptions about what it means to collaborate between “prisoner” and “artist,” when such collaborations obfuscate paid l­ abor (artists and organ­izations) and unpaid ­labor (incarcerated ­people) and promote both idealized and punitive notions about the rehabilitative role of art for the most marginalized and criminalized individuals, leaving carceral systems unchecked.

The Stakes of Collaborating For nonincarcerated artists and organ­izations, the investments in prison arts collaborations are multifold, the most significant often being a commitment to Fraught I maginaries

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education and cultural access ­behind bars, as well as securing grants to fund the programs that typically pay for nonincarcerated facilitators, administrators, and a portion of the nonprofit’s overhead. For some local nonprofit cultural and arts centers, securing grants to provide ser­vices for vulnerable, targeted populations is a primary means to stay afloat, even if ­those groups are not core audiences or central to the mission of the organ­izations. For emerging artists, working with incarcerated ­people can connect to social justice practices, while also being a marker of achievement—­seen as cutting-­edge and radical, allowing them to enter unknown terrain, and giving them entrée to a group to whom it is difficult to gain access. Overall, t­ hese collaborations can be a major stepping-­stone t­ oward greater visibility, prestige, and larger grants and awards. They also afford an opportunity to explore what Lea describes as the fascination that the nonincarcerated have about the creative lives of prisoners: “­People are so intrigued by incarceration and deprivation of creativity.”16 For nonprofit organ­izations, prison art collaborations are financially, administratively, and ideologically folded into the antagonistic relations between the carceral state and its captive subjects. Nonprofit organ­izations that collaborate with prisons are primarily accountable to prison staff and grant funders and less so to the most vulnerable and ­those who are the primary subjects of the grant: imprisoned ­people. While many such programs are touted for giving voice to, offering ave­nues of expression for, or contributing to the rehabilitation of incarcerated ­people, nonprofit organ­izations tend to be the biggest beneficiaries in t­hese collaborations. In this regard their status relies on maintaining healthy, long-­term relationships with prisons. Many directors and administrators of prison arts programs spoke candidly and with ethical concern about how the success of their organ­izations depends on having sizable prison populations; it is largely the prison boom that has driven the growth in arts programming in recent years. Many nonprofit administrators and teaching artists who are employed by them are aware of the fraught status of their associations with prisons and attempt to create programs that w ­ ill engage and personally empower incarcerated p ­ eople. But t­hese tenuous arrangements are ultimately governed by prison administrators and staff, who can at any moment cancel a program. Nonprofit arts organ­izations are not the only institutions benefiting from the vulnerability of prisoners while attempting to provide ser­vices to them. Such is

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also the prob­lem with academic studies of incarcerated p ­ eople and even prison education initiatives offered by universities. Writing about education programs, including one in which he works, scholar Anoop Mirpuri won­ders “how neoliberalism’s economic and ideological dependence on policing, prisons, and carceral technologies elicits forms of oppositional scholarship and critical engagement that ratify liberal procedures of valorization and value accumulation at the heart of racial capitalism.”17 Mirpuri identifies the ideologies and pro­cesses of extracting resources, bodies, and ideas from incarcerated p ­ eople while not disrupting the carceral state as “the correction-­extraction complex,” a system that disciplines, holds captive, and extracts l­ abor and resources from targeted populations. He asks, “How might inquiry that explores the discursive and aesthetic practices of prisoners work against the correction-­extraction complex that serves as its condition of possibility? How does such inquiry resist performing the legitimation work that the prison requires for its usefulness to racial capitalism?”18 Mirpuri argues that scholars and educators consider their investment in the category of the prisoner even as they tout a critique of prisons. His interrogation challenges the nonincarcerated to consider the limitation of and comfort in their imaginary landscape that hinges on a system of incarceration as the most foundational institution of managing populations and enforcing laws. The stakes of such engagement and collaboration are much dif­fer­ent for incarcerated ­people. Is consent to participate in an arts program pos­si­ble when one party is financially compensated and professionally rewarded while the other is held in punitive captivity? The notion of informed consent is especially challenging when working within or facilitated through one of the most punitive institutions known to modern society—­the prison industrial complex. For researchers to work with or study prison populations, they must go through research review boards at their home institutions, and departments of correction require additional levels of scrutiny. Whereas researchers must go through the review protocol, for most partners in prison arts collaborations, proposal review can be quite arbitrary and less regulated, if it happens at all. As one prison administrator explains, at the fa­cil­it­y where he worked, many collaborations with artists occurred through phone calls and email inquiries from artists and nonprofit groups interested in working with incarcerated ­people. Most of the time, t­ hose inquiring had no training working inside prisons or with p ­ eople

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confined and punished by the state. Another prison administrator recalled an incarcerated person stating, “They are using us,” when she pitched the proposal of a collaboration by a group of prominent artists who had already secured funding. The imprisoned man was aware of how the captivity of some served to buttress the ­careers of o ­ thers. In most collaborations, incarcerated artists have no access to the terms of the grant, do not know how much money the artist or organ­ization has received, and are not allowed to receive any remuneration for their ­labor or from the circulation or sale of art resulting from the collaboration. Instead, ­under a shared logic of the prison and nonprofit industries, both of which rely on state and private funds, the benefits to incarcerated participants (in the language of grant proposals) include the experience of working with a professional artist, and in some arrangements, receiving course credits, certificates, community ser­vice, or positive reports that incarcerated p ­ eople may be able to submit, along with other “good-­standing” reports, in a pos­si­ble parole hearing. I engage with t­ hese concerns not with the intention of exposing or making vulnerable organ­izations that provide art ser­vices to the incarcerated or that benefit from prison collaborations. Rather, I propose that we consider how ­these collaborations can be re­imagined to change the outcomes and goals of participatory art practices from a scenario where some return to cages and ­others to their private homes. Instead, how can such programs help promote the fullest ­human capacity of the incarcerated millions? This entails in part a reassessment of what collaboration involves, especially between p ­ eople who are differently situated in states of un / freedom, captivity, and access to resources and institutions. It starts with an understanding of collaboration that acknowledges the dif­fer­ent stakes of its partners and that creates practices that are not just about survival or scarcity, but about the flourishing and freedom of all participants, to paraphrase writer and activist Adrienne Maree Brown.19

A Brief History of Prison Arts Programs Since the 1970s, as prison populations have grown, so have collaborations between arts organ­izations, educators, activists, and prisoners, though t­ here have been periods in this time frame when programs have been cut or underfunded due to

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state and federal bud­get priorities.20 Craft workshops and art activities have existed in some prisons since the advent of the modern penitentiary, but the collaboration among outside artists, nonprofit centers, and art organ­izations has roots in the late 1960s and early 1970s and connects to social movements and radical art collectives of the era. Two competing, and sometimes precariously overlapping, demands comprise this growth: first, the collective strug­gles of prisoners’ rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s for more access to education, cultural programs, and rehabilitation for incarcerated and detained ­people, and, second, the administrative needs of the carceral state to manage and occupy the increasing numbers of ­people in prison. Historian Lee Bern­stein’s Amer­i­ca Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s offers a cultural and po­liti­cal history of the rise of prison arts programming. It provides a rich account of the reciprocal creative and intellectual exchanges that took place among writers, activists, and artists across the carceral archipelago, emphasizing how imprisoned intellectuals and writers impacted the aesthetics and practices of nonincarcerated artists and writers like Faith Ringgold and Larry Neal. Examining a broad range of government-­funded and privately funded writing, theater, per­for­mance, and visual arts programming that brought the incarcerated and nonincarcerated together in sustained collaboration, Bern­stein argues that in the 1970s, prisons ­were at the center of radical po­liti­cal organ­izing, arts practices, and theorizing. He writes, “The prison culture of the 1970s demonstrated widespread hopes for collective liberation brought about by a revolutionary movement with incarcerated ­people among its vanguard. It was not simply that culture could sustain inmates and connect them to one another; during the 1970s cultural expression became the vehicle for incarcerated ­people to participate in po­liti­cal and social movements seeking to transform and improve society as a ­whole.”21 Among the most significant incidents that birthed modern prison arts programs was the Attica Prison uprising of 1971. The “Manifesto of Demands” from the Attica Liberation Front included educational opportunities, vocational training, access to books and media, an end to racial segregation, and an end to incarcerated ­people being persecuted for their po­liti­cal beliefs, peaceful dissent, or race.22 As Heather Ann Thompson’s account of Attica and its aftermath shows, the uprising was a momentous period when incarcerated p ­ eople or­ga­nized against the

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state’s repression and conditions of captivity. But the state’s brutal response to the uprising and its legacy are far reaching in how prison administrations have since managed po­liti­cally conscious and radical prisoners with the expansion of more punitive and austere mea­sures to prevent ­people from organ­izing and rebelling, such as isolation units and supermax facilities.23 Thompson writes that one of the consequences of the uprising was “to fuel an anti-­civil rights and anti-­rehabilitative ethos in the United States.”24 In a few facilities, prison administrations responded to some of the demands of incarcerated protestors by allowing more educational and cultural programs, like the Prison Cultural Exchange Program created by the Black Emergency Cultural Co­ali­tion (BECC). BECC, like many black artists and activist groups, allied with the Attica prisoners. The group responded immediately to the demands of the incarcerated protestors out of po­liti­cal and cultural solidarity. BECC was a group of black artists based in New York City that had formed in 1969 to protest the racist practices of museums and cultural institutions, specifically the infamous exhibit Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black Amer­i­ca, 1900–1968 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Art historian Susan Cahan writes that the BECC’s “primary demands ­were twofold. First, they protested the absence of African Americans in curatorial positions at the Metropolitan Museum, and second, they rejected the idea that an art museum would have an exhibition of African American culture that contained no painting or sculpture.”25 Cocreated by artist Benny Andrews (who would l­ater play a central role in the growth of prison arts education programs throughout the 1970s), Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Camille Billops, Norman Lewis, and ­others, the BECC quickly launched campaigns against other major art establishments, pressuring them to diversify their staff, curatorial vision, and collections. A ­ fter the Attica uprising—­and the state’s violent response, in which incarcerated protestors ­were massacred—­BECC connected its direct actions against museums to the need for cultural exchanges with incarcerated p ­ eople to challenge the conditions of prisons and the cultural and educational deprivation they enforced. A co­ali­tion statement from the era reads: Our pre­sent strug­gle is in response to the Attica massacres. In our efforts to support our ­brothers and ­sisters in the prisons of Amer­ic­ a the Black

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Emergency Cultural Co­ali­tion has proposed a Prison Cultural Exchange Program which it feels w ­ ill serve to augment the rehabilitative pro­cesses called for in the 28 demands of the Attica prisoners. Our program would allow for the sending of artists into the prisons to teach, lecture, exhibit their works and assist in arranging exhibitions of the works of prisoners in the vari­ous communities. . . . ​We are especially committed to the strug­gle to uphold the validity of art as an agent for cultural revolution and social change.26

Influenced by the Black Arts Movement, the BECC’s mission hinged on a belief in art as a tool of revolution and on an idea of healing that was generated by Attica prisoners in their manifesto, one that refuted the prison’s philosophy of rehabilitation: “The program which we are submitted to u ­ nder the façade of rehabilitation, is relative to the ancient stupidity of pouring ­water on a drowning man, inasmuch as we are treated for our hostilities by our program administrators with their hostility as medi­cation.”27 The BECC followed the lead of Attica protestors, listening to their needs in refuting state-­mandated ideas of rehabilitation and also the urgent need for “exchange” with a nonincarcerated public. Lee Bern­stein notes that this was a period of po­liti­cal and intellectual exchange between incarcerated and nonincarcerated artists, writers, and activists not bound by the professionalizing of nonprofit administrators and social ser­vice facilitators that now dictates many collaborations.28 Thus, a reciprocity of ideas underpinned ­these interactions without the constraints of grant-­funding, deliverables, and payroll that frame accountability in the nonprofit world. By October 1971, one month ­after the Attica uprising, several members of BECC began volunteering to teach art and writing in New York jails and prisons.29 They or­ga­nized exhibits and published Attica Book, which featured art by BECC members and a diverse group of other artists who had formed solidarity with the incarcerated activists fighting for their rights. It also included poetry and other writing by incarcerated ­people who had participated in BECC’s initial workshops. One well-­known piece that appeared in Attica Book is Faith Ringgold’s United States of Attica (1971–1972), a map of the United States that centers around the Attica massacre and the nation’s history of state-­sanctioned vio­lence against indigenous and black populations. The map offers a counternarrative of the nation, highlighting practices of dispossession, l­abor and racial exploitation, slavery, and captivity.

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By 1972, BECC had formed into a nonprofit organ­ization and created the Prison Arts Program to support its art workshops and cultural exchanges in jails and prisons. It was supported by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. BECC offered a wide range of workshops on visual arts, literary arts, and theater and per­for­mance, initially in facilities in New York, but soon expanding to other states. BECC’s archives include several requests from imprisoned people, nonincarcerated artists, and other nonprofits asking the organ­ization to create programs and to model best practices in collaborating with the incarcerated. By the late 1970s, BECC employed racially diverse artists across many genres who taught in fourteen states, from California to Maine.30 By 1976, BECC was operating art classes at San Quentin.31 It also published a newsletter that featured writing and art by participants and instructors, including an essay titled “Art and the Ex-­Con,” by Rodney G. King, a formerly incarcerated person whom Benny Andrews hired to teach in BECC’s program.32 King’s writing was included in Attica Book while he was incarcerated. He reflects on receiving a copy of the book in prison with a signed letter from Andrews in which Andrews greets him formally. King writes, “ ‘Dear Mr. King’ reaffirmed the fact that I was a man with a name and not a body with a number.” King comments on the significance of being published among a community of artists: “I immediately responded by giving thanks and informing him that the only time I previously saw my name in print was on a court calendar.”33 Bern­stein notes that central to BECC’s vision and commitment to prison arts programming w ­ ere acknowledging and amplifying the skills and creativity of incarcerated artists. He quotes Andrews: “ ‘Along with losing many of their basic rights, it seems that prison artists have also lost their right to be considered artists, regardless of their artistic accomplishment. The public has been reluctant to be open minded in its approach to art created b ­ ehind prison walls.’ ”34 Despite receiving national attention and mounting several exhibits, BECC strug­gled with funding.35 Ten years ­after its founding as a nonprofit, the organ­ ization was severely crippled. U ­ nder the Reagan administration, the NEA was no longer able to fund prison arts programs. A letter to Andrews dated 25 March 1982, from A. B. Spellman, director of the NEA’s Expansion Arts Program, states, “I am in receipt of your letter of March 11 requesting a reinstatement of the grant for the Black Emergency Cultural Co­ali­tion (BECC). I am well aware of the good

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that the BECC has accomplished in recent years and I regret that the current policies of the Expansion Arts Program mitigate against support of prison arts proj­ects and therefore against awards to BECC.”36 The po­liti­cal shift ­toward more retributive prisons and the corresponding lack of government funding for education and cultural enrichment programs partly led to the organ­ization’s decline. This shift ­under the Reagan administration demonstrates how prison arts programming and collaborations are enormously affected by changes in prison policies. In many prisons during the 1970s, administrators used cultural and educational programs to manage, control, and occupy growing prison populations and to deter activists from staging large-­scale protests. In some re­spects, prison arts and education programming was meant to squelch the revolutionary ideology of the Attica B ­ rothers and even the BECC. As Bern­stein notes, “Ironically, this faith in the transformative power of cultural expression also informed many of the reformist justifications for prison programming. Steeped in humanistic rationale rather than revolutionary politics, some prisons provided opportunities for inmates to both learn from and create lit­er­at­ ure, poetry, and visual art. Historical and po­liti­cal analy­sis took on a decidedly rehabilitative accent when an associate warden or cultural subcontractor placed it on a bud­get line.”37 While prisons sought out administrative and programmatic means to deal with increasing numbers of incarcerated p ­ eople and a rising po­liti­cal consciousness among them, intense debates continued about how to manage incarcerated p ­ eople, ­either through programming or through security and custody. Focusing on theater and writing programs in prison, Bern­stein writes that what was at stake was “­whether prison theater programs, or arts and education programs more generally, provided ave­nues for entertainment, liberation, therapy, or vocational training.”38 For prison staff, programming was a way to manage prisoners. For many incarcerated p ­ eople, art was to serve as a tool for liberation. Art teachers and educators had to walk a tightrope between not appearing as a threat to prison staff and not coming across to incarcerated ­people as employees or agents of the state. Bern­stein writes: Often working si­mul­ta­neously within and against the dictates of a repressive structure, they [artists and educators] found ways to shape courses of study and cultural programming that could pass muster with prison

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authorities while remaining relevant to the inmates. Thus, if they ­were forced to describe educational and cultural programs to p ­ eople who saw them as meaningful only within the rehabilitative function of prisons, they could also judge for themselves if they ­were relevant to their own interests and needs. B ­ ecause artists and educators who worked in prisons depended on the cooperation and often the funding of federal and state politicians and professionals, this conflict had a particularly profound impact on their ability to teach in prisons.39

­ hese tensions persist in con­temporary prison arts programs. Joseph Lea, the T former media specialist at York, comments: ­ here’s always been a tension between programs and custody. We ­were T in programs, education and counseling and twelve-­step programs are in programs, and custody is all security. So ­there’s this constant tension between programs and custody. We caused the ­people to move around a lot, and we caused ­people to get in groups a lot. That is antithetical to custody, which wants them not moving b ­ ecause it makes for a safer environment and easier control.40

Although tensions between programming and security have persisted throughout shifting prison policies, from the 1980s u ­ ntil recently educational and cultural programs in prisons had drastically shrunk as politicians, lawmakers, and prison administrators created more retributive prison environments.41 Much of the arts programming that exists in prisons t­oday comes from outside initiatives sponsored by universities, arts organ­izations, foundations, or in­ de­pen­dent artists. In some states, like California and Ohio, arts councils partner with departments of correction and nonprofit organ­izations to create programs. While responding to changes in prison policies and funding streams, con­temporary prison arts proj­ects and collaborations continue to uphold some of the structures and practices forged by radical activists of an ­earlier era, even as they remain largely unaware of ­those histories. Bern­stein concludes: The artists and teachers who continue to go into American prisons are ­little more than a skeleton crew, applying for grants to provide sorely 168

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needed and much appreciated programming. Without the structures left in place by the 1970s, ­there would be virtually no aesthetic programming in U.S. prisons. Perhaps the most impor­tant paradox is this: the period that saw the solidification of a law-­and-­order response to criminality also gave rise to an extraordinary range of opportunities for prisoners to access cultural and educational programs.42

Arts in Corrections Approaches The Prison Arts Proj­ect (PAP) of the William James Association (WJA), based in California, highlights some of the complexities of prison arts collaborations that are funded by or interwoven into departments of correction. Collaborations that require funding from departments of correction and whose orga­nizational structure is embedded in the state may have more access to incarcerated participants and to penal spaces and resources when bud­gets and po­liti­cal attitudes are supportive, but they are vulnerable to changing funding priorities of state bud­gets. And often, they have to operate u ­ nder a correction model of working with incarcerated ­people. ­These orga­nizational structures also highlight the shift from 1970s radical activism to a late twentieth-­century reform model built around nonprofit organ­izations and the professionalization of activists as social ser­vice providers and administrative man­ag­ers. At the same time, they sustain some of the most consistent skill-­based workshops and opportunities for incarcerated artists with ­little resources other­wise. PAP was founded in 1978 by Eloise Smith, a former director of the California, Arts Council, and her husband, Page Smith, a historian at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a cofounder of WJA. As one of the most well-­established and oldest art programs serving incarcerated populations, it stands as a model for many other organ­izations in building collaborative relationships with prisons and creating arts programming for incarcerated ­people.43 As Bern­stein notes, the organ­ization was created “to bridge the gap between philosophy and social action.” He also observes that the organ­ization’s found­ers “framed their goals in narrow terms that would speak directly to the ‘what works?’ concerns of prison administrators and funding agencies.”44 WJA came into being during a time when vibrant and often quite radical prison arts programs and exchanges ­were Fraught I maginaries

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taking place across the country. It offered workshops on printmaking, painting, poetry, drama, songwriting, bookbinding, and guitar. Supported by multiple funders, including the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the California Arts Council, foundations, and private grants, PAP early on developed close relationships with state penal and cultural agencies. By the mid 1980s, during California’s prison boom, PAP ran art programs in ­every prison in California and became part of CDCR through its new Arts in Corrections division. The division oversaw a large network of collaborative partners in addition to PAP, sponsored fellowships for professional teaching artists, and operated programs in all the state’s carceral facilities.45 It provided “an artist facilitator who is a state employee within the prison that would help to hold the space and receive the supplies and escort the artists and help them to navigate through the system.”46 Having a person on staff at prisons helped to ensure that workshops would operate with a regular schedule and a consistent group of students.47 It also allowed Arts in Corrections programs to use certain art materials normally prohibited in many prisons b ­ ecause the art facilitator had the power to advocate for the needs of the program. Participants ­were recruited by word of mouth, flyers, and through the closed-­circuit tele­vi­sion station that operates in state prisons. Generally, in PAP as in most other prison arts proj­ects, the prison staff have ultimate authority over who can participate. In some facilities, incarcerated ­people are able to sign up directly. In most prisons in California and across the nation, incarcerated ­people must not have disciplinary rec­ords in order to participate, but rules differ in each institution. The Arts in Corrections division produced data to demonstrate how it contributed to the goals and mission of CDCR. The programs it offered w ­ ere so popu­lar that in many facilities t­here ­were wait-lists to participate. Even so, Arts in Corrections, and arts programming in general, was drastically reduced during the state bud­get crisis of 2003. From 2003 to 2014, WJA managed to continue programs in two prisons without any state support. During much of that period, Laurie Brooks, the executive director, maintained the organ­ization by working without pay and relying on about twenty artists to continue the programs, many as volunteers. As part of its advocacy, California L ­ awyers for the Arts began to work with WJA and the California Arts Council to create art programs in four prisons to develop evidence-­based research about the benefits of art-­based

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programs in prison, led by  Larry Brewster of the University of San Francisco. Based on their findings, CDCR provided funds for a two-­year pi­lot program beginning in 2014. As a result of t­hese efforts, Arts in Corrections has resumed multigenre art classes in all thirty-­five California state prisons through a contract with the California Arts Council that involves WJA, the Alliance for California Traditional Artists, the Actor’s Gang, and other nonprofit arts organ­izations.48 Alma Robinson, executive director of California L ­ awyers for the Arts and principal advocate, states, I believe that arts programs in corrections expand justice through the empowerment of each individual who realizes greater self-­worth by exploring their unique gifts and talents. Artists work with incarcerated ­people to find their creative voices that can transcend the self-­limiting expectations that they have lived with most of their lives. Artists who dedicate themselves to this work—­whether they are inside or outside—­are impor­ tant messengers for justice.49

Remaining engaged in Arts in Corrections programs long term allows many incarcerated ­people to develop advanced artistic skills and craftsmanship, like the formerly incarcerated artist Ronnie Goodman during his time at San Quentin. Jack Bowers, who has taught with WJA for twenty-­five years, says that while programs like Arts in Corrections become enfolded in prison systems, they also provide impor­tant and sometimes rare opportunities “for prisoners of dif­fer­ent social groups to find commonality through shared arts interests.”50 The printmaking workshop at San Quentin is an example of how art spaces can create community and relations across differences. Incarcerated artists worked with a teaching artist placed by WJA to collaboratively design and carve a linoleum block. Although being part of the administrative bureaucracy of state prisons allows arts programs to operate with relative stability, maintaining such close ties to the carceral state can impact how workshops operate and how incarcerated ­people perceive them. Some incarcerated ­people are unwilling to participate in programs endorsed by the institutions that hold them captive, arguing that they are “methods of ideological control and psychological warfare.”51 ­Others strategically participate

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in state-­sponsored programs to gain access to art supplies that they can use in their solo practices. A currently incarcerated artist whom I ­will not identify (not based in California) describes his solo art practice as “­free” and his work with an arts organ­ization as “slave.” He says, “Even with some of the opportunities and experiences I’ve had with [the organ­ization], it’s still art reduced to decoration via censorship and politics.” The language of rehabilitation, punishment, and incarceration are significant issues that come up in prison arts proj­ects, especially ones funded through state agencies. They reveal some of the limitations of collaboration in state-­sponsored programs and are deeply emblematic of fraught imaginaries.52 Engaging in pathologizing discourse about criminality can be one of the demands placed on cultural and arts programs, along with demonstrating mea­sur­able outcomes to justify their expense. Some artists and art administrators I interviewed spoke of how they code-­switched. That is, they would use the punitive language of the state to talk about incarcerated p ­ eople when interacting with prison staff, and collaborative and peer-­learning terms when talking with incarcerated ­people. One administrator—­a white ­woman who asked to remain unnamed to protect her organ­ization’s relationship to the prison where they run programs—­stated, “I never have much reason to do anything but call [incarcerated participants] by their names. But if ­there’s a CO [correction officer] talking to me, I may just say ‘offender’ or ‘inmate’ to see if I can get what I need.” She describes how t­hese terms produce cognitive dissonance when used in the context of art-­making: Iw ­ ill use ­those words ­we’re not supposed to use . . . ​mostly for the cognitive dissonance. I want p ­ eople to have that cognitive dissonance. . . . ​“Offender” is awful. I never use “offender,” u ­ nless I’m talking in their [the prison administrators’] language. “Offender” means ­you’ve done something wrong and you never s­ topped from ­doing wrong. ­You’re just offensive. It’s awful. Prisons are awful. The w ­ hole ­thing should be dismantled. T ­ here’s no question. But in case it ­doesn’t happen tomorrow, I’m ­going to go in and do what I can, to be like a termite and do what I can to change it from the inside.

Her critique offers insight into tensions that exist between some of the ­people who staff nonprofit organ­izations and their po­liti­cal thoughts about the institu-

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A printmaking class at San Quentin State Prison, provided by the William James Association, 2008.

tion of prisons. ­These tensions also resonate between nonprofit organ­izations and the freelance artists who are hired to teach in prisons.

The Itinerant Artist and the Politics of Art as Social Justice Most teaching artists in prisons and other carceral facilities are contingent workers hired as in­de­pen­dent contractors without benefits and often with very l­imited supply and transportation bud­gets, if any at all. Many w ­ ere trained in art school and, like ­others in the arts and culture industries, are struggling to earn income within the current economic system. Some have long-­term relationships with the organ­izations that hire them, but o ­ thers are brought on for short-­term proj­ects that might last for a day, a few weeks, or a few months. This precarious status

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has largely to do with l­imited funding for t­ hese types of programs, but nonetheless organ­izations benefit from large pools of unemployed professional artists and the ­limited paid gigs available in creative fields. DonChristian Jones, a self-­identified black queer artist in his twenties who grew up in Philadelphia and studied art at Wesleyan University, leads mural art workshops with incarcerated people who are h ­ oused in several units on Rikers Island. Jones is among a young generation of artists and activists, largely led by ­people of color, who connect the rise in the carceral state explic­itly to the oppression and vulnerability of LGBTQ ­people; they are part of a movement that merges radical queer and trans politics with abolitionism with the goal of “building power among ­people facing multiple systems of oppression in order to imagine a world beyond mass devastation, vio­lence, and inequity that occurs within and between communities.”53 They also engage ­people most directly affected by mass incarceration from the position of having also been directly impacted, meaning that many young artists of color who attempt to work with incarcerated ­people have also experienced the effects of imprisonment personally, in their families, and among their communities. Rikers is a particularly challenging and historically charged carceral fa­cil­i­ty for Jones, who has had relatives, including his ­father, incarcerated ­there. Although Jones does not discuss his sexuality with his participants, he does not attempt to hide parts of his identity while working inside prisons. He also participates in mentoring and cultural programs with queer and court-­ involved young ­people in community-­based settings. Many of them have spent time at Rikers and are aware of the par­tic­ul­ ar vulnerabilities of being identified as gay, queer, or gender-­nonconforming in carceral settings. To develop a mural, Jones begins by using poetry, imagery, and ­music—­often lyr­ics instead of recorded sound, as most forms of technology are forbidden, even as teaching tools—to guide participants in brainstorming themes of interest based on their collective experiences. He also uses word-­mapping from conception to design to fabrication. Next, Jones brings in vari­ous images that may represent overlapping topics, moods, and themes that recur among participants. He emphasizes the importance of providing visual material that stretches beyond the familiars of prison life. Collective brainstorming is a crucial step. It is when the group begins to cohere. During one brainstorming session, the group was transformed and a mural was birthed when a young Haitian immigrant detainee shared that he cried all 174

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the time. Jones describes that par­tic­u­lar group as a collective of gang-­identified men who ­were marginalized within the general prison population; they ­were ­housed separately ­because their gang affiliation was a very small faction within Rikers, which led to their being threatened by larger populations of rival gangs. The Haitian participant told the group that his d ­ aughter’s ­mother, who was only eigh­teen, had died and that he had never seen his two-­year-­old d ­ aughter. Jones said that the session transformed into a space where other participants shared about their pain and vulnerability—­“that they cry all the time,” too. Jones reflects: I just looked at this moment and I’m in a room full of black and Latino men, and we all had admitted to crying all the time. That was one of the most power­ful ­things that I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never been in such a safe space to be so vulnerable, and yet I’m in the confines of a jail. And ­there’s like vaulted desks and handcuffs. Then one of them goes, “Yeah ­there’s like power and strength to be derived from vulnerability.” I was like, “Yes. Exactly!” It ­doesn’t mean ­you’re weak to cry. I was like, “Yes! Yes!” And they ­were like, “Yeah, like Martin Luther King and Tupac. They all would cry.” So that is what our word map became.54

Out of their sharing, the group developed a mural titled Staying above the ­Water (2017), which incorporates images of grief, sorrow, and resilience that resonated with vari­ous participants. It is impor­tant to emphasize that the space of collaboration that Jones describes is from the position of the art teacher, who can leave at the end of the session. For all the participants, the kind of sharing that occurred through collaborating is a challenge to penal space and its austerity, and yet the notion of vulnerability—­what it means for the teaching artist and the incarcerated students—is rife with complexity. Furthermore, if anyone among the group w ­ ere to reveal another member’s vulnerability, it could put participants at greater risk of being targeted by prison staff or other prisoners. The sharing that emerges in t­hese programs, while crucial to collective art-­making, reflects the power inequalities that are embedded in collaborating across prison walls and the lasting implications of this work. Jones is deeply aware of the ironies of his position as a working artist and contingent laborer contracted by nonprofit organ­izations that provide ser­vices to Fraught I maginaries

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vulnerable populations and whose funding sources are government contracts and private philanthropy. Analyzing ­these fraught dynamics of working with cultural organ­izations that rely on relationships to the punitive state, he states: They are dependent on that kind of underserved community. And they also, I find, particularly the larger, more established ones, are run top down by ­people that are mimicking a corporate structure, that are mimicking a commercial structure. Their bud­geting is ­doing the same. Their funding is ­doing the same, and t­hese ­people are not d ­ oing any direct work with the populations that they [intend] to serve. So my challenge as a teaching artist, or like d ­ oing more direct work, is like finding myself as this liaison between management and the street. . . . ​So much is lost in translation . . . ​ and it can be racialized too. Like if you have a nonprofit that is run by all white ­people that is deemed progressive, but ­you’re working with a community of brown folks, ­there ­will often be a disconnect in that work. . . . And then ­there are issues of artist support or teacher support, like what ser­vices are they ­doing or providing to make sure w ­ e’re OK in experiencing second­hand trauma. You know ­because we have to be at tip-­top shape, mentally, emotionally, physically, to continue this work. Other­wise w ­ e’re ­doing a detriment to the ­people, and then also sometimes feeling exploitive, like “Oh, you need me to fill this quota,” or “You need me to produce this work so you can then take it to a gala or an auction and sell it.” You know, the work of a child who already has nothing, who should be receiving this accolade, who should be receiving this money.55

Jones speaks of the systemic precarity, vio­lence, and trauma at the core of prisons, where both ­those held captive and ­those employed by the system exist in spaces of state-­sanctioned brutality, deprivation, suffering, and the arbitrary and forceful power that the carceral state asserts at any given moment. Like many contract workers and volunteers in prisons, Jones on occasion has arrived and been unable to teach ­because ­there is no prison staff available or willing to chaperone him to the common area where his classes are held. Even more frequently, he arrives and prepares for the workshop, but participants are not let out of their cells. This work is also a challenge for most artists and ser­vice providers because

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DonChristian Jones and Rikers mural students, Staying above the ­Water, word map and sketch, 2017.

of Rikers’s well-­documented vio­lence and massive size. As of 2017, it warehoused about nine thousand people in ten facilities on a four-­hundred-­acre island.56 The vast majority of ­people held at Rikers are pretrial detainees, meaning they have not been convicted of a crime but are instead suspects, often of misdemeanor charges, who cannot afford bail, or they are ­there for parole violations.57 Rikers has been a topic of public debate recently ­because of the #CloseRikers and No New Jails NYC campaigns ­after the suicide of Kalief Browder. Browder, a black teenager who was taken to Rikers at the age of sixteen ­under the suspicion of stealing a backpack, was imprisoned t­ here for three years without a trial, let alone conviction. Officers and other detainees routinely assaulted him before all charges w ­ ere dropped in 2013.58 Jones worked with Browder briefly in

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a mural workshop at Rikers. To Jones, Browder was similar to many confined at Rikers who are awaiting a trial, a hearing, or simply someone to pay attention to their case. Also like many t­ here, Browder proclaimed his innocence, but what set him apart and what many observers suspect led to the frequent assaults on him ­were his out­spoken insistence that he did not commit the crime for which he was held and his refusal to take a plea deal. When Jones met Browder, it was his first time working as a teaching artist in a carceral fa­cil­it­ y. Jones recalls that Browder was diligent and serious about working on the mural, but at Rikers, like most jails and prisons, teaching artists and outside contractors and volunteers are prohibited from getting to know participants personally: ­ ou’re not supposed to get so close. So he was just another kid on my Y roster who happened to then take it [the mural] more seriously. And when that happens, ­those are the kids you get closer to, and we valued him as a paint­er. . . . ​He was quiet. He was kind and he was not nearly as rowdy as any of the other guys. Almost every­one in ­there is gang affiliated, and he ­didn’t seem to be. I d ­ on’t think he was ever repping any set. And he said several times, “I’m innocent.” He ended up being. . . . ​We arrived one day in our fourth week. We ­were wrapping up the proj­ect and he w ­ asn’t ­there. And we w ­ ere asking his classmates, “Where’s Kalief?” And they said, “Oh, he was thrown in the box.”59

Investigators and journalists have detailed how other detainees at Rikers would attack Browder with the endorsement of correction officers, who continued to punish him for his claim of innocence. ­After Browder’s suicide, Jones worked with a group of teenage boys of color in Brooklyn to mount a mural honoring Browder, titled I Just Want to Come Home (2015), in a public site. As part of the proj­ect they or­ga­nized a series of conversations between p ­ eople differently situated in relationship to carcerality (such as police and residents of highly profiled neighborhoods). Treacy Ziegler is a white teaching artist who has worked with incarcerated ­people in several facilities in vari­ous states over the past de­cade. One of her approaches to navigating the fraught imaginaries and power dynamics between incarcerated and nonincarcerated ­people is to volunteer her time as unpaid ­labor, which she recognizes that not every­one can do. ­After years of working as a social

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DonChristian Jones and Rikers mural students, Keep Your Head Up, 2017.

worker and exhibiting as a studio artist in Philadelphia, Ziegler began volunteering in carceral facilities when she proposed to a few wardens to mount an exhibit of her art inside a prison. A warden in an Ohio prison accepted her proposal. One of the few black wardens working in Ohio’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, he was supportive of arts and educational programs. Her exhibition hung in units where incarcerated p ­ eople ­were ­housed, not just the common areas where visitors w ­ ere allowed. That initial proj­ect led to a series of collaborations with prisons in northeast Ohio, and her work has since expanded to other facilities. She often works as an itinerant artist, not connected to any nonprofit arts organ­ization. Sometimes she is paid for her work and sometimes not. Each proj­ect is dif­fer­ent and contingent. In addition to teaching inside prisons, Ziegler runs correspondence art classes through Prisoner Express, a ­free newsletter, published by volunteers, that goes out to imprisoned ­people across the country. Prisoner Express provides information about programs and ser­vices offered in prisons. It also provides f­ ree books, publishes art

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and writing by incarcerated ­people, hosts an annual prison art exhibit, and operates ­free correspondence courses for incarcerated p ­ eople. Ziegler serves as the newsletter’s unpaid program director for the arts. ­People who take her correspondence classes are often in solitary confinement. Besides offering lessons and assignments, when pos­si­ble she sends art supplies to imprisoned students. Moth and Light (2015) is an example of a collaboration that grew out of Ziegler’s multiple engagements with prison art and education. A short animated film based on a story she wrote, it was cocreated with filmmaker Jack Weisman and several artists in solitary confinement, including Jerome Washington, who had enrolled in her correspondence course. Moth and Light consists of over six hundred drawings by incarcerated p ­ eople in response to Ziegler’s story describing the experience of an incarcerated man trying to save the life and secure the freedom of a moth that he had found in the Ohio prison where he was ­housed. The man, one of Ziegler’s students, asked her to carry the moth to freedom and release it outside the prison fence.60 Ziegler writes regularly about her experiences in prison arts programming and about some of the current trends and debates around working with incarcerated ­people. She has taken to task the notion of “social practice art” as a mode of engaging and collaborating with incarcerated ­people, asking, “What structure is ­there for protecting vulnerable groups from artists who may exploit ­these groups as a means to artistic success and money; particularly in [light] of the increasing museum exhibitions and grant money for social practice arts?”61 Ziegler prefers to recognize the teaching of art as distinct from collaborating with incarcerated ­people on a specific art proj­ect that addresses social prob­lems or prisons broadly. She considers the former more “egalitarian” and effective than the latter. While I do not fully endorse her framing of social practice art or the classroom as egalitarian, her emphasis on teaching students to draw from their lives is based in her commitment to refrain from imposing her voice or narrative on incarcerated subjects (also discussed in Chapter 6). Jones and Ziegler bear witness that not only are fraught imaginaries about disparate imaginary horizons of incarcerated populations and the organ­izations or programs with which they collaborate, but teaching artists often have fraught relationships with the organ­izations that contract their l­abor, the specific prison or jail where they work, the participants who join, and the larger carceral system.

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Rethinking Collaboration and Carceral Publics The collaborative work of Robin Paris and Tom Williams with men on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, in Nashville, attempts to foster a process-­driven conversation with some of the most restricted individuals among prison populations. Paris and Williams are college professors who began collaborating with ­people on death row a­ fter being invited by the phi­ los­o­pher Lisa Guenther to lecture in a philosophy course that she taught t­here. Guenther’s research on prisons centers around an ethical question: what does it mean for the nonincarcerated to live in a world where we allow for p ­ eople to be placed in solitary confinement and to be put to death by the state?62 Paris and Williams, inspired by their experience as guest lecturers, began volunteering to teach art history and photography-­studies courses that do not use technology (cameras are forbidden). Instead, they work with paper cutouts and photocopies. Paris and Williams also facilitate partnerships between their students at local colleges and their students in prison. One proj­ect that received considerable attention and that animates the possibilities and limitations of fraught imaginaries is Life ­after Death and Elsewhere (2015). Williams and Paris invited death-­row participants to create memorials of how they wanted to be remembered, as counternarratives to the state’s official rec­ord of their condemnation to death. Williams explained that most embraced the idea, but two refused to participate and instead did proj­ects that offered a critique of the assignment: I suggested, “What if we did a memorial show?” A ­couple of the guys ­were staunchly opposed, and so we worked out a sort of compromise where some of them would submit works that showed why they refused to design their own memorial, which, I think, added something significant to the show. . . . ​We ­were thinking more than the opportunity for the artists,

Jerome Washington, drawings for Moth and Light, produced by Treacy Ziegler and Jack Weisman, 2015.

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what it might make p ­ eople feel to live with knowledge of a death sentence, what it means to endure this condition of living death . . . ​and we ­were also thinking a ­little bit about the debates over memorials and monuments. Who gets memorialized, particularly in a place like Tennessee?63

Ron Cauthern’s photo-collage New Monument for Nashville (2014) takes up this question. In it, Cauthern, a participant in the workshop, has painted a statue of himself in his death row clothing standing in front of the Tennessee State Capitol. As a generative and fraught concept, what it means to memorialize one’s life from a person convicted to a death sentence and from a position as university professor is an immea­sur­ able space. And that chasm is the space made visual through this collaboration.

Currently and formerly incarcerated ­people are creating collaborations that forge new conversations, ways of speaking to ­these fraught relations. In 2016, The Confined Arts (TCA) program was formed, ­under the direction of Pastor Isaac Scott, a person who is formerly incarcerated, to create arts programming in and outside of prison and to represent incarcerated artists in the sales and exhibition of their work. The goal of TCA is to enable directly impacted artists to develop professionally and not be exploited by collectors or commercial galleries, as well as to create exhibitions and public programs to change the narrative that is commonly associated with the experiences of incarcerated people. TCA also fosters ongoing public education about equal h ­ uman rights. In 2016, TCA or­ga­nized, along with Hunter College East Gallery, Visions of Confinement: A Lens on ­Women in the United States Prison System, an exhibition about ­women in prison that featured art by incarcerated ­women and collaborative works. On one of the walls of the gallery was a large collage made of photo­graphs of incarcerated ­women and their c­ hildren that spelled out “Prison Is a Feminist Issue.” TCA partners with a broader network of reentry ser­vices and ­family support for ­people who are currently and formerly incarcerated and works closely with Columbia University’s Center for Justice, where Scott is employed. Grafton Reintegration Center (GRC), located in northeast Ohio, is a minimum-­ security fa­cil­i­ty that offers extensive vocational, educational, and arts-­based programming aimed at incarcerated men who are considered low security risks and are close to becoming eligible for parole. When I visited in fall 2017, the 1 82

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Ron Cauthern, New Monument for Nashville, illustration; Robin Paris, archival pigment print, 2014.

prison had a media arts center, an elaborate screen-­printing apprenticeship, and a graphic-­design program, all run by Eric Gardenhire, an employee of Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction who oversees recreational and cultural programs at Grafton. He is also a working artist.64 Gardenhire believes that engaged programming is impor­tant to the operation of prisons, both for the development of incarcerated ­people and to make the prison staff’s work less challenging. He states what many involved in cultural programming in prison believe: that “programming is the biggest management tool.” From the perspective of the administration, programming leads to fewer disciplinary infractions, meaning more compliant subjects.65 From the perspective of the incarcerated, programming is a way to manage penal time, to create networks and community, and to gain skills. At Grafton’s media arts center, incarcerated p ­ eople have access to equipment and technology for all aspects of media production. They staff the center as paid employees and work on production teams to develop, produce, and edit content. Their programs are aired on a closed-­circuit tele­vi­sion station seen in four prisons Fraught I maginaries

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across northern Ohio. Occasionally, members of the team have been able to leave the fa­cil­i­ty to interview and rec­ord content outside prison, including an interview with a defense attorney who is an advocate for prisoner reentry ser­vices. The media arts center, graphic design, and screen-­printing workshop all operate through peer mentoring. More experienced team members train newer ones. The motto in the fa­cil­it­ y is “What one person knows, every­one should know.” On the day that I visited the media arts center, the production team asked to interview me a­ fter giving me a tour of their fa­cil­i­ty and discussing their pro­cess of working collaboratively. I watched as the team set up a designated green room for the interview, prepared the microphones, and set up the camera. One of the se­nior team members conducted a thirty-­minute on-­air interview with me that delved into my research and about cultivating relationships between incarcerated ­people and a broader public. Much of our conversation centered on how incarcerated ­people might get nonincarcerated ­people to see them as other than criminal subjects. A crew member cited Bryan Stevenson’s notion of proximity as one of the strategies needed to end mass incarceration. They ­were speaking of a type of proximity with the public—­including art teachers, volunteers, and other nonprisoners—­that is disallowed by prison administration. Artists and teachers are generally not permitted to have contact or to correspond with incarcerated people outside the structure of class. Prison Re­nais­sance is an online literary and visual arts journal that is managed by currently and formerly incarcerated ­people at San Quentin State Prison in California. They, too, are inspired by questions about how to create proximity between the incarcerated and nonincarcerated. I learned about Prison Re­nais­sance when Camille Griep, a nonincarcerated ally, forwarded me an email from Emile DeWeaver, one of the journal’s cofound­ers, who at the time was incarcerated at San Quentin. Besides DeWeaver, Prison Re­nais­sance’s cofound­ers are Rashaan Thomas and Juan Meza. All three ­were serving long sentences at San Quentin. They initiated the proj­ect, which has proven to be a jumping-­off point for other artistic collaborations, out of a commitment to connect to a broader, nonincarcerated public beyond the artists, educators, and volunteers that the prison administrators approved. Prison Re­nais­sance’s mission is “to transform society’s understanding of incarceration via collaboration and exchange between ­free and incarcerated artists. We hope that the generative work produced by our artists and supporters w ­ ill change how the public views and empathizes with the nation’s incarcerated population—­the largest in the world.”66

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DeWeaver, who was released from prison in 2018, developed into an accomplished writer while incarcerated. He noted that many editors told him that their experiences with him have changed their perceptions of incarcerated ­people. He began mulling over how to make vis­i­ble the injustices of mass incarceration. He states: I’m very passionate about we, as a country, needing to change what justice looks like, b ­ ecause the criminal l­egal system has played such a negative, destructive role in my life. I feel like I’ve lived through it, I know the prob­lems, and I know t­ here are ways to fix them. It d ­ oesn’t have to be like this. So I’m thinking, how can I bring proximity to the pro­cess of social change that we need? How can I become more proximate with a population that likely fears me?67

Though San Quentin is known among prisons for offering a range of art and educational programs, like PAP and the Prison University Proj­ect, it was impor­tant to DeWeaver, Thomas, and Meza that their new initiative be led by incarcerated ­people and not sponsored by prison administrators. They wanted to resist the carceral rehabilitative ideology and the censoring and administrative approval that are a part of state-­endorsed programs. Their website states, “Prison Re­nais­sance is not associated with any Department of Corrections.”68 From prison, DeWeaver and Thomas worked with Griep to curate and edit an artistic journal and to initiate art collaborations that exceeded the state mandate of correction as captivity and rehabilitation. DeWeaver and Griep became acquainted when DeWeaver submitted a short story to the Lascaux Review, a journal where Griep worked as a se­nior editor. The story, titled “Superman,” was accepted, and the editor in chief asked Griep if she would be comfortable working with someone who was incarcerated. Griep said yes, and that exchange evolved from a “mentorship . . . ​into a friendship and peership.”69 Over the years, DeWeaver and Griep have worked on a number of writing ventures together. When the collective at San Quentin formed Prison Re­nais­sance, they asked Griep to work with them. Griep notes, “Emile and I now critique each other’s work. I assist him in submissions, editing, Prison Re­nais­sance [administrative] tasks, and some personal affairs management.” From inside and outside

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prison, Prison Re­nais­sance is committed to serving as a platform for dynamic exchanges and artistic collaborations between the incarcerated and the nonincarcerated.70 DeWeaver’s artist statement reads, “I woke up one morning in a cell wanting to change my life and the world that had s­ haped my life. All I had was my art, so I learned to use that.”71 Prison Re­nais­sance has developed initiatives with nonincarcerated partners, including university chapters that work with educators and students to bring writing and art by incarcerated ­people into classrooms and to enact po­liti­cal change. Members of the Stanford University chapter gathered signatures in support of the Voting Restoration and Democracy Act in 2018. Prison Re­nais­sance, in collaboration with the Stanford chapter, published the zine Incarceratedly Yours, issue i, comprising writing and art by four p ­ eople from San Quentin and four ­people from Stanford. In one piece, DeWeaver’s poetry is interspersed throughout a woodcut by Vince Pane, a PhD student in chemistry and an artist. Metropolis, an exhibition or­ga­nized by Prison Re­nais­sance in collaboration with a group of incarcerated and nonincarcerated Bay Area artists in April 2018 (a few months before DeWeaver’s release), focused on geographic proximity and social exclusion, two impor­tant features of the mission of the collective. The exhibition attempted to complicate the idea of the metropolis and the distance between San Quentin and San Francisco, as well as bring attention to the massive number of ­people held captive in the nation, and the Bay Area specifically. In the opening conversation, DeWeaver said, “It’s very impor­tant to understand that we are incarcerating so many p ­ eople that it can fill a city, and for me that’s what Metropolis is about. It’s . . . ​a wake-up call that we are incarcerating a metropolis in our country.”72 The show consisted of visual works, sonic works, and poetry that centered incarcerated voices, “revealing the commonalities between the metropolis inside and the metropolis outside.”73 The opening of Metropolis featured a conversation between Phil Melendez of Insight Prison Proj­ect and DeWeaver and Thomas—­Melendez in the gallery space, and DeWeaver’s and Thomas’s voices projected into the gallery while their bodies ­were confined at San Quentin. DeWeaver led attendees in a movement-­based experiment exploring embodiment, creativity, and collaboration. Weaving together Adrienne Maree Brown’s book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and his own writing, DeWeaver led the attendees in a series of movements

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​Prison Re­nais­sance, Metropolis, 2018. Video still.

related to sight. He instructed participants to collaborate by choreographing their gestures. Together, they practiced putting their hands to their eyes, forming circles to intimate binoculars; they covered their eyes to perform blindness or an unwillingness to look. Their gestures synced into a rhythm. Then DeWeaver’s voice filled the gallery as Melendez carried a portable speaker around the space, amplifying DeWeaver’s voice. Together and with the audience, they enacted a site-­ specific embodied per­for­mance, one that highlighted the differences in their respective locations. DeWeaver said: I want to do something with you called the murmuration exercise. It’s inspired by Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy. Brown writes about this dream of a social justice movement that’s irresistible b ­ ecause of this deep trust that we are capable of moving in, in the same way that birds move, in a murmuration. And she dreams of a movement where we are [so] tuned into each other, that like birds in a flock we can just respond to each other. So to­night what I want to do is practice this dream on a small scale, and I want us to embody this practice of trust and encounter our specific relationships to change. Are you guys down with that? Are you with me in this?74

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­ fter the audience says yes, DeWeaver begins to read from Emergent Strategy as A the gallery performers / attendees move in unison: It is so impor­tant that we fight for the ­future, get into the game, get dirty, get experimental. How do we create and proliferate a compelling vision of economies and ecologies that center h ­ umans and the natu­ral world over the accumulation of material? We embody. We learn. We release the idea of failure, b ­ ecause it’s all data. But first we imagine. We are in an imagination ­battle. Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and Renisha McBride and so many ­others are dead ­because, in some white imagination, they ­were dangerous. And that imagination is so respected that t­hose who kill, based on an ­imagined, racialized fear of Black ­people, are rarely held accountable.

DeWeaver continues to read from Brown’s book as participants move in sync to his voice: We have to imagine beyond t­ hose fears. We have to ideate—­imagine and conceive—­together. We must imagine new worlds that transition ideologies and norms, so that no one sees Black ­people as murderers, or Brown ­people as terrorists and aliens, but all of us as potential cultural and economic innovators. This is a time-­travel exercise for the heart. This is a collaborative ideation—­what are the ideas that ­will liberate all of us?75

­ fter the per­for­mance, participants continue to practice “collective ideation” by A talking among themselves and with DeWeaver on speaker phone about what it would look like to have the movement to end mass incarceration led by those incarcerated.

Prison arts collaborations have the capacity to envision new worlds and systems: ones that do not rely on forced captivity, dehumanization, torture, and subjugation.

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Such envisioning requires nonincarcerated artists, administrators, advocates, and educators to resist the carceral logics that maintain prisons and division between captive and ­free person. How do we collectively imagine and create in ways that do not rely on the vio­lence of caging and carcerality? Baz Dreisinger surmises: Prison arts programs are certainly well-­meaning efforts but ­they’re also crumbs tossed at a system starved for radical overhaul. T ­ hey’re smoke screens, obstructing our view of the big picture, which is that when it comes to justice and safety and humane treatment, prisons simply ­don’t make sense. Big-­picture change is not about tinkering with or enhancing what is, but conjuring up bold imaginings of what could be. For all that I love and believe in it, art can be an obstacle to such imaginings ­because of the very t­hing it does so well: dazzle us, and then distract us, with beauty.76

Instead of distracting from or obfuscating the fundamental wrongness of prisons and caging, can prison arts collaborations build new imaginary horizons by forming relations, ways of looking, and practices of interdependence that challenge the institutional brutality and punitive discourse separating the incarcerated from the nonincarcerated? ­There are structural and ideological risks for organ­izations and artists in banishing the logic on which the carceral state operates, where some are able to enter and exit as teachers and ­others must return to enclosed boxes as criminalized and punished subjects. Prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore writes, “When the capacities resulting from purposeful action are combined ­towards ends greater than mission statements or other provisional limits, power­ful alignments begin to shake the ground. In other words, movement happens.”77 Can prison arts collaborations go beyond personal growth and individual transformation to foster movement building?

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6

R E S I S T I N G I S O L AT I O N ART IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

Since his death in California State Prison, Corcoran, on July 22, 2013, Billy Sell’s self-­portrait has been circulated widely by activists and watchdog groups working to end solitary confinement.1 Sell was a participant in a massive hunger strike among ­people held in solitary confinement units that began in the supermax Pelican Bay State Prison and spread to other prisons, involving over thirty thousand incarcerated participants and receiving wide support among nonincarcerated allies. The protest aimed to change the inhumane and torturous conditions of solitary confinement, where ­people in isolation units “are allowed no phone calls, no contact with loved ones and their only physical interaction with fellow ­humans is when they are handcuffed or strip searched by guards.”2 For several days before Sell’s death, witnesses and investigators reported that he sought medical treatment but received none.3 His death was determined a suicide by prison staff a­ fter he was found strangulated and unresponsive in his cell. However, advocacy groups have accused California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of misconduct, for actions that include creating the conditions of his death, not providing medical treatment, not properly investigating the cause of death, and not reporting his death to the public

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­ ntil pressured by watchdog groups.4 Sell’s death, along with his self-­portrait, u brought greater attention to the hunger strike and the massive scale of long-­term isolation in California and elsewhere. In his self-­portrait, Sell ­faces outward. He has a shaven head, bespectacled and slightly tilted, and holds his hand to his mouth. He is framed against a black-­and-­ white checkered backdrop that resembles prison stripes. His eyes stare directly at the viewer; they are si­mul­ta­neously hollowed and inquiring. His drawing, like much of the art made by ­people in solitary confinement, attempts to express the totalizing impact of the immobility, penal isolation, and sensory control enforced by such restrictive states of captivity. The portrait reflects what phi­los­o­pher Lisa Guenther calls “becoming unhinged,” a phenomenological description of how solitary confinement breaks apart “interrelational subjectivity,” leaving the person alone in his cell haunted and dissociated, enduring “a suffering that blurs the distinction between life and death.”5

Billy Sell, Self-­Portrait, 2012. Pen and pencil on paper.

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Sell drew the portrait as part of a correspondence art course offered by Prisoner Express, a ­free newsletter for incarcerated ­people published by Durland Alternatives Library. Prisoner Express, in addition to printing news about prisons and offering correspondence courses, publishes writings and art by incarcerated ­people. Sell was enrolled in an art course called “Drawing from Life,” taught by the artist Treacy Ziegler, a longtime volunteer with Prisoner Express (also discussed in Chapter 5). Many of Ziegler’s students are like Sell, ­people h ­ oused in high-­security isolation units and who lack access to educational, vocational, or arts programs that might be available to the general prison population. For more than a year before his death, Sell and Ziegler corresponded about the drawing curriculum and his art; he alluded to the conditions in solitary confinement. In his initial letters, Sell expresses both hopelessness and gratitude: I must be honest with you as I know you are with me. As I am writing (and have weighed this out) regret sinks into my heart heavi­ly. I do not or ­will not be able to properly participate in the art program. I’m sorry [Sell’s emphasis]. I feel as though I have wasted your time. However my tools as you ­will see prohibit me from giving you a solid effort. The only paper that I have access to is this that I am writing on. Being ­housed in security lock-up (S.H.U.) I am unable to purchase drawing paper let alone supplies.6

In more than one letter, he describes himself as feeling “weighted” with regret and concerned that he is wasting her time. He expresses feeling preoccupied by his inadequacy—­that is, his lack of access to resources to meet the course’s requirements. Sell writes to Ziegler, “Should my custody change I would be able to get charcoal and pencils plus a few other textures to draw on. Then I’ll be in business so to speak. Maybe I’m ­there but I just ­don’t see it.”7 With this statement, he conveys a lack of perspective—­“I just d ­ on’t see it”—in part due to what Guenther describes as the impact of solitary confinement’s spatial constraints on perception and intercorporeal depth: “The social and perceptual depth is precisely what is blocked for the prisoner in supermax confinement: the spontaneous overlapping of perspectives with ­others, and the anonymity of belonging to a shared world in which one’s own unique perceptual perspective is only one among many, where one is a participant in the plurality of a social world.”8 1 92

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In Ziegler’s letters to Sell, she encourages him to continue to draw and participate in the course. She sends him drawing exercises and examples of art, including her own. She shares about her strug­gle as an artist: “One [Ziegler’s emphasis] is always just becoming an artist, always falling short. Everyday I go into my studio I must deal with how inadequate I feel as an artist. This is just part of being an artist. . . . ​One never arrives at the point of success. . . . ​I have lots of tears over e­ very piece of work I have done.”9 In all her letters Ziegler advises Sell to keep drawing what he sees, “to draw from life,” and not what he thinks he’s supposed to draw. She ends one letter with “Keep on drawing and of course, draw from life . . . ​that world of life and shadow and form around you.”10 Shrouded in a sense of worthlessness, Sell expresses appreciation for having his art included in an exhibit, but says he is unsure why anyone would want to see his work.11 ­Later, he mentions being permitted to access pastels for the first time in solitary, only to have the materials confiscated: “We just had a massive search and in that they ­were thrown away. I ­won’t promise much from the ­future[;] if I get the chance to experiment with that I w ­ ill.”12 In his last letter to Ziegler, dated 16 June 2013, Sell mentions how the collective protests staged by ­people ­housed in isolation have led to changes, like more art supplies: “Yeah, it’s cool that we get—or can get—­pastel chalks, now. That’s b ­ ehind a lot of strug­gles that are taking place that we got that privilege. If not we would not of [sic] received them at all.”13 The circumstances surrounding Sell’s death remain unclear, but through his activism, writing, and art, as well as through the output of o ­ thers held in solitary confinement, the broader public has an illuminating glimpse of the ­human devastation caused by involuntary and prolonged isolation. Most ­people think of solitary confinement as a type of punishment for disciplinary infractions—­rule breaking—­imposed on ­people who are already in prison. In fact, solitary confinement takes many forms and has vari­ous names. “Secured-­ housing unit” (“SHU” or “shoe”), “restrictive-­housing unit,” “protective custody,” “management-­control unit,” “administrative segregation,” “the box,” “the dungeon,” and “the hole” are just some of the terms, official and unofficial, used to refer to the “prison within a prison”: the isolation unit, in which p ­ eople are confined by themselves to a single cell for twenty-­two to twenty-­four hours a day.14 No ­matter the term or category, the intention ­behind isolation cells is the same: to incapacitate prisoners and remove them from all social life. “Gone is the rhe­toric of rehabilitation or spiritual redemption. It has been replaced by a neoliberal R esisting I solation

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language of risk management, security, efficiency, accountability, and public-­ private partnerships.”15 Structured to maintain control through sensory deprivation and ­limited perception, isolation cells tend to be steel and concrete boxes containing the barest of furnishings and supplies: a concrete or metal slab on which a thin mattress lies, a smaller metal or concrete structure jutting from the wall that serves as both desk and ­table, a stool welded to the ground, and a metal toilet / sink combination. Carnell Hunnicutt’s drawings of a solitary confinement cell where he was ­housed in Connecticut reflects its deliberate austerity. In many prisons today, isolation cells have not changed much since the first ones ­were built in the nineteenth c­ entury—among the most famous examples being the solitary units at Eastern State Penitentiary, in Pennsylvania—­although the harrowing effects of solitary confinement have been well documented since its inception. Writers, social engineers, prisoners, prison staff, activists, and courts have described the deleterious impact of isolation on ­human beings. In 1890, the US Supreme Court wrote, “A considerable number of the prisoners fell, a­ fter even a short confinement, into a semi-­fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and ­others became violently insane; ­others still, committed suicide; while t­hose who stood the ordeal better w ­ ere not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient ­mental activity to be of any subsequent ser­vice to the community.”16 B ­ ecause it was widely understood to cause irreparable harm, solitary confinement was rarely used in the United States during the early twentieth ­century. However, as part of a “get tough on crime” shift in policing and imprisonment, the implementation of solitary confinement increased dramatically in the late twentieth ­century.17 Scholars of prisons have shown how the shift ­toward more punitive imprisonment, including a rise in isolation units, was directly connected to strategies of the carceral state to squash radical activism and prisoners’ rights movements. Guenther writes, “The ­legal and po­liti­cal re­sis­tance of prisoners in the 1960s and 1970s was met with a counterresistance—­ amounting to a domestic counterinsurgency—­through which the exception of punitive isolation increasingly became the rule, and tidied-up versions of ‘the hole’ w ­ ere normalized and extended to entire prison populations in new supermaximum-­security prisons.”18 Solitary confinement units and supermax prisons grew in number throughout the late twentieth c­ entury. They w ­ ere used not only to punish ­those considered

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incorrigible, but more increasingly as a management strategy to separate, alienate, and render irrelevant a wide range of ­people held in punitive captivity.19 Many thousands are held in solitary confinement for no disciplinary infraction or penal violation whatsoever but for administrative purposes. They are placed in isolation units without due pro­cess. Often a signature by a prison administrator is all that is needed to remove a person from the general prison population. ­Those most often isolated include p ­ eople with m ­ ental illness, gender-­nonconforming ­people, religious minorities, po­liti­cal dissidents, and undocumented ­people. The incapacitation of t­hese groups through isolation is one of the technologies that prisons implement to regulate gender, race, religion, and po­liti­cal affiliation in general prison populations; it exemplifies the use of administrative categories as part of the punishment regime of the carceral state. Another technology of the state is the obscuration of ­people in solitary confinement, making it difficult for activists and watchdog groups to track the number of ­people held in isolation and to monitor their condition. As of 2018, Solitary

Carnell Hunnicutt Sr., Supermax Cell at Northern C.T. (Figures A and B), 2011.

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Watch, a watchdog group working to end solitary confinement, estimates that in the United States, “at least 80,000 incarcerated men, w ­ omen, and c­ hildren are held in some form of isolated confinement on any given day.”20 In some facilities, ­people considered vulnerable if ­housed in the general prison population are held in­def­initely in solitary confinement for their protection, according to carceral logics. A 2015 report by Black and Pink, an organ­ization that advocates on behalf of queer, trans, gender-­nonconforming, and HIV+ incarcerated p ­ eople, states that 85 ­percent of LGBTQ prisoners report having spent time in solitary confinement, many for no disciplinary infractions.21 In some states, youth ­under the age of eigh­teen are held in solitary confinement inside adult prisons, both as a protective mea­sure (presumably to prevent them from being assaulted by adults and other youth) and as a punitive mea­sure to discipline t­hose considered chronic rule breakers.22 New Jersey and California have created entire wings called “management-­control units” to in­def­initely ­house po­liti­cal prisoners, ­people affiliated with or suspected of affiliation with gangs, and o ­ thers whose ideas or bodies are considered a threat to the function of the prison. Many are held t­ here long term, sometimes for the rest of their lives, like Cesar Villa, who was accused of being a gang member by another imprisoned person. Based on that single accusation, in 2001 Villa was transferred to Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit, a supermax fa­cil­i­ty, where he remains presently.23 ­People confined in supermax prisons—­institutions designed and built with the purpose of holding imprisoned ­people in the most restrictive forms of isolation—­ have the barest contact with other h ­ umans. They are constantly monitored through surveillance cameras, and in many cases their only interactions with other ­humans occur when prison staff deliver their meal trays (through a port in the door or wall) or during scheduled time outside their cells for showers, exercise, and ­legal or medical visits. Anthropologist Lorna A. Rhodes, who has conducted ethnographic research in solitary confinement units, analyzes how supermax prisons and highly restrictive control units operate by excluding ­those confined to them from public life and from general prison populations. She writes that supermax prisons are reflective of Giorgio Agamben’s theory of “bare life.” She explores how prisoners in solitary confinement communicate with each other through the walls, by yelling into the hallways, and through other means, as a way of navigating their exclusion from citizenship.24 P ­ eople in supermax prisons

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have reported being forbidden from speaking to o ­ thers (and that ­doing so incurs further discipline), being prevented from having visits from f­ amily and loved ones, and being denied receiving letters from personal contacts.25 The United States Administrative Maximum Fa­cil­i­ty, also known as ADX Florence, located in an old mining town in Colorado, is considered the nation’s highest-­security fa­cil­it­y. ­There, incarcerated p ­ eople are held in almost total isolation, as bare life. It has been described as a “high-­tech version of hell” in how it uses automation and surveillance to eviscerate all social life and ­human touch for prisoners.26 Incarcerated ­people held in long-­term solitary confinement, like Todd (Hyung­Rae) Tarselli, find ways to use the barest of materials for artistic exploration and to connect with other imprisoned people, especially ­those in isolation whose voices they can often hear but whose ­faces they might never see. Tarselli has been in prison since 1992 and in solitary confinement for at least seven of ­those years. During his imprisonment, he has become a prolific artist, making works on found material, like leaves collected from the prison yard, but also by using isolation as penal ­matter, the subject of exploration in some of his work. Tarselli, who is Korean American, draws on e­ arlier prisoners’ rights movements and on the racial and po­liti­cal education he has gained through the study of black radical activism and scholarship, having been tutored by po­liti­cal dissidents also held in isolation. Tarselli draws detailed portraits of black po­liti­cal leaders and imprisoned activists, both as part of his practice of solidarity and as a po­liti­cal critique of the relationship between incarceration, racial captivity, and dispossession. Incarcerated artists in isolation cultivate practices of survival u ­ nder extremely restrictive conditions of penal space, time, and m ­ atter. In solitary confinement, access to penal ­matter is much more ­limited, and penal time and space function ­under even more punitive and retributive settings and ideologies than they do in other carceral settings, except perhaps death row (in many death-­row units, ­people are held in solitary confinement). ­People in solitary confinement are unable to form the types of relationships that I have discussed in previous chapters, though some find ways to connect with ­others in isolation, with nonincarcerated allies, and with themselves as subjects and witnesses of their existence in involuntary solitude. How do the restrictions on mobility, the sensory control, and the lack of ­human contact impact the aesthetic experiences and practices of p ­ eople in solitary

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confinement? To explore this question, I focus on four artistic proj­ects that have emerged from isolation: (1) covert and guerrilla filmmaking in a gang-­ management unit in a New Jersey state prison; (2) a graphic and textual memoir by an artist ­housed in vari­ous isolation units in Florida; (3) collages assembled by a po­liti­cal prisoner confined to a management-­control unit in New Jersey; and (4) a collaboration between p ­ eople in solitary confinement and nonincarcerated photog­raphers and advocates that visualizes radical imaginaries and possibilities for t­ hose rendered socially and po­liti­cally dead. While the work of artists in solitary confinement appears in other chapters of this book, h ­ ere I focus on t­hese specific proj­ects to highlight how artists resist “the living death” and the intercorporeal vio­lence of solitary confinement.27

The Sensory Experience of the Hole To make art in solitary confinement is to deliberately engage the sensory deprivation that occurs as a mode of assault in isolation cells. With solitary confinement, the carceral state attempts a totalizing control over the bodies and minds of imprisoned ­people, largely through structuring their perceptual experiences both with excruciating detail to enforce deprivation, and with calculated indifference to their suffering. Bonnie Kerness, director of the Prison Watch Program of the American Friends Ser­vice Committee (AFSC), writes that p ­ eople in isolation have “to endure humiliation, sleep deprivation, extreme dark or extreme light, extreme cold or heat—­all a systematic and purposeful attack on h ­ uman stimuli.”28 ­People held in isolation long term experience diminished vision, largely b ­ ecause they are unable to see beyond a few feet in any direction, thus affecting their depth perception. They might be ­housed in a cell without a win­dow and ­under artificial light, with no control over the light switch or temperature. ­Others have win­dows out of which very ­little can be seen. Prisoners in long-­term isolation experience what Guenther calls “dead time”: they strug­gle to keep track of days of the week and hours of the day, beyond the routine of when meals are served, when showers are taken, and when they are allowed out to go to the recreation cages. Life ­under such extremely deprived conditions can also heighten sensitivity to any changes in their routine or environment.

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Incarcerated writer William Blake, who has been in solitary confinement in New York State since 1987, describes the bare austerity of the isolation units where he has been ­housed: ­ here is nothing in a SHU yard but air: no TV, no balls to bounce, T no games to play, no other inmates, nothing. T ­ here is also very ­little allowed in a SHU cell: three sets of plain white underwear, one pair of green pants, one green short-­sleeved button-up shirt, one green sweatshirt, one pair of laceless footwear that I’ll call sneakers for lack of a better word, ten books or magazines total, twenty pictures of the ­people you love, writing supplies, a bar of soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, one deodorant stick, but no shampoo.29

Blake does not have access to commissary items, packages, or phone calls and has not been outside in years. Like most ­people in solitary confinement, he is not permitted to participate in educational, art, or recreational programs that take place at the fa­cil­it­ y where he is ­housed. Imprisoned ­people and survivors of solitary confinement have testified to the sensory deprivation built into the system. Aron “Akili” Castlin’s work combining drawing and poetry, titled An Architect’s Dream (2014), is a power­ful example of how incarcerated artists creatively document the effects of isolation and interrogate ­those responsible for constructing the cells and sentencing ­people to them. Based on his experiences in isolation in California, Castlin draws a sparse cell where all furnishings are bolted down, with a mesh door and a closed-­circuit tele­ vi­ sion. In red pen, he writes across the floor of the cell, “Sensory deprived, / mentally, spiritually, / emotionally scourged / bruised to the bone, / left hemorrhaging and alone / from open wounds having been / banished within.” He ends the poem, “as my life excruciatingly dissipates, / no reprieve ­will be ­there, / within this torture chamber / and architect’s dream.” Castlin brings to the fore the architects, the planners, the p ­ eople who purposefully make institutions that are meant to produce suffering, and eventual death, in ­others. In Survivors Manual: Surviving in Solitary, a guide written by p ­ eople currently and formerly held in isolation and published by AFSC, Ronald Epps describes

Aron “Akili” Castlin and Ricky D. Matthews, An Architect’s Dream, Who Eye Am: A Truth Seeker Journey, published by LC DeVine Publishing, 2014.

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the sensory deprivation that he experienced in solitary confinement: “with barely the bare essentials, where even the wall-­mounted stainless steel mirror in the segregation cells is removed from the walls so that even the sight of one’s own image is denied.” T ­ hese conditions led to his inability to reassimilate into the general prison population. Solitary confinement created such a disturbing antisociality in Epps that to this day he cannot be h ­ oused in a cell with another prisoner and finds h ­ uman touch, like a hug from a friend, unbearable.30 Extreme isolation takes a toll on mind and body. For Judith Vazquez, the immobility imposed by solitary confinement, in which prisoners cannot take more than a few steps, was so physically debilitating that she had to relearn how to walk. She had to reacclimate to open spaces once she returned to the general prison population ­after years in solitary confinement and maximum-­security closed units.31 Solitary confinement assaults the body, violently disrupts social relations, and forces an unbearable relationship with the self—­all through the structures of the carceral state. Guenther writes, “To be confined in solitude is not just to be left alone but to be forced into an inescapable relation to oneself—­and to no one e­ lse.”32 Testimonies of prisoners and survivors of solitary confinement detail how sensory deprivation is coupled with sensory assault, including foul smells and noise disturbances. In his memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison, Shaka Senghor describes the overwhelming smell of ­human feces that permeates solitary confinement. Some p ­ eople in isolation units weaponize feces as one of their only methods of attack and protest, throwing their waste at correction officers and other prisoners through the tray port. Senghor, like ­others held captive in solitary confinement, also notes how the units can be loud and cacophonic when prisoners who are angry, desperate, and unhinged beat on metal surfaces throughout the night in acts of protest and disruption.33 ­These examples of the state’s warfare on incarcerated ­people who are considered a threat to the general operations of imprisonment reveal how isolation is accompanied by a multisensory assault: the diminishment of sight, the lack of social recognition within the prison and the nonincarcerated public, immobility, and the overload of smells and sounds that further diminish the person, largely through disorientation and lack of control. ­Under ­these extreme conditions, what purpose might art serve for prisoners in solitary confinement? When ­people have ­little or no control over what they see,

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smell, hear, and touch; experience the barest of ­human contact; have access to minimal provisions; and are held in cells where they can only slightly move, how do they innovate and experiment across the sensorium to express their h ­ uman capacity? How do they resist the dehumanization of their conditions and document their experiences as captive subjects in the far reaches of what is a v­ iable life?

Covert Filmmaking in New Jersey’s Closed Gang Unit In 2004, while incarcerated at Northern State Prison in New Jersey, Omar Broadway acquired a contraband item: a small video camcorder. Though he has never revealed how he acquired the camera, it has been hypothesized that he purchased it from a correction officer who smuggled in contraband items to sell to incarcerated ­people. Over several months, Broadway and his cellmate, Buddy Randolph, kept the device hidden and used it to document the routine vio­lence of the isolation units where they ­were ­housed. Almost ­every shot is taken from the tray port, a narrow, rectangular opening in their cell door. Shot on a camcorder, ­under low-­light conditions, the footage is grainy, and at times the details on the screen are not clear without Broadway’s and Randolph’s narration. What is clear in the footage is the visual distinction between the agents of the state and t­ hose held captive: prisoners wear all-­white uniforms (similar to hospital scrubs), and officers wear dark uniforms, military-­style boots, and protective gear. Prison administrators appear occasionally in pants and buttoned-up shirts. Amidst this blunt visual field, what we see more than anything ­else is vio­lence. Broadway and Randolph rec­ord numerous beatings, which occur with such frequency that it is hard to keep track of them: no discrete markers delineate one act from the next, and no sense of an end is in sight. Housed in a wing of the prison called the Security Threat Group Management Unit (STGMU, pronounced “stigma” by prison guards), Broadway and Randolph are, as Omar’s m ­ other describes it, on “deep lockdown,” h ­ oused in a tiny cell twenty-­four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.34 STGMU was created to hold t­hose identified by the state as purported gang leaders, but in fact STGMU, like other isolation units and facilities, uses the label “gang member”

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to punish targeted populations, largely young black and Latino men, who are placed ­there ­under extremely punitive conditions. Removed from the general prison population ­because of their gang status—or suspected status—­they are placed in STGMU in­def­initely or for the duration of their sentences. ­There, they are ware­housed in tiny cells without any programming or activity and routinely assaulted by correction officers. The existence of gang databases in and outside prisons has significant impact on the lives of black and Latino p ­ eople, making them vulnerable to punitive surveillance, repeated carceral confinement, assault, and death. As a recent report by the Intercept reveals, ­these databases have expanded in the con­temporary era of liberal prison reform.35 Unlike most prison units, where incarcerated p ­ eople leave their cells for meals, work, or as part of the daily schedule, at STGMU, food, phone calls, commissary items, and even medicine are brought to captives and served through the tray port. Meals arrive in Styrofoam containers. At one point in the film, Broadway and Randolph scan their tiny cell to take account of the discarded food containers stacked to the ceiling. The cells w ­ ere designed to hold one person in isolation, but instead each h ­ ouses two ­people in what is called “double-­cell solitary,” making the quarters Omar Broadway and Douglas Tirola, An Omar Broadway Film, 2008. Video stills.

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even more suffocating and immobilizing.36 Captives of STGMU are let out of their cells ­every three days to shower and for five hours of state-­mandated recreation per week. During rec time, each person exercises in his own chain-­link cage, in a compound of other cages. In this closed and highly punitive wing, incarcerated ­people experience rampant physical and psychological abuse without recourse. When they complain or attempt to document abuse using administrative procedures, such as through the inmate complaint form, the internal affairs department (part of the prison bureaucracy) uses video cameras and its own administrative procedures to dismiss their complaints or to unleash more punishment. Believing in the evidentiary possibility of the camera to reveal the abuses to a broader public, Broadway and Randolph rec­ord officers dragging prisoners by shackles around their ankles, by their arms, by their clothing, and even by their hair. They turn the camera on the prison staff and the incarcerated. Many of ­those imprisoned in STGMU are aware of the camera and help Broadway and Randolph by giving video testimonies and letting them document their injuries. One prisoner shows Broadway his mouth, which has been wired shut b ­ ecause of injuries sustained in a beating by correction officers. He tries to speak about the pain. He ­angles his mouth and pulls his lip open through the fencing to show the camera his injury. In another scene, a prisoner falls to the ground in a violent seizure ­after being pummeled by prison guards. Broadway and Randolph also tape gang fights that appear to be endorsed by prison staff, who do nothing as rival members beat each other in hallways. Filming ­under their cell door, they offer a subterranean ­angle from which to capture the banality of state vio­lence; it is a tactic of “undersight,” to paraphrase theorist Simone Browne.37 They shoot the boots of correction officers marching through hallways, and the remnants of their assaults strewn across the floor: broken Styrofoam trays, items of clothing, bodily fluids. ­After one of their friends is beaten, Broadway asks him to turn his head to the side and insert it through the tray port. The camera rec­ords the bruised face squeezed through the rectangular opening. It is a jarring, awful, and creative moment. Broadway deliberately makes penal m ­ atter out of his friend’s beaten and swollen face to document the vio­lence and horror of management-­control units. The filmmakers also document how prison guards use access to showers, exercise, and food as methods of control. Guards arbitrarily delay meal delivery or

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cancel recreation time. We hear prisoners yelling about their right to food and exercise, and how they have been locked in their cells for days without an explanation. In other scenes, we see partial footage of incarcerated men protesting for their right to shower or to gain access to the recreational cages, refusing to return to lockdown in their cells. They stand in the hallway that separates the cells from the correction officers’ station. The officers shout o ­ rders for them to return to their cells, but the prisoners silently refuse. The staff then warns the prisoners that they ­will be gassed if they do not follow ­orders. ­After a brief standoff, correction officers arrive in riot gear, holding large canisters of teargas. In anticipation of the assault, the incarcerated men place plastic bags over their heads to protect themselves from, or at least to delay the effects of, the gassing. Following the gassing, the officers beat the prisoners with batons, stomp on them, and then force them back into their cells. This deliberate assault on prisoners is a state-­mandated set of procedures called “cell extraction.”38 The term more commonly refers to the forcible removal of prisoners from their cells. Broadway and Randolph fantasize on camera about how their clandestine footage ­will bring them fame and wealth while exposing the vio­lence of control units that hold p ­ eople in long-­term isolation. Broadway also hopes that it w ­ ill reduce his prison sentence. Eventually, the tapes are smuggled out; the audience is not privy to how this occurs, but ­there is a suggestion that a sympathetic correction officer assisted them. The results of their covert shooting and Broadway’s ­mother’s efforts to obtain visibility for their work is the basis of the documentary An Omar Broadway Film (2008), which comprises a compilation of their footage that has been edited and narratively arranged by 4th Row Films, a small New York–­ based production com­pany. The film intersperses Broadway and Randolph’s footage with interviews with their relatives, residents of their neighborhoods, former prisoners, and several p ­ eople (both black and white) from law enforcement and correction departments. It also incorporates environmental footage of East Orange and Newark, where Broadway and Randolph grew up. Broadway and Randolph’s experiments with the camcorder demonstrate how penal space, ­matter, and time shape aesthetic engagement and culture-­making for ­people in isolation units, although they use a medium that is forbidden in most prisons. Their practices also convey what Browne theorizes as the “tactics employed to render one’s self out of sight, and strategies used in the flight to freedom

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from slavery as necessarily ones of undersight.”39 In the case of Broadway and Randolph, the filmmakers work against the mandate of the carceral state to control the sensory experience—­through both deprivation and assault—of ­those held in isolation. ­These strategies and attempts at flight are necessary for survival in conditions where ­people are rendered socially and po­liti­cally dead, but they are not intrinsically liberatory. Broadway and Randolph eventually got their footage out and had it aired through local news and the 4th Row film, which helped lead to the shutting down of STGMU.40 But they remained shackled by the carceral state. Randolph is still serving time. Broadway was released, rearrested for parole violation, and released again years l­ater. In 2016, he died during what the police described as a suicide while being pursued as a suspect in the murder of his nephew.41 Broadway and Randolph document the vio­lence that constitutes the carceral state and is intensified in high-­security isolation prisons, which have even less monitoring and oversight by a nonincarcerated public. Conditions in t­ hose units exemplify what Dylan Rodríguez calls the “constitutive technology of vio­lence” that is an essential production of the carceral state: “the sanctioning and exercise of dominium (absolute owner­ship and ‘inner power’) over its ­human captives, a total Omar Broadway and Douglas Tirola, An Omar Broadway Film, 2008. Video stills.

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power that does not require formal po­liti­cal approval or ethical consent from the ostensible polity.”42 The dominion of the carceral state to determine not only who lives and who dies, but also who lives in­def­initely in the state of the living dead, as many describe solitary confinement, is largely facilitated by administrative procedure and internal review, bureaucracies of incarceration meant to oversee prisons, procedures that are weaponized against imprisoned p ­ eople to rationalize the increased use of isolation.

­ egal Procedure and Graphic Illustration L in Florida Prisons During his decade-­long sentence in Florida state prisons, the majority of which he spent in solitary confinement, Moliere Dimanche innovated forms of art-­ making and aesthetic practices that forged relations with other incarcerated ­people and challenged the structures of carceral visuality. He entered prison at nineteen and cultivated many roles ­there in order to survive. He became a commissioned portrait artist and a tattoo artist who traded his work for food, cigarettes, coffee, and other goods. He also became a writ writer—­that is, a jail­house ­lawyer who petitions the courts on behalf of incarcerated ­people. Dimanche filed countless l­ egal actions documenting abuse and violations against prisoners’ rights. His prolific ­legal work forced the state to respond, sometimes with brute force and at other times with changes in prison conditions. It led to more visibility of the abuse perpetrated by prison staff, and to several internal investigations, media stories, and even a federal case, Dimanche v. Brown (2015), in which he “sued 16 prison officials in federal court, alleging that he was subjected to harsh treatment in retaliation for filing grievances about prison conditions.”43 His l­egal advocacy made him a target of correction officers and wardens. “I became a bit of [a] pariah when I was in t­ here. . . . ​I was one of t­ hose p ­ eople that if I’d seen an inmate being abused or if I’d seen an inmate being killed or something, I’d raise the issue. I would file grievances. It got to the point where I would petition the court on behalf of inmates who ­couldn’t do it themselves.”44 He was punished harshly and forced to spend long stints in solitary confinement, where

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he was routinely abused. Nonetheless Dimanche continued to file Inmate Grievance forms and to document abuse using the “Crime Line,” a phone system set up in some prisons to anonymously report incidents. In one of his reports, he documents “men forced to get naked before gassings; men gassed without provocation; men having their vision scrambled with a BCO’s [brutal correction officer’s] fin­ger, BCO’s [sic] masturbating to a picture of a man’s five-­year-­old ­daughter[;] men gassed and forced to slap each other viciously before being allowed to exit their contaminated cell; men gassed and forced to say that they wore pink pan­ties; men gassed up their pant legs so the chemical agents make contact with their genitals.”45 Dimanche categorizes vari­ous ways that “the use of force,” an administrative term to justify assaults on prisoners, was implemented, such as “the strip method,” in which an incarcerated person is forced to undress to his boxers and then is moved into a freezing cell for seventy-­two hours. He writes, “Being on ‘Strip’ is both physically and mentally devastating.”46 In another “use of force,” an officer gives a prisoner the option to ­either “get missing” or withstand a brutal beating. To “get missing” means to behave in such a way that one ­will be placed in the psych ward, hoping to avoid the threatening officer’s brutality. Having been subjected to ­these actions, Dimanche testifies that the abuse and mistreatment on the psych ward is much worse than a beating. So extreme is Florida’s abuse of prisoners in m ­ ental health facilities that it was the subject of a New Yorker exposé and a federal investigation ­after an incarcerated man with a history of schizo­ phre­nia was locked in a shower and scalded to death by a correction officer.47 Dimanche survived by chronicling his experience in graphite drawings and writing what would become a ­legal and visual memoir of his time in prison, titled It Takes a Criminal to Know One: How the Inspector General and I Are One and the Same. In solitary confinement, he had very ­little material, so he bartered with orderlies for writing utensils and used the backs of prison forms to make art. I would have to barter again with stamps to the confinement orderlies and have them bring me pencils, but the only type of pencil they could fit on my food tray was a broken piece. So I ­wouldn’t even have an eraser but it would be enough of a piece. In order to keep the tip sharp I would just

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Left: Moliere Dimanche Jr., untitled drawing on back of prison form, date unknown. Graphite on paper. Right: Moliere Dimanche Jr., Black Jesus, date unknown. Graphite on paper.

scrape it on the ground, you know scrape it on the concrete and that would keep the tip sharp enough for me to keep ­going.48

Most of his elaborate drawings ­were created on the back of prison forms. Using minimal materials, Dimanche continued to document the abuse of prisoners, including an attempt by correction officers to kill him. According to his account, officers gassed him through the tray port in his cell door. He survived by placing his head inside the toilet in his cell. He compares his near-­death experience to that of lynching, and the Florida state prison system to Jim Crow segregation. He writes, “I’ve met him [ Jim Crow] personally and he is as happy as ever.”49 Dimanche became increasingly aware of the relationship between the prison system and white supremacy, noting numerous officers with white-­ nationalist tattoos and the organ­izing of KKK meetings inside prison facilities. He lists the vari­ous racial epithets used to verbally assault prisoners, and the nicknames for forms of torture, such as “Black Jesus,” a type of tear-­gas assault inflicted on defenseless prisoners in isolation cells.

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Left: Moliere Dimanche Jr., Pills and Potion, 2015. Graphite on paper. Right: Moliere Dimanche Jr., Tango, 2013. Graphite on paper.

Moliere published his memoir shortly a­ fter his release from prison in 2016. The book details how “exhausting the Inmate Grievance Procedure” almost cost him his life, and documents the abuses that he experienced and witnessed in Florida’s prison system. He writes, “This book was completed from the Gulf  C.I. confinement unit. My stubbornness and refusal to give up the Good Fight exhausted the Office of the Inspector General. Their response was simply to bury me in confinement in­def­initely, and let the grievance[s] pile up ­until they fell wherever they may.”50 The chapters are or­ga­nized as an anatomical dissection and diagnosis of the Florida prison system, using meta­phors of bodily organs, disease, and antidote. Each chapter begins with a drawing he made while in prison; the drawings serve as symbolic maps of memories, p ­ eople, and emotions—­what he describes as “psychographics.” They document his experience as he was forcibly moved from prison to prison around the state, and they represent the psychic and bodily toll of isolation and abuse on his personhood, such as in Pills and Potion (2015), in which he draws himself as a version of the Mono­poly Man, moving around a board populated by names of vari­ous penal facilities in Florida.

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His drawing Tango (2013) includes a partial image of President Barack Obama with “HOPE” written above his head, reminiscent of Obama’s poster for his first presidential campaign. Obama, whose eyes are downcast, appears in a cracked picture frame. Dimanche watched Obama’s po­liti­cal ascendancy from a prison cell in Florida and notes the complexity of rooting for Obama in an era when millions of ­people of color are in prison or ­under parole supervision. Dimanche frames hope as a forked concept. It hooks him to a vision of a ­future outside captivity and to the possibility of black po­liti­cal leadership, but it is also a recognition of racialized captivity, of the Jim Crow system operating inside Florida state prisons and elsewhere. Moliere’s style of approaching ­these paradoxes, what he calls “Moliere expressions,” is a type of hieroglyphic that zooms in on the symbols of carcerality and on his par­ tic­u­lar experience as captive and advocate for ­others. Tango renders familiar symbols of the American court system, except ­here, as in much prison art, the symbols are broken. A blindfolded Lady Justice holds the scales of justice in one hand while forcing Moliere, whose hands are tied ­behind his back, into a tank of ­water head first, recalling forms of torture such as waterboarding, and thereby connecting his plight in isolation cells in Florida to that of captive ­people in military bases, black sites, and detention centers. Ghoulish f­ aces push through the American flag, while a large noose lies at the bottom of the drawing, an effort to reveal the racial vio­lence at the roots of the criminal l­egal system and US democracy. Dimanche’s attempts to make vis­i­ble and accountable the system that holds him captive also make him more vulnerable to state retribution. Even from solitary confinement, he insists on bearing witness and exercising juridical procedures to force the carceral state to respond, while recognizing how the exclusion of the status of the prisoner and the racial other is embedded in such l­ egal rights. In punitive isolation, he both participates in established demo­cratic procedures as the right of a citizen subject and shows that the very foundation of the justice system is rooted in racial vio­lence and the denial of freedom for black and other vulnerable subjects who fall ­under the category of criminal.51 It Takes a Criminal to Know One can be read within the lit­er­a­ture of what theorist and abolitionist Joy James calls “(neo)slave narratives,” a term used to describe accounts of black captivity and freedom strug­gles, including prison lit­er­a­ture and memoirs, that draw correlations between slavery and carcerality. While James states that (neo)slave narratives are not intrinsically progressive or revolutionary

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(they cover a wide range of po­liti­cal ideologies), con­temporary narratives by the imprisoned have the capacity to provide “po­liti­cal histories of the captives and their captors.”52 Theorist Fred Moten interrogates “the relationship of certain narratives of slavery to the question of freedom, not only in the historical context in which they w ­ ere written, but in the no-­less-­desperate context of our fiercely urgent now”—­that is, the con­temporary era of mass incarceration and of per­sis­tent vio­lence by the state against black subjects.53 And yet, we must keep in mind the differences between slavery, immigrant detention and deportation, military sites, and other forms of racialized captivity and subjugation. Scholar Anoop Mirpuri offers a critique of scholarship and activism that connect black slave narratives to prison lit­er­a­ture in ways that support liberal penology instead of radically questioning how “unfreedom is materialized in everyday life.”54 Dimanche shows awareness of ­these distinctions and historical trajectories throughout his art and memoir. At one point, he discusses mourning the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Aiyana Jones, and Freddie Gray from his prison cell, as a person held in penal captivity and witnessing the precarity of black life in the not-­so-­free world beyond prison walls.55 Dimanche understands the threat of racial vio­lence—­ whether imprisoned, on the streets, or sleeping in one’s home—as a condition of black life in the United States. His critique of the carceral state is grounded in a broader analy­sis of racial subjugation and a denouncement of “the State for manufacturing slavery on both sides of the prison walls,” to quote James.56 One of the most significant ways that Dimanche resists penal isolation in his art and writing is through revealing the relationship between prisoner and prison staff that fundamentally sustains the everyday operations of carcerality. He brings the very p ­ eople whose livelihood depends on the prison industrial complex into a mirroring relationship. The cover illustration of his memoir is a drawing of Dimanche and the inspector general of Florida, Jeffrey T. Beasley, through a fractured mirror. Dimanche and Beasley are locked cheek to cheek, e­ ither hugging or clinging to each other in a death grip. Both hold their tools of investigation. For Dimanche, it’s a writing utensil; for the inspector general, it’s a magnifying glass. Dimanche brings the penal spectator into an uneasy relationship with both Dimanche and the system by crumbling the troubling divide between prisoner and captor and instead showing how the prison regime is a structure of mutual dependence. He writes, “In this game, I am technically the ‘Criminal,’ the guy

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who broke the law and must pay his dues. But in this same game, Beasley is the ‘Criminal’ who’s still active. The one who gets away. The Smooth Criminal.”57 Dimanche’s prolific and innovative work in the penal hole of Florida state prisons, where he is isolated, beaten, and gassed, stands in stark contrast to Western canonical notions of art, in which aesthetics and freedom are linked to an unmarked whiteness—­what theorist David Lloyd argues is “the still-­pervasive image of the artist as the epitome of the ­free being.”58 Moliere shares with his reader the type of aesthetic discernment he is making from sites of captivity. During a visit from his ­mother, he realizes that the slabs of concrete used as t­ables in the visiting area are the same edifices used as tombs to bury prisoners killed by guards. He and other incarcerated artists are involved in forms of innovation that fundamentally contest how the notion of discernment underpinning aesthetics and the production of art belongs to the domain of the discriminating, mobile, sensory, and f­ree Western man who ascribes value and judgment. He is also involved in a juridical interrogation that reveals the racialized vio­lence endemic to the carceral state.

Po­liti­cal Collage and Revolutionary Visions When po­liti­cal prisoner Ojore Lutalo met Bonnie Kerness, director of the Prison Watch Program of the American Friends Ser­ vice Committee (AFSC)—an organ­ization that monitors the condition of prisoners and provides ser­vices to support them—­his first question to her was, “Do you know how I can get a red silk shirt?”59 Lutalo had been in prison for years and in isolation for months; he was experiencing sensory deprivation and obsessive thinking, and was losing track of days. To focus his mind, he fantasized about a red shirt and the fine clothes that he used to wear on the streets. His request took Kerness by surprise. It was in stark contrast to the dire questions he had sent to the AFSC office that led to her visit: “Why am I in the control unit? How long am I ­going to have to stay ­here? And what’s a control unit?” That was in 1986; it would be another twenty-­three years before Lutalo was released from prison. Lutalo was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), the revolutionary organ­ization founded in 1970 whose members included Assata Shakur, Sundiata Acoli (who remains incarcerated since 1973), and many other high-­profile black

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freedom fighters and allies. Lutalo had been arrested and convicted b ­ ecause of his involvement in the organ­ization’s clandestine activities involving “expropriations.” As historian Dan Berger writes, “Lacking wealthy benefactors or steady access to resources, BLA cells often relied on bank robberies to secure funds (a tactic revolutionaries call ‘expropriations,’ for it involves taking money that cap­i­ tal­ist institutions have secured through other ­people’s l­abor and using it ostensibly to further liberatory ends).”60 Arguing that the United States was founded on stolen land, stolen bodies, exploited ­labor, and resource hoarding, BLA members throughout the 1970s and 1980s executed many operations—­large and small—to expropriate resources, including staging several bank heists. Lutalo was considered a threat to the general prison population ­because of his po­liti­cal beliefs and revolutionary activities. He was among several incarcerated black revolutionaries who w ­ ere relocated to the Management Control Unit (MCU) of Trenton State Prison in New Jersey. MCU consists of isolation cells primarily used to segregate politicized and out­spoken prisoners. Based on AFSC’s monitoring and advocacy work, Kerness writes: In 1975, a­ fter the tumultuous years of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the prisoners’ rights movement, Trenton State Prison in New Jersey established an administrative isolation unit for po­liti­cally dissident prisoners. The Management Control Unit, which now has 96 beds, ­houses ­those prisoners who have not broken institutional rules, but who are, as a result of their convictions and expressions, seen to be a threat by the prison administrators. This unit isolates activists and leaders.61

The Prison Watch Program would ­later learn through an investigation that MCUs had been created in prisons across the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. They h ­ ouse many radical activists and are part of the architecture that facilitated an expansion in isolation units in the late twentieth ­century. Lutalo’s days in MCU alternated between twenty-­three and twenty-­four hours spent alone in a cell. The one hour e­ very other day that he was allowed outside, he was sent to an encaged exercise area alone. He had very ­limited access to supplies and none to peer mentoring and recreational or educational programs. For many of t­ hose years, he was not allowed direct contact with other prisoners. His

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only communication was with prison staff through the tray port in his door, with a social worker who periodically visited, in phone calls to ­lawyers and activists, and occasional visits from AFSC staff like Kerness. To manage penal time and to maintain a relationship with himself as a subject and witness to his life in isolation, he made collages—­hundreds of them. They ­were constructed with minimal materials—­white ­legal paper, Elmer’s glue, newsprint—­and with the use of a copying machine to which Lutalo had restricted access, one of his rights to allow him to reproduce ­legal documents. Influenced by the art of Emory Douglas, the minister of culture for the Black Panther Party who created many of the organ­ization’s most iconic posters, Lutalo calls his collages “visual propaganda”; more than simply works of art, they are tools to spread po­ liti­cal messages. Lutalo’s collages became his primary mode of communicating with allies, advocates, and a broader nonincarcerated public. As the Prison Watch Program spread word of his lockdown in MCU and of the widespread use of solitary confinement in general, his contact with activists and allies grew. He began to correspond through letters with ­people regionally, nationally, and internationally. Lutalo eventually sent them collages to represent his condition—­that is, when the collages w ­ ere not confiscated or destroyed by prison staff. He used collage to rec­ord his experiences of isolation, deprivation, and disorientation. He states that when ­people asked what his cell looked like, “I got tired of rewriting the same ­thing over and over again. So I started ­doing the collages. At the time I just considered them po­liti­cal propaganda, b ­ ecause I was using them to educate ­people at large. See, the visual is more effective than the verbal.”62 Lutalo meant for his collages—­built with the tools available to him in administrative segregation, including repurposing news media—to contribute to a pedagogy of liberation. He encouraged ­others to copy and distribute them. Most of the collages are black and white, with occasional use of color via paper or pen. They document his treatment, the plight of other po­liti­cal prisoners, the technologies of isolation units, and forms of “no-­touch torture” employed as methods of state vio­lence, including “psychological (isolation, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, temporal disorientation); psychophysiological (thermal, stress positions)[;] and psychosocial (cultural humiliation, sexual degradation).”63 One could argue that “no-­touch torture” is a misnomer in that

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the term implies that the body is not beaten, brutalized, or made to suffer. Yet the body is subjugated u ­ nder punitive captivity. John Leach writes, “Whilst physical and psychological torture can be separated they cannot be divorced and it has been pointed out that psychological torture still requires extensive physical manipulation (e.g., physical confinement, keeping ­people awake) and, therefore, psychological torture is also an assault on the body.”64 Besides his collages, Lutalo sent Kerness letters describing the conditions in MCU. His art and letters became vital resources for the Prison Watch Program in studying the increasing use of solitary confinement. “How do you describe desperation to someone who is not desperate”? began one letter to Kerness from Lutalo. In Kerness’s summary, he recounted, “every­one in the Control Unit being awakened by guards dressed in riot gear holding barking dogs at 1 a.m. ­every other morning. Once awakened, the prisoners w ­ ere forced to strip, gather their belongings while feeling the dogs straining at their leashes snapping at their private parts. He described being terrorized, intimidated, and the humiliation of being naked.”65 Through his contact with AFSC, Lutalo cultivated a public with whom he was in conversation, even if their responses w ­ ere not direct or immediate. As the carceral state worked to eviscerate all relationality for him on behalf of politics, his practice of collage-making worked against state authority. Lutalo incorporated his carceral biography into his collages as a way of projecting his presence outside MCU and refuting the closed security of the unit. In Breaking Men’s Minds, he incorporates his prison ID photo, a significant feature in his work as a practice of self-­referentiality and relationality. The photo is often accompanied by his name and prison mailing address in an aesthetics that has more to do with using art to connect to o ­ thers than it does allegiance to a par­tic­ u­lar form or genre. Another key feature of his work is the indeterminacy of time, as seen in the collage It’s Time for an Intervention, whose date of completion is unknown. Although he often incorporates dates from headlines and from his prison documents into his collages, Lutalo returns to some of his pieces years ­later. He has continued to build on his early work since his release from prison in 2009. Time in isolation cannot adequately be marked by dated documents or headlines. Time in isolation is an absence of external markers to register penal temporality as experienced in closed, minimal, and locked quarters of solitary confinement. It is

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Ojore Lutalo, Being Persecuted for Po­liti­cal Thoughts, date unknown. Collage.

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nonlinear, as seen in Being Persecuted for Po­liti­cal Thoughts. The collage incorporates a “Notice of Classification Decision, Routine Review,” in which Lutalo comments that he is being persecuted for his po­liti­cal beliefs and documents his movement from the general population to isolation, alongside the response from the review committee, which reads, “Your radical views and ability to influence o ­ thers poses a threat to the orderly operations of the Institution.” Across the top of the collage, a heading reads, “22 Years in Isolation,” which poses a question: what is the duration of twenty-­two years alone in a box? Theorizing about the relationship between corporeality, space, and time in solitary confinement, Guenther writes, “Time becomes unhinged and the world turns upside down in experiences of severe bodily deprivation—­because time and the world, and even the subject of experience, are sustained by a more fundamental nonintentional, unconscious, affective dimension of corporeal life.”66

Lutalo became an expert in the methods used by the carceral state to control radical prisoners by rendering them irrelevant, voiceless, or insane. Collage-­ making and letter-­writing served as impor­tant tools for maintaining a po­liti­cal and social life. Another method was fantasizing about fashion, color, and life on the streets of New Jersey. Even though a red silk shirt was one of his fantasies, the color red would ­later terrorize him and haunt his collages. Lutalo recounts and reimagines one of the more horrifying incidents of no-­touch torture that he survived. Without explanation, he was ordered to move from the isolation cell where he had been h ­ oused for years into another cell. He knew immediately that prison staff ­were employing a method of disorientation used to weaken and control ­people in solitary confinement. He was shackled and guided through the wing where he was ­housed to another wing, where they ­stopped before a door. What he saw caused him immediate alarm. He says, “So they opened the door, and before they opened the door, I seen blood on the win­dow frame . . . ​on the win­dow glass in the door, right? . . . ​Dried blood. So I step into the cell . . . ​and I’m looking to see what’s ­going on, and it’s smelling real bad. ­Every time I walk, I would hear blood crunch under­neath my boots . . . ​I was in that cell for about six hours.”67 Lutalo was locked inside a cell covered in dried blood—­a total sensory assault: the foul smell, the sound the dried blood made underfoot, the streaks across the wall, his inability to touch surfaces, to lean or sit down. He describes the blood as a viscous red, both sticky and crunchy. It was a textured, colored substance that at one point had flowed through the body of another. Lutalo responded with such viscerality that he froze in one spot. He wanted no part of the tracks on the floor and the smears on the wall. How did the bloody red get from another’s body to the walls of this cell? How long had it been ­there? How many ­others had been forced to bear witness to it? And who painted the walls, the floor, the door knob, the toilet seat with it? The dried blood spread around the cell could have been placed t­here by the person whose blood it was, akin to the use of fecal m ­ atter in acts of re­sis­tance by po­liti­cal prisoners in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, or by prisoners gone mad from torture, isolation, boredom, and despair. Lutalo cannot get the bloody cell out of his head. He describes the experience in interviews and reimagines it in his art. In representing the trauma through collage, he does not expel his own blood onto the paper. He does not substitute

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Ojore Lutalo, Seeing Is Believing, date unknown. Collage.

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his blood for that of another. He has no desire to produce verisimilitude; nor is verisimilitude the domain of collage. As Jacques Rancière explains, collage is a po­liti­cal aesthetic, one that “combines the foreignness of aesthetic experience with the becoming-­art of ordinary life. Collage can be realized as the pure encounter between heterogeneous ele­ments, attesting en bloc to the incompatibility of two worlds.”68 For Lutalo, his captivity in that constrained space of horror, where he could not move without becoming more immersed in the scene, embodies the incompatibility between total isolation and sensory overload. Lutalo becomes a forced and terrorized witness to the suffering of another and their remains. ­Here is a relationality that he wants to refuse but cannot; the story of whose blood was let in that cell is now his story, but it is not his blood. In Seeing Is Believing, the headline “Living Nightmare” appears more than once, as do statements linking the experience to the horror of slavery, which Moten theorizes as foundational to the black radical aesthetic tradition: “The Afro-­diasporic tradition is one that improvises through horror and through the philosophy of horror.”69 H ­ ere Lutalo depicts a blueprint of the cell with dark red paint smeared across it; the use of collage gestures t­oward a visual and sonic register of horror in the punitive captivity of the carceral state. In Taken to Task, Lutalo uses newsprint with the words “extra!, extra!” and “blood” displayed in a font associated with horror films. In a ­later collage, No Touch Torture Is Psychological Torture, which he made ­after his release, we see the cell again, this time on yellow paper and accompanied by a testimony that he wrote with the assistance of the Prison Watch Program: “­After my forced 6 hour stay in that ­human blood stained cell, I was not given a change of clothing or afforded the opportunity to take a shower. A ­ fter I moved into cell #5, I washed my boots down with soap and ­water.” Lutalo’s testimony evokes purification and cleansing, concepts that w ­ ere foundational to the origins of the penitentiary, which has proven to be a failed proj­ect. H ­ ere, the invocation of cleansing is not about the state’s mandate for rehabilitation or spiritual redemption, but the claim of the incarcerated to rid himself of the stain of torture, to perform a reconstitution of self as a response to the state’s assault and attempt to disassemble his personhood. Since his release in 2009, Lutalo continues to work with Kerness and the Prison Watch Program to advocate on behalf of po­liti­cal prisoners and ­others who are held in isolation units, and to end solitary confinement and other forms of torture,

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and he still uses collage in ­these efforts. A 2017 poster titled Torture Chamber features the testimony of Michelle Angelina, a transwoman h ­ oused in the same management-­control unit where Lutalo spent over two de­cades. Angelina contacted the Prison Watch Program about her confinement. Her testimony documents the sexual and gender vio­lence that she has experienced in a men’s prison, where she is kept in isolation, purportedly for her safety. Lutalo incorporates Angelina’s testimony into the center of the collage; it reads (in all capital letters): Now, my current situation is horrible. I have zero contact with anyone. I live in a special suite, my cell (is) in a cage where the cell next to me is my own personal suicide watch cell where the toilet has a steel cover on it (in) order to force me to stand to urinate into the sink and make bowel movements into a Styrofoam tray. I also have my own private VPRC—­“Violent Person Restraint Chair”—­ room my cell that I live in has steel plated walls as does my suicide watch cell. I am only allowed to go to “yard” by myself in a small cage outside. Nobody ­else is allowed in the other yard cages when I go out. I am all alone with no one to talk to.

Angelina documents in her letters to the Prison Watch Program the multiple forms of vio­lence she endures in administrative segregation in a men’s fa­cil­i­ty. According to the logic of the carceral state, Angelina as a transwoman is a threat to the operations of the prison and the gender binaries that segregate and classify incarcerated populations. She has been removed from contact with other incarcerated ­people for her protection and the protection of o ­ thers. She is assumed to be self-­harming. The Violent Person Restraint Chair is a constant threat, and the suicide-­watch area in her “suite” presumes, anticipates, and encourages her unhinging. Queer theorist Stephen Dillon writes of how the physical and psychic toll of solitary confinement reinforces and produces categories of difference: “The prison not only produces non-­normative genders and sexualities but also non-­normative bodies and minds. It captures queer bodies and shuts down queer ways of being, but it also produces queer experiences of space and time.”70 Angelina’s account resonates with many of the testimonies collected by the Black and Pink Network. In a survey of its thirty-­one hundred members, the

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Ojore Lutalo, Torture Chamber, date unknown. Collage.

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network found that 50 percent of its respondents had been held in solitary confinement for two years or more; the report also notes that solitary confinement is used more frequently to control transwomen.71 ­Because LGBTQ prisoners experience higher levels of isolation—­both through control units, and socially, in general prison populations, where many have to hide their identities—­Black and Pink Network maintains an active letter-­writing campaign to foster relationships and community among incarcerated LGBTQ ­people. The organ­ization has exhibited the art of its members to bring greater visibility to the conditions of queer, trans, and gender-­nonconforming ­people in prison.

Collaborating through the Penal Hole Activist groups like Black and Pink have been crucial to documenting and bringing to public awareness accounts of p ­ eople in isolation units. Additionally, several art-­ based collaborative proj­ects have emerged to bring public visibility to the conditions and effects of solitary confinement with the intention of ending involuntary isolation in prisons and other carceral facilities. Among the best-­known artistic collaborations about solitary confinement involved Black Panther Party member and artist Herman Wallace and white artist and activist Jackie Sumell. Wallace, along with Albert Woodfox and Robert King, was a member of the Angola Three, a group of incarcerated men who became activists while h ­ oused at Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, a­ fter the former slave plantation on which the prison was built. Angola is the largest maximum-­security prison in the world, holding captive more than six thousand, the vast majority of whom ­will die ­there. It functions as an eighteen-­thousand-­acre penal farm where incarcerated ­people are forced to perform agricultural l­abor, not dissimilar to how enslaved p ­ eople ­were forced to ­labor in the same locale in prior eras. About this continuation of black captivity and forced servitude on the site, Dennis Childs theorizes, “The sight of the black neoslave laboring in the plantation field at Angola becomes less of an exceptional scene of southern barbarism than a spectacular repre­sen­ta­tion of a banal pro­cess of socially acceptable (and pleas­ur­able) racial cap­i­tal­ist carceral genocide that continues to stretch across the mythological borderline of slavery and freedom.”72

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In 1971, Wallace, Woodfox, and King formed a chapter of the Black Panther Party inside Angola and worked to or­ga­nize other incarcerated p ­ eople to protest against the brutal and oppressive conditions in the prison. In 1972, when a prison guard was killed during an uprising at Angola, Wallace and Woodfox w ­ ere falsely accused and found guilty of his murder, and King was accused of being an accomplice. They w ­ ere convicted and sentenced to solitary confinement; they are known for having served among the longest sentences in isolation in modern prison history. King served twenty-­nine years in solitary confinement before he was released in 2013, Wallace served forty-­one years in solitary confinement, and Woodfox served forty-­three years.73 Woodfox’s 2019 memoir Solitary documents the torture the three of them endured and their strategies to survive over four de­cades in the closed cell restricted (CCR) units at Angola prison. He also makes clear how he, Wallace, and King ­were kept in solitary confinement for de­cades b ­ ecause of their po­liti­cal beliefs and party membership. Woodfox quotes a 2008 deposition by then warden of Angola Burl Cain, stating that the only reason Woodfox, King, and Wallace remained in CCR was ­because of their affiliation with the Black Panther Party. Cain is on rec­ord saying about Woodfox, “I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison ­because he would or­ga­nize the young new inmates.”74 Providing insight into the hellish matrix of solitary confinement, Woodfox also details how t­ here are tiers and degrees of isolation and deprivation. In addition to the CCR where he spent most of his years in isolation, t­ here was also the CCR dungeon where he was placed when he refused the routine strip searches that prisoners in isolation ­were forced to endure. In the dungeon, he was held in a dark cell, forced to share a mattress with three other men, fed a slice of bread twice a day, and forced to drink ­water out of the toilet. Then ­there was Camp J, a punishment camp where captives ­were isolated without belongings and forced to eat leftovers from the general prison population, and where suicide attempts ­were common.75 Woodfox describes how his comrade King was sent to Camp J for refusing the forced practice of strip searches: “It was the harshest, most punitive camp in Angola. . . . ​A prisoner had to survive three levels of harsh deprivation without a disciplinary report for six months before being allowed back in his normal housing.”76

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Sumell, who learned of the Angola Three while studying art at Stanford University, reached out to Wallace in 2003 by sending him a letter with the question, “What kind of h ­ ouse does a man who has lived in a 6 × 9-­foot cell for over thirty years dream of?”77 Wallace responded in words and included drawings of his cell; ­later, based on vari­ous prompts from Sumell, he began to envision and sketch his dream home. From this initial exchange evolved a wide-­ranging collaboration across the carceral archipelago, involving multiple proj­ects, including a book of their correspondence titled The House That Herman Built (2006). Sumell constructed a scale model of Wallace’s cell and a digital simulation of Wallace’s dream home using design software.78 The collaboration was the subject of a documentary, Herman’s House (2012).79 Over the course of a de­cade, their collaborations built a shared vision of freedom and home, even while the two occupied vastly dif­fer­ent positions: Wallace confined to a highly restricted cell in isolation, and Sumell, a professionally trained artist, able to move between urban centers and vari­ous art and educational institutions. Wallace’s colorful and stark illustrations of his cell and Sumell’s interpretations of Wallace’s cell and his dream home have circulated widely, through multiple exhibitions, publications, and media coverage. The collaboration was not only about employing visual advocacy to bring critical attention to Wallace’s and ­others’ confinement in isolation; it also had the aim of creating a home outside prison for Wallace. Sumell and other allies sought to secure land to construct Herman’s dream h ­ ouse in New Orleans, the city where he was born and raised. When Wallace was diagnosed with liver cancer, Sumell and a team of allies and attorneys worked to make sure that he did not die in Angola. Wallace was released from prison on 1 October 2013, a­ fter a federal judge ruled that his initial indictment was unconstitutional. He died shortly ­after his release, surrounded by his ­sister, Sumell, and other allies, knowing and stating that he was ­free. Another significant collaboration between p ­ eople ­housed in isolation units and nonincarcerated artists and allies developed in 2008 as part of a grassroots effort both to increase public awareness of the devastating harm of long-­term isolation and to shut down Tamms Correctional Center, a supermax prison in Illinois designed to ­house five hundred prisoners in extreme forms of deprivation and isolation. ­There, all prisoners w ­ ere held in permanent solitary confinement, with no

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communal activities, phone calls, ­family visits, or direct contact with other imprisoned people. The collaboration was initiated by artist Laurie Jo Reynolds, who worked with a broad group of volunteers, ­lawyers, activists, formerly incarcerated ­people, and f­amily members in practicing what Reynolds calls “legislative art.”80 As Pete Brook writes, “Legislative Art involves unglamorous admin, spreadsheets and letter-­writing as much as it does poetry, poster-­making and marching. Legislative Art strategically and creatively engages with government systems, with the intent to secure concrete po­liti­cal change.”81 The co­ali­tion, which marked Tamms’s tenth year of existence, called itself Tamms Year Ten. According to the co­ali­tion’s website, “At Tamms, prisoners are known to cut or mutilate themselves, scream uncontrollably, smear themselves with feces, and attempt suicide—­all predictable consequences of the torture of sensory deprivation. Their psychiatric treatment often consists of stripping men of their possessions (including their clothes), putting them in four-­point restraints, subjecting them to twenty-­four hour lighting, and controlling them with pepper spray and psychotropic drugs.”82 The co­ali­tion used vari­ous strategies to correspond with prisoners at Tamms and to raise public awareness, including starting a pen-­pal and letter-­writing program, collecting testimonies from currently and formerly incarcerated p ­ eople and their families, and sending out books based on requests. One visual strategy was the “I Am a Mom” Proj­ect, which directly references a well-­known campaign from the twentieth c­ entury that grew out of both the black civil rights movement and ongoing ­labor strug­gles in the United States. The “I Am a Man” poster campaign, orchestrated in 1968 by black sanitation workers in Memphis, who ­were on strike to protest discriminatory practices and unsafe job conditions, received international coverage and support for at least two notable reasons: b ­ ecause of the strike itself, and out of support for Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in Memphis while he was ­there working with the strikers.83 In the “I Am a Mom” Proj­ect, ­mothers of incarcerated p ­ eople in solitary confinement, such as Brenda, photographed h ­ ere, stake a claim for reproductive justice by embodying a statement that says, “My child, my ­children do not belong to the state.” They critique normative ideologies of race and class, such as the “culture of poverty” theory, that pathologize and criminalize black families, especially black mothering.84 The participating ­mothers claim recognition for their families,

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c­ hildren, and selves, as well as for the many millions of ­family members impacted by having relatives incarcerated. ­Mothers pose with a sign that reads, “I AM A MOM,” in front of a wall of prison ID photos of ­people, mainly men, held in isolation in supermax prisons. The backdrop in front of which the ­mothers pose is an assemblage of carceral visual indexes. Tamms organizers have turned t­ hese portraits into documents for advocacy. Instead of isolated subjects in single cells, the grouping of photos creates a collective, shared experience among prisoners held in solitary captivity. The presence of the nonincarcerated m ­ other with her proclamatory sign is both a statement of reproductive justice and an assertion of nonlineal kinship: “I speak for all ­mothers and ­children impacted by mass incarceration and excessive punitive captivity.” It represents a practice of collective mothering that comes out of black strategies of survival that date back centuries. It is a practice that hinges the nonincarcerated to incarcerated subjects who are locked away in the most isolating environments of modern life. As a result of their efforts, combined with growing public outrage about involuntary isolation and the cooperation of Illinois governor Pat Quinn, the prison was closed in 2013. Photo Requests from Solitary, another effort initiated by the co­ali­tion to close Tamms, continues to operate. It is “a participatory proj­ect that invites men and w ­ omen held in long-­term solitary confinement in U.S. prisons to request a photo­graph of anything at all, real or i­ magined, and then finds a volunteer to make the image.”85 The proj­ect provides a platform for nonincarcerated photog­raphers and p ­ eople held in solitary confinement to collaborate as a way to expand the visual sensory world and engage the imaginative possibilities of ­people in isolation.86 It recruits volunteer activists and photog­raphers to fulfill the requests for photo­graphs. Since the proj­ect’s inception, photo requests by p ­ eople in isolation have ranged from images of loved ones, to homes or streets where they grew up, to places they have never visited, to specific historic sites, to fantasy-­scapes and ­imagined scenes. Titles of some of the photos submitted include Autumn Leaves, Lovesick Clown, Muslim Mosque or Moorish Science ­Temple in Chicago or Mecca or Africa, and My ­Family Together.87 In 2013, a­ fter the closing of Tamms, Laurie Jo Reynolds and Jeanine Oleson of Photo Requests from Solitary began to collaborate with Jean Casella of Solitary Watch, which became the umbrella organ­ization to manage

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Justin Goh for Tamms Year Ten, I AM A MOM with Brenda, 2009.

photo requests, recruit photog­raphers, and curate exhibits and other public programs as part of their larger goal of bringing public awareness to the widespread use of involuntary isolation in prisons and other carceral facilities.88 Dillon, in an analy­sis of Photo Requests from Solitary, examines how the proj­ect visualizes the histories, dreams, and imaginary worlds of incarcerated ­people, and also highlights the invisible: the forces of racial apartheid such as segregated housing, surveillance, underemployment, exploitive l­abor practices, environmental discrimination, and other systemic forces that fuel the carceral state. One photo depicts h ­ ouses on a dilapidated block, reflecting how the proj­ect makes “vis­ i­ble what has been dis­appeared from the visual landscape.”89 The photo fulfilled an incarcerated person’s request to see the ­whole block of 63rd and Marshfield, on the south-­side in the Englewood community [in Chicago]—­the 6300 block of south Marshfield is where I’m from. I would like it taken in the day time, between two and

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Laurie Jo Reynolds for Tamms Year Ten, My Picture with Blue Sky (for Roberto), 2011.

four ­o’clock p.m. It’s a green and white duplex-­like house—­the only green and white h ­ ouse on the block—­that my Auntie “Gibby” lives in. I want the picture taken from the sidewalk (that leads to the T-­shape alley ­going ­towards Ashland and 63rd) in front of the alley, facing slightly t­ owards 64th Marshfield. But, make sure [the] majority of the west-­side of the block gets pictured.90

The specificity of the description makes clear the historicity of the request and also his claim on an intimate and social life that attaches memories to the ­angle, light, direction, and time of day in which he wants to see his relative’s home documented. The photo also underscores the erasure of the incarcerated from ­family life and the domestic sphere. Some ­people request alternate images of themselves, ones that ­counter carceral indexes. Roberto, who was held at Tamms, writes: I would like my own picture done with an alternate background from the IDOC picture. I have no pictures of myself to give my friends and ­family.

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This would mean a ­great deal to me. If this is not able to be done. Then I’ll leave the picture for you to decide. If you can place my picture on another background. Nothing too much please. Something ­simple like a blue sky with clouds or a sunset in the distance would be fine.91

His request for a clear blue sky demonstrates his desire to see himself other than how prison identification photography preserves and circulates his image, keeping him always tethered to the category of the criminal. Laurie Jo Reynolds photoshopped his state ID photo into an expansive horizon, bordered only by the photographic lens. The requests from p ­ eople in isolation and the photo­graphs that fulfill their requests amount to an archive of envisioning possibility for ­those rendered socially and civically dead. They reimagine the public through an insertion of ­people in extreme isolation into settings seemingly impossible. The caption for Sunset over ­Water (2016) reads, “Geri is a transgender w ­ oman who is serving her sentence in men’s prisons, and spent years in solitary ­after she was sexually assaulted. She requested, ‘An [early] sunset over w ­ ater, the kind with lots of red and purple in the sky / clouds ideally with a lone buoy in the distance.’ ” Dillon theorizes how the photos produced by Photo Requests from Solitary queer penal space and time, writing: The visions created by the prisoners and artists in Photo Requests from Solitary see beyond the “prison ­house” of the ­here and now to spaces and temporalities that may seem familiar but are ultimately otherworldly, in that they demand an undoing of normative epistemologies, ontologies, and order of the world itself. . . . ​Seeing beyond the normative vio­lence of the everyday, the queerness of the photos point[s] to ways of living, thinking, seeing, and organ­izing life that render the prison and its regimes of social death abnormal and unnatural.92

Through this proj­ect, the incarcerated subject and the nonincarcerated subject cultivate a radical collective imaginary where both can imagine and visualize life without bars. Photo Requests from Solitary demonstrates how art-­making across vari­ous states of un / freedom produces relational possibilities that challenge the punitive

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Jessica Posner for Photo Requests from Solitary, Sunset over ­Water (for Geri), 2016.

isolation, the burden of time, the disruption of social relations, and one’s removal from civil society and f­amily life enforced by solitary confinement and other forms of involuntary solitude. The work of the artists that I have discussed reveals how incarcerated p ­ eople insist on relationality and sociality, even from, or especially from, the penal hole. They forge connections. They create kinship among carceral populations, among their beloved, and with o ­ thers held in captivity and rendered po­liti­cally and socially dead. Through their radical imaginaries and relational practices, ­these artists offer necessary tools and insights into how we strategize, build solidarities, procure resources, and envision ­under austere and brutal regimes.

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7

POSING IN PRISON ­FA M I LY P H O T O ­G R A P H S , P R A C T I C E S O F BELONGING, AND CARCERAL LANDSCAPES

Since 1994, I have exchanged words and images with my cousin Allen, who was sentenced to life in prison at the age of eigh­teen. We write to each other regularly, often reminiscing about growing up in southwest Ohio. Allen and I ­were raised as siblings, along with several other first cousins in our large and close-­knit ­family. His ­mother is my ­mother’s older ­sister, and child-­rearing was very much a group effort that was shared among all the ­women and teenage girls in the f­ amily. Allen ends his letters to me in the same way: “Niki, send more pictures. Love, your lil cuz Allen.” I send him pictures, and he reciprocates. I have a small suitcase of memorabilia from Ohio prisons: letters, greeting cards, and photo­graphs sent to me from Allen and other male relatives while they ­were incarcerated. The photo­graphs are studio portraits taken by incarcerated photog­raphers whose job in prison is to take pictures. In them, Allen poses sometimes with props, always in uniform. The backdrops, painted by incarcerated ­people, break up the uniformity and repetition of the prison attire and staged poses. ­There are also photo­graphs from our

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Frances and De’Andre, February 2010.

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visits to see Allen. In most of t­ hese, he stands in the center and we huddle around him, hugging him tightly. In the first few years of his imprisonment, I could not look at ­these photo­graphs that arrived tucked b ­ ehind his letters. I dreaded opening an envelope from him if I could feel that the contents included something akin to the thickness and flexibility of photographic paper. I would quickly glance at the photos and put them back in the envelope, feeling much more comfortable with the letter. Reading his words, I had space to pro­cess and absorb what he communicated. The pictures overwhelmed me, flooding me with feelings of sadness, grief, hopelessness, and longing. Gradually, I trained myself to look longer. I began to fixate on certain details—­his hairstyle, a new tattoo, the shape of his arms and his neck. Then, as an experiment, I de­cided to hang the photos around my home—­secured by magnets on the refrigerator, tacked to a wall, or taped to the back of a door. ­After a while, they no longer unsettled me; they ­were just ­there, along with other images and possessions. In some ways, I forgot they ­were on display ­until a friend who is an art historian visited me and inquired about one of them. Hanging on my refrigerator was a photo of another cousin, also imprisoned in Ohio. In it, De’Andre, in his late teens, smiles at the camera; he stands in a blue uniform, while hugging his grand­mother (my aunt Frances). The backdrop is a painting of a winter scene, with snow-­covered trees and rolling hills. The partial figure of a deer animates the landscape. I replied, “That’s my cousin De’Andre in prison during a visit from his grand­mother—my aunt.” My friend was shocked: “Wow. That was taken in prison. . . . ​­There’s so much love in that image. They both look so happy.” My friend, although a black man whose f­ amily, like mine, was descended from US slavery, had never seen a photo­graph documenting a ­family visit to an imprisoned relative and was unaware of how common t­hese images are among groups most affected by mass incarceration—­blacks, Latinos, Native Americans,

and poor whites. The smiles and hug shared between grand­son and grand­mother ­were far from what he associated with prison life and culture. He compared the fantasy backdrops and setting to photographer James Van Der Zee’s early twentieth-­century portraits of black residents of Harlem. Also notable in Van Der Zee’s work is the intentionality of his sitters to use portraiture to document aspirations of upward mobility, racial equality, and demo­cratic inclusion. Van Der Zee’s photo­graphs have a sense of futurity and hopefulness, and often a subtle or explicit claim to the nation (the US flag as a prop, or black soldiers in uniform); his images document anticipation of a better life for black Americans in the early twentieth ­century, a progressivist narrative of freedom and equality to be gained somehow, somewhere in the ­future. My friend’s comments led me to see my ­family’s prison photos as more than documents of our pain and loss, and instead to consider them in the context of the many millions of prison photos that circulate between incarcerated p ­ eople and their families and friends, given that ­there are over two million ­people incarcerated in the United States. In terms of sheer volume, ­these images amount to one of the largest practices of vernacular photography in the con­temporary era. I choose to distinguish vernacular studio photos in prison as such b ­ ecause more often than not the photographer is unknown, and the images’ primary function is to document individuals who seek to be photographed, as distinct from being part of an artist’s portfolio or photo study. Like most vernacular photography, t­ hese images reside primarily in private collections, ­housed in shoeboxes, photo ­albums, drawers, and closets. T ­ hese photo­graphs serve as impor­tant visual and haptic objects of love and belonging structured through the carceral state. They also reveal what novelist Tayari Jones calls prison’s “other vio­lence: ­Every incarcerated ­human is stripped of ­family.”1 Among the most striking features that set t­ hese images apart from more publicly circulated photo­graphs of prisoners are the emotive smiles, the imaginative backdrops, and the familial gazes of the photographic subjects that, one could argue, acknowledge the intimacy of their intended audience. Within portrait photography, backdrops tend to be read as signs of aspiration, futurity, and fantasy. In prison portraiture, backdrops si­mul­ta­neously obfuscate and highlight carceral geographies. They are more varied than the poses and uniforms of the imprisoned sitters. Prison backdrops tend to proj­ect exterior life—­a space outside prison

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walls—­and they often fall within landscape-­painting traditions. While some backdrops reference iconic landmarks, like New York City’s skyline, the majority do not proj­ect a sense of place or specificity of location. Instead, they represent a sense of nonconfinement, a lack of bars, bound­aries, borders—an ungoverned, yet manicured, space. According to artist and curator David Adler, abstract aesthetics and landscapes are used ­because prison staff monitor the backdrops: “A common theme is paintings with vague imagery, just abstract patterns, and t­ here is a reason for that. This i­sn’t ­really a ­free system; t­ here are wardens monitoring it for gang symbols. The belief is that if it’s some kind of watery, abstract background it’s easier to spot a gang symbol.”2 Against ­these scenes, the imprisoned, wearing penal clothing and held captive in penal space, mark time. But also, ­these photos serve an impor­tant function outside prison walls; they circulate as practices of intimacy and attachment between incarcerated p ­ eople and their loved ones. As one of the only forms of photographic production that incarcerated ­people can willingly engage in, vernacular prison photos are a significant component of the visual culture of mass incarceration. They are photographic accounts of the lived presence of ­people held in punitive captivity who are rendered invisible and removed from civil society and ­family life. They also rec­ord the emotional ­labor performed to maintain ­these connections across carceral geographies. My ­family’s collection of photos of our incarcerated relatives is personal and precious to me, but also it is like so many millions of other collections: a reflection of the toll of carcerality on the populations most directly impacted. Vernacular prison photos mark penal time, and they also map feelings of intimacy, kinship, and hope between incarcerated ­people and their loved ones. They document the past, pre­sent, and f­uture of love and belonging structured across carceral geographies. And they serve to complicate criminal records, even while being taken ­under the approval and surveillance of prison staff. My ­family’s archive and anecdotes illuminate a practice that u ­ ntil recently has received ­little public recognition or scholarly attention: vernacular studio photos being taken among incarcerated ­people i­n prison visiting rooms. In ­these images, incarcerated p ­ eople work against criminal indexes and punitive captivity to produce themselves as subjects of value in networks of belonging. Vernacular studio photos serve as sites where incarcerated ­people and their nonincarcerated loved ones can share space and time and visualize their attachments through

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photographic repre­sen­ta­tion; such practices are an example of what I call carceral aesthetics—­the production of art and visual repre­sen­ta­tion in conditions of un / freedom.

Vernacular Photography and Prison Backdrops Prison photog­raphers, rarely identified and working u ­ nder punitive captivity, negotiate the desires of other incarcerated p ­ eople and their visitors to have a photo­ graph that both documents and erases the vis­i­ble signs of carcerality, while working u ­ nder the direct supervision of prison guards. The prison photographer ­labors ­under the surveillance of the penal state to capture the regulated self-­ expression of incarcerated subjects and their visitors. At the same time, the position of photographer is a privileged job among prisoners, in large part ­because this person is able to interact with ­others, sometimes with less regulation and more fluidity than he or she can in other carceral spaces. The photographer has a ­great deal of mobility in the studio space and has relative control and autonomy over how the studio runs during his or her work shift. When she or he is not photographing, the prison photographer walks around and straightens up the visiting room—­lining up chairs and removing food packages that have been left ­behind. She or he must appear to be busy and cooperative when not actively photographing. Art historian Geoffrey Batchen examines vernacular photography as a “non-­ category” of everyday images that account for the vast majority of photo­graphs taken since the medium’s invention in the nineteenth ­century. Yet ­these photo­ graphs are rarely included in museum collections, public histories, and institutional archives.3 That public invisibility is heightened when considering photo­ graphs of incarcerated ­people, given how carceral visuality governs prisoners’ access to cameras and the public’s access to images of the incarcerated. Vernacular prison portraits are produced in makeshift studios and in visiting rooms. Incarcerated artists paint backdrops and, in some cases, design sets for their photo shoots. Only minimal props and accessories are available for staging. ­These temporary studios exist in many prisons across the United States. The photo­graphs consist of individual and group portraits of incarcer-

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Deana Lawson, Mohawk Correctional Fa­cil­i­ty, 2013. Pigment prints, 46 parts, 11 × 8.5 inches each.

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ated individuals, as well as photos documenting visits from ­family and friends. Incarcerated ­people and their visitors purchase the images. Alyse Emdur, in her study of prison backdrops, states that a single photo­graph costs between $2.00 and $4.00, making this a lucrative ser­vice for prisons.4 Vernacular prison portraits provide an impor­tant counterpoint to a long history of photographing imprisoned ­people as part of carceral indexes. The most prevalent and available images of criminalized and incarcerated populations are ­those used in the ser­vice of carceral institutions to identify, monitor, and confine subjects, such as mug shots and prison ID photos (see Chapter 3). Prison studio photos are crucial modes of self-­representation that serve as shadow archives to governmental indexes of criminalized ­peoples.5 They wrestle against the public removal and punitive isolation enforced by the state. They also function as documents of the quotidian prevalence of penal settings for the populations most impacted by punitive governance and imprisonment as they navigate familial and intimate relations through the porous and punitive bound­aries of carcerality. Millions of t­ hese images are sent out of US prisons each year to relatives, loved ones, and friends. Until recently, as mentioned, ­these images have had ­little visibility outside their circulation among incarcerated ­people and their personal networks. However, in the past de­cade, vernacular prison portraits have circulated more broadly in the public through exhibitions, art auctions, and blogs dedicated to prison culture.6 Photographer Deana Lawson’s series Mohawk Correctional Fa­cil­i­ty (2013) is one such example. The photo­graphs are of Lawson’s cousin Jasmine, Jasmine’s incarcerated partner Eric, and their young c­ hildren. The name of the series is taken from the prison where Eric was incarcerated—­a name that reiterates the land

theft, dispossession, criminalization, and captivity of indigenous p ­ eoples. The site is a carceral fa­cil­it­y now primarily occupied by hyperincarcerated black, Latino, and indigenous men and is staffed by rural white workers. In the series, we see the power of prison studio portraits to document familial and intimate relations. In some photo­graphs, Jasmine and Eric hold each other affectionately. They kiss and hug. In ­others, they stand together with their young ­children. The backdrop is unchanging and more austere: it is a mural painted on cinder block. The lines of the blocks are vis­i­ble through the paint. Against this carceral backdrop, Jasmine and Eric—­and other prisoners with their lovers, families, and friends—­ make memories structured through the carceral state. The photo­graphs reveal the familiarity of penal settings for many millions who must navigate their most intimate relations through prison geographies and bureaucracies, u ­ nder constant David Adler, Prisoner surveillance. Fantasies: Photos from Prisoner Fantasies: Photos from the Inside (2007–2012), which was mounted the Inside, 2007–2012. at the Clocktower Gallery in New York in 2012, consists of a handful of photographic portraits from vari­ous prisons in the United States.7 The sixteen four-­by-­six-­inch photos came from the collection of David Adler, who has taught art classes in prisons and has collaborated with imprisoned ­people for several years. Adler solicited portraits from incarcerated ­people through his work in prisons and through other channels, including prison newsletters. Absent from most of the images are the names, locations, and dates of the photographed. The state-issued clothing of the subjects, however, reveal that the photos ­were taken at penal institutions. Another feature is the lack of obvious signs of incarceration. Only one photo­graph has information that identifies its subject as being incarcerated. In this image, a man stands solo in front of a landscape backdrop. “CDCR Prisoner” (“CDCR” stands for California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) is printed in bold yellow letters on his pants. In another photo­graph, a white man with shaven head stands topless, displaying the tattoos that cover his chest and arms. He smiles at the camera; ­behind him is the serene image of a beach in soft focus. In yet another, two men wearing caps (one a kufi and the other a skullcap) pose in front of a landscape backdrop. Lush grass and a serene stream

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David Adler, Marlo, Prisoner Fantasies: Photos from the Inside, 2007–2012.

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form the center of the backdrop, and autumnal trees frame the corners. Both men wear gray sweat suits. One stands angled; the other f­ aces the camera boldly, holding his left fist at his chin and his right arm across his chest. Tattoos run along his forearms. They gaze at the camera. In another, a ­woman identified as Marlo, wearing a tan uniform and white sneakers, poses against a colorful backdrop. One hand rests on her hip, the other leans against her thigh. She smiles and tilts her head forward. The date of the photo­graph—29 July 2007—­appears in the bottom corner, a sign of the use of digital photography.8 Digital technology has transformed the quality and proliferation of prison studio photos. Prior to the early 2000s, most such photos ­were taken with Polaroid cameras. A single token purchased one shot only. The Polaroid images ­were typically wide shots that encompassed the backdrop and all sitters, with details hard to decipher. By and large, the photog­raphers and the artists who designed and painted the backdrops remain unidentified, or, more precisely, cannot be easily identified, given the closed systems of prisons. Backdrops in portrait photography tend to be read as signs of aspiration, futurity, and fantasy-­as-­play. Backdrops are part of the history of photography, having emerged shortly ­after the advent of the technology.9 Artist and writer Avon Neal writes, “As folk art the photographer’s painted backdrop is an often overlooked but nevertheless significant example of vernacular painting. Created primarily by self-­taught artisans, its large-­scale imagery is designed to dominate the photographer’s workspace. One of the fascinating aspects of photographing with a painted background is the transforming blend of magic and real­ity that makes the subject indistinguishable from the painting, an illusion that is confirmed by the photo­graph itself.”10 Neal discusses how backdrops alter p ­ eople’s memories of events and locations, pointing to how the backdrop serves as an index of sorts, turning the photo­graph into a document of an event with symbolic, material, and historic registers (e.g., a ­family posing in front of a backdrop of the ­Grand Canyon at a local fair and ­later remembering the photo­graph as a document of a trip to the landmark). Prison backdrops denote specific visits from relatives, even as they alter the memory and experience of the visit. They also mark how the incarcerated and the

nonincarcerated experience time differently. In one of my f­amily pictures, Allen, my m ­ other Eleanor, and his m ­ other (my aunt Sharon) pose for the vacation that has yet to happen. The ­women stand on each side of him as he hugs them tightly. He peers into the camera with a slight smile. My m ­ other and aunt smile and pose casually. The backdrop portrays a sun setting over the sea from the vantage point of someone on a boat. On initial glance, the image appears to have been taken on a cruise ship. It is Allen’s prison blues, property of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, that reveals the context. ­Every time I look at the photo­ graph, I know that it was taken in prison, but I also have to tell myself that Allen, eigh­teen years into his sentence at that point, had not taken a vacation with his ­family as an adult. He had never watched the sunset from aboard a ship with relatives by his side. Other common references in prison backdrops are symbols of light—­ lighthouses, the sun, light reflected on ­water, rays entering through win­dows and prison bars. One of the most remarkable backdrops that I have personally observed was a painting, made in the photorealist tradition, of a wall of glass bricks in which each brick seemed to reflect light into the prison visiting room. It was a study of how light refracts, Sharon, Allen, and Eleanor, 2007. making it appear as if the sun’s rays ­were penetrating through the prison’s architecture. Before posing with Allen and me for our photo­graph, Nicole, Allen, and Sharon, August 2012. Aunt Sharon touched the backdrop and said, “Wow! It looks so real. I mean the light coming in.” According to Arjun Appadurai, backdrops locate photo­graphs within public discourse at a historic moment and within a geographic or national context. Considering the role of photography as a mode of visualizing modernity in early twentieth-­century India, he writes, “All backdrops thus direct the viewer’s attention outwards from the foregrounded subject of the photo­graph to a location represented in it and to the discourse in which the photo­graph is located, to which it is a potential contributor. T ­ hese wider discourses, ­because they are inflected by a medium which is itself

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‘realistic’ in peculiar ways, has a complex relationship to the power relations implicit in photography, wherever cultural ‘­others’ are concerned.”11 Appadurai distinguishes between two backdrops that shape most posed portraits: the vis­ib ­ le backdrop, which foregrounds the h ­ uman subjects, and the invisible backdrop, which “is the context that shapes the power of the photographer and the wider set of practices of observation and cata­loging from which he or she emerges.”12 Within carceral settings, power and surveillance are not invisible backdrops but rather are the lens through which the viewer observes the prisoner posing in state-­issued clothing against a fantasy backdrop. Alyse Emdur’s Prison Landscapes is a collection of over one hundred prison backdrops and portraits of incarcerated ­people posing in front of them. Emdur’s interest in prison backdrops emerges from her ­family’s visits to see her older b ­ rother in prison, which occurred throughout much of her childhood. Over the course of several years, Emdur photographed painted backdrops in prisons and corresponded with incarcerated ­people, asking them to share images of themselves in front of prison backdrops. Prison Landscapes displays a wide range of backdrop styles and genres from prisons across the country. Next to the images appear statements from incarcerated ­people. Their comments reveal painful and vexed relationships to the backdrops, which are seen as an attempt to mitigate or hide the brutality of being a captive subject. Antoine Ealy, an incarcerated man at Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Florida, states, “I think the murals are supposed to represent illusions. Even if I pretended that I was someplace ­else, real­ity would not let that moment last long. I’m always aware of where I’m at. The illusion serves as an escape for some but for me, it is only a prop to make me feel like I should be happy in a place where everyday [sic] is sad.” Greg Chambers, who is ­housed in Minnesota Correctional Fa­cil­i­ty, writes, “Greetings Amer­i­ca, When I struck a pose I was thinking, how do I pose while incarcerated? I definitely ­didn’t want to smile, ­because I ­didn’t want ­people to think I was okay with where I’m at. Basically I just took pictures to let my loved ones know I was alright.”13 Chambers’s words are perhaps the most lucid statement of the complicated relationship between incarcerated p ­ eople and the visual culture of mass incarceration. How do incarcerated people use the l­imited resources they have available to assert their presence and to illustrate their many attachments to a

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multifarious network of sociality and intimacy while refusing to succumb to state narratives that justify their criminalization through notions of penality or rehabilitation?

Emotional ­Labor and F ­ amily Intimacy across Carceral Geographies Prison studio photos reflect the power of the carceral state and si­mul­ta­neously the strategies of t­hose most impacted by carcerality to forge relations and attachments that extend beyond punitive governance. They circulate within the context of relationships of love, kinship, and familial attachment across carceral geographies. While they tend to replicate the composition of traditional ­family portraits, in which a male patriarch—­often the incarcerated—­stands at the center, they add complexity and layered emotional registers to the long and voluminous tradition of ­family photography, especially within black kinship structures. Tina Campt writes that f­amily photo­graphs among black p ­ eople 14 are “sites of articulation and aspiration” (Campt’s emphasis). Focusing on sets of photo­graphs instead of single images, she analyzes “the world of image-­making as a collective and relational practice of enunciation. Why does a community make certain kinds of photo­graphs? . . . ​And what makes such photo­graphs significant, not only for what they show but also for what we see in them, specifically, what registers affectively in and through them at other sensory registers?”15 The collective and relational possibilities of prison studio photos are heightened by the foreground and backdrop of the carceral state. Such images document how prisons attempt to regulate families, intimate attachments, and feelings of love, longing, and belonging, as the captive and captured subjects—­the incarcerated individuals and their loved ones—­engage the photographic practice as evidence of relations that are ­shaped by but not bound by the power of the state. The ­family photo­graph is often discussed in anecdotal terms: “Oh, this is when we vacationed in . . . ,” or “This is when we traveled to. . . .” Yet the ­family photo­graph staged in prison is one that marks another f­ amily narrative of dreams deferred, of loss and captivity, of the criminal stigma, and of a temporal coming together

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­ nder the strictures of carcerality. The prison photo­graph is pro­cessed and circuu lated through the lens of the penal institution. This visual and haptic artifact documents the state’s continued restructuring and disarticulation of black, Latino, indigenous, and poor white families. Photo­graphs from the visiting room of prisons complicate the documentation of f­ amily life for many who are or whose relatives are ­under the jurisdiction of correctional authorities. In them, the f­ ree and unfree pose together in front of fantasy backdrops; they mark time together. The production and circulation of ­these images can be modes of touching on multiple levels. The haptic as a mode of touching refers to the materiality of the photo­graph as an object, and to its affective power to produce feelings. In prison portraits, the intimate gaze of the sitter and the intended audience can communicate across prison walls sensory experiences of feeling and touching that challenge the structural rigidity of carcerality and yet can only happen through the institution itself. Prison studio photos reflect gender roles in normative f­ amily structures. They often portray tender and demonstrative acts between incarcerated men and their ­mothers, ­sisters, aunts, grand­mothers, wives, lovers, and female friends—­women and girls who support them on many levels (through caring for their dependents, visits to prison, monetary support, accepting collect calls, and managing their relations and responsibilities outside of prison). As studies like Megan Comfort’s ­Doing Time Together examine, the responsibility for maintaining ­family and intimate bonds with incarcerated loved ones—­whether the incarcerated are men or ­women—­rests primarily on the w ­ omen. Given that an estimated 93 ­percent of US prisoners are categorized as male, the gendered dynamics of maintaining ­family and social bonds are impor­tant to note as evidence of how the carceral state burdens often poor and working-­class Latina, Native American, and black ­women with maintaining domestic life and supporting the imprisoned in the era of mass incarceration.16 Less attention has been paid to how incarcerated men l­abor to love and to perform familial notions of belonging through writing letters, sending art and photo­ graphs, and demonstrating an emotional attentiveness not commonly expressed in heteronormative relations outside of carceral structures. For example, on the back of a prison studio photo, one of my male relatives wrote to me, “I love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.” In a portrait that Allen com-

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missioned for Valentine’s Day as a gift to several ­women in our ­family, he stands in front of a celestial backdrop of billowy clouds and blue sky with a cupid hovering in the upper edges. A large red heart sits upright on a pedestal at the same height as Allen’s head. Allen’s hair, which typically he wears short or in braids, is “lorded”—­a soft yet hypermasculine style taken from urban street culture. Allen wears a crucifix necklace, an adornment rarely seen in his photo­graphs. He smiles slightly and clenches his fists. He sports an A-­frame tank shirt and blue sweat pants—­a version of his state-issued clothing that is less marked with signs of incarceration. It is a carefully manicured pre­sen­ta­tion of self, using the l­imited resources available to him in prison, one that conveys gendered and familiar notions of tenderness and strength. It is a conscious and deliberate act of staging love and affection and a practice of belonging with his loved ones on the outside. One of the most challenging—­and yet difficult to document—­aspects of prison life is the management of emotions and expectations between incarcerated ­people and their loved ones. Moving beyond conventional notions of l­abor, feminist so- Allen, Valentine’s Day ciologists and theorists, such as Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, have portrait, date unknown. recently examined how intimate and emotional l­abor are deployed in par­tic­u­lar sites and practices by vari­ous categories of ­women. Boris and Parreñas write, “Intimate ­labor involves tending to the intimate needs of individuals inside and outside their home. Our intimate needs would include not just sexual gratification but also bodily upkeep, care for loved ones, creating and sustaining social and emotional ties, and health and hygiene maintenance.”17 Their analy­sis grows out of reproductive-­ labor studies and Arlie Hochschild’s influential research on emotional ­labor among ­women in specific employment sectors. Hochschild writes that emotional “­labor requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in ­others.” She distinguishes this “management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display” from “emotion work or emotion management to refer to ­these same acts done in a private context where they have use value” (Hochschild’s emphasis).18 Prison photography documents an intimate and emotional (unpaid) ­labor that is tethered, at a cost to t­hose photographed, to reproductive ­labor among imprisoned people and their loved ones. In order to access

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t­hese ser­vices, ­family members and visitors must come with large quantities of quarters at some prison sites, or must load money onto vending cards that they purchase from prison vendors prior to entering visiting rooms. Such seemingly small acts accumulate into expensive endeavors when one also considers the costs of getting to and from carceral institutions that are often located hours away from where the relatives live. Prison abolition scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, in her study of the grassroots organ­ization ­Mothers Reclaiming Our C ­ hildren, examines how ­mothers and w ­ omen of incarcerated relatives “transformed their caregiving or reproductive l­abor into activism, which then expanded into the greater proj­ect to reclaim all c­hildren, regardless of race, age, residence, or alleged crime.”19 Her analy­sis of caregiving and reproductive ­labor provides insight into how prison studio photos visualize forms of emotional l­abor inasmuch as they document racial capitalism and the work of marginalized ­people to maintain relations ­under carcerality. ­These photo­graphs rely on rehearsed, deliberate, and laborious acts of conveying emotional investment for the incarcerated and nonincarcerated. While the emotional l­abor of staying connected through the carceral state has been understood as part of the expansive work of the gendered l­abor of ­women, long-­term incarceration can produce shifts in the practices of care and emotional ­labor between incarcerated men and the ­women and girls in their lives.20 What has gone overlooked and underresearched is the emotional investment of incarcerated men in staying involved and connected with ­family and loved ones on the outside. Both my cousins Allen and De’Andre have expressed how difficult they find it to manage emotions and stay calm before a f­ amily visit. The anticipation and anxiety can cause sleepless nights and lead to altercations with other incarcerated men or prison staff, which can result in the revocation of ­family visits. The practice and toll of emotional l­abor can also be observed through the regulation of intimacy that takes place during visits. Prison regulates intimacy in the most basic ways, making the touch of a loved one a rare experience that can be purchased during a photo shoot in the visiting room. The visiting room of a prison serves as one of the sites where certain intimate acts are allowed, yet ­those acts can only be performed in full display of other incarcerated p ­ eople, their visitors, and prison staff. Prisons have long and strict rules about physical contact and conduct during visits that vary from state to state and are based on the security level of the institution and the incarcerated. Typically, the prisoner ­faces the guard’s

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booth, while visitors sit with their backs to the guard. They also have harsh and punitive dress codes for female visitors. Dress code regulations are largely targeted at ­women and frame them as sexual provocateurs. Part of the dress code for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction reads: Inappropriate attire includes, but is not ­limited to: See-­through clothing of any kind. Tops or dresses that expose the midriff or have open backs or open sides (such as any sleeveless clothing such as halter tops, tube tops, cropped tops, tank tops, and muscle shirts). • Low-­cut clothing cut in a manner that exposes the chest. • Any clothing that inappropriately exposes undergarments. • Skirts, dresses, shorts, skorts, or culottes with the hem or slit above the mid-­knee. • Wrap-­around skirts / dresses or break-­away type pants.21 • •

­ omen are routinely scrutinized, shamed, and denied visits b W ­ ecause they are told that their bodies and clothing do not meet the requirements. Once, when I was visiting De’Andre, a white female prison guard accused me of wearing a see-­ through shirt—­when I had on a button-­down white dress shirt. Speaking in a threatening tone, she told me that she had made a note in my visit rec­ord and that my visiting privileges would be revoked if I had another dress code violation. ­Women visiting incarcerated relatives have been subject to groping, strip searches, and cavity checks.22 Posing for photo­graphs is one of the few opportunities when displays of affection and physical contact are allowed. When pictures are being taken, the rules are softened. For one, it is often the only time when incarcerated ­people and their visitors can walk together. The seemingly normal act of walking together becomes a special and cherished occasion in a prison: not only is movement allowed, but the bodies of loved ones get to occupy space differently than they do in the stationary seating areas. Hugs, kisses, and handholding, while staged for the camera’s lens, afford moments when loved ones can momentarily experience bodily contact and other modes of recognition. ­These are forms of public intimacy

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that all who are pre­sent in the visiting room—­prison staff, the incarcerated, and visitors—­may witness. In theorizing the ways in which intimacies are regulated by the state, theorist Lauren Berlant writes: How can we think about the ways attachments make ­people public, producing transpersonal identities and subjectivities, when ­those attachments come from within spaces as varied as ­those of domestic intimacy, state policy, and mass-­mediated experiences of intensely disruptive crises? And what have t­ hese formative encounters to do with the effects of other, less institutionalized events, which might take place on the street, on the phone, in fantasy, at work, but rarely register as anything but residue? Intimacy names the enigma of this range of attachments, and more; and it poses a question of scale that links the instability of individual lives to the trajectories of the collective.23

Within the context of carceral institutions, the regulation of intimacy is magnified. In fact, one of the conditions of being in prison is the ways in which forms of intimacy and privacy are unavailable. Each photo­graph purchased extends the time and contact between the incarcerated person and their nonincarcerated loved ones. The photo­graphs also capture the work necessary to maintain connection and facilitate physical and emotional expression in carceral spaces. Smiling, hugging, and performing a sense of togetherness are deliberate and labored activities when carcerality and strictures of “­doing time” mark ­these photographic moments as both fleeting and enduring. The makeshift photo studio at Ross Correctional Institution in Ohio consists of a backdrop painted by incarcerated artists and a wooden park bench. In late September 2012, I was t­ here with my cousin Eric, visiting his son De’Andre, who at twenty-­three years old had been in an adult prison for more than six years. At the time of our visit, he had six years left of his minimum sentence. Eric was visibly uncomfortable. De’Andre had recently been transferred to the closed, maximum-­security fa­cil­i­ty, where the majority of incarcerated men are in lockdown for twenty-­three hours a day. De’Andre had written to both of us, depressed

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and worried about his safety. He had not had a visitor in over a year. Being h ­ oused in this fa­cil­i­ty was the biggest challenge he had endured since being incarcerated. As Eric and I wait in the visiting room for De’Andre, Eric fidgets in the visitor’s seat. He turns to me and tells me that the last time he was at Ross was fifteen years ago, when he was incarcerated and sitting on the other side. De’Andre had been in elementary school at the time. On this Saturday after­noon, the photographic backdrop is of an autumnal setting sun. The sky is a pale shade of pink, and centered at the top of the landscape is a large, warm yellow sun. The outer ring of the sun bleeds into the pink and touches the edge of the lone tree on the horizon. The tree, leafless, stands majestic, the tips of its branches extending above the sun’s rays. It is one of the sparest backdrops I have seen and is unusual in its color scheme. The photography studio is right next to the guard’s desk and close to the visitor’s entrance. I speak briefly to the shift photographer while he sets up a shot; communication between photographer and visitors is not officially allowed, but the guard does not seem to mind. The photographer tells me that he learned to take pictures in prison; he had never given photography much consideration when he was on the outside, he says. The visiting-­room experience in general feels more casual and less regulated than it does in most prisons I have visited, and yet this is one of the most restrictive institutions, known for incarcerating ­people labeled as violent felons or who have disciplinary rec­ords at other penal institutions. Photo shoots in prison tend to be quick and cursory. The photographer is careful not to spend much time talking with his sitters for fear of scrutiny by the guards, but t­ oday the shoots last longer, and ­those who are posing linger on the park bench and chat with each other. Ahead of us, a young Latino ­couple spends considerable time in the studio, staging several images. The photographer talks to them as he casually sets up each shot. He tells the incarcerated man to turn slightly ­toward the camera, as his female visitor wraps her arm around his waist. The guard at the desk, less than two feet away, leans forward and watches with mild interest. The photographer appears relaxed and in command. At one point, he turns and chats with the guard. The c­ ouple sits on the bench hugging each other tightly as several images are taken. In the final pose, they embrace and kiss for an extended period. It is an open-­mouth kiss. I have never seen this in my thirty

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Eric, De’Andre, and Nicole, September 2012.

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years of visiting prisons. The guard says nothing. The photographer continues to click away. ­After the ­couple finishes their shoot, they walk back to the seating area. The photographer tells us we are next. De’Andre, Eric, and I take two pictures. In one, De’Andre is in the center. Eric is on his right and I am on his left. For the second picture, Eric says that De’Andre and I should take one together. De’Andre likes this idea; he has had very l­ ittle contact with ­women in six years. He squeezes me much tighter than I expect when the photographer asks us if we are ready. For our second picture, the photographer takes a few shots without our asking. He lets us choose the one we like best. ­After the photo shoot, De’Andre turns morose. He complains that his ­father and I are not paying enough attention to him. He sits quietly, looking down at his lap. He interrupts our conversation, and I know that he wants more than we can give him h ­ ere and now. I tell him what I have been thinking for a while, that ­there is only so much that we can do to support him, that life is also hard on the outside. I tell him that ­every time he writes, it ­can’t be to make a request of me. It all feels so burdensome. He wants to leave with us. He wants to know that we ­won’t leave him h ­ ere. De’Andre starts to cry, long and hard. His f­ ather breaks the rule that keeps the incarcerated on one side of the t­able and visitors on the other. Eric hugs De’Andre and cries too. Eric tells his son that he is always t­here for him, that De’Andre is never a burden. I stand nearby, watching them and watching the guard watch us. My last visit to De’Andre in prison was on 3 July 2015. I was in Ohio for our f­amily reunion and had scheduled time to spend with him. By then, he had been moved to a lower-­ security prison closer to home. He had reconnected with his junior-­ high sweetheart, Samisha, who visited him regularly and provided im­mense support. They w ­ ere making plans for ­after his release. He talked about enjoying his prison job training ser­vice dogs for ­people who need assistance. We posed in front of a large, plush American flag. I asked the prison guard if the flag had been made t­here. He said that it had been ordered

from a vendor for the In­de­pen­dence Day holiday. A ­couple of months ­after that visit, Samisha helped De’Andre file a special appeal to have his sentence reviewed, and on 10 September 2015, he was released from prison, to the surprise and absolute joy of our entire ­family.

Black ­Family Narratives and Pictorial Genealogies I have this photographic collection of Allen and De’Andre aging, maturing, changing in prison. The images of Allen, almost Nicole and De’Andre, twenty years into his life sentence, accumulate, showing him transform from an July 2015. angry and scared teenager, to a depressed man in his twenties, to a resigned but hopeful man in his late thirties, anticipating each time he goes before the parole board that he ­will be released. We, on the outside, also age in ­these images. In one of Allen’s favorite photo­ graphs, all nine of my grand­mother’s ­daughters, now in their m ­ iddle ages, laugh and smile in a gesture of togetherness. This was taken the first Thanksgiving ­after my grand­mother’s passing, in 2008. Across the photo­graph, Allen’s ­mother has written, “The ladies that love you! Mom loves you the most! J” ­These pictures of our relatives in prison are impor­tant for the f­amily members waiting on the other side of the prison walls. They are something to hold on to between prison visits, or during the long wait for the ­family member to return home, if that ever happens. Seeing an image of the incarcerated loved one brings reassurance to the ­family that their child, loved one, parent, spouse, s­ ister, lover, or friend is being cared for, like when De’Andre sent me a portrait of himself a ­couple of months ­after he had had surgery to remove a cancerous growth on his forehead. He was seventeen and had just been transferred to an adult prison. He received surgery by prison medical staff without any f­ amily being pre­sent or even being notified that he was undergoing surgery. ­These portraits assure us that our incarcerated relatives are alive and managing, but they cannot reveal what life is like on a daily basis for our loved ones serving

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Fleetwood daughters, November 2008.

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time. ­After one visit to see Allen, my grand­mother was so unsettled that she could not return for many years. Allen had been in solitary confinement for weeks. When they met him in the visiting room, he was unshaven, fidgeting, and talking unclearly. He was unable to make eye contact; they cut the visit short. It was too unbearable. They did not take a picture that time. When my grand­mother fi­nally calmed enough to visit him again—­several years ­after that incident—it would be her last time seeing him. Suffering from dementia and advanced diabetes, she was unable to drive. She took the two-­hour drive to the prison and back with Allen’s ­mother, one of her oldest ­daughters. On their way home, my grand­mother held on to the pictures from the visit. At one point, according to Aunt Sharon, Grandma looked at them and said to her, “I see you. And Allen looks good, but who is that old ­ woman standing next to Allen?” Sharon said, “That’s you, Momma.” They drove the rest of the way home in silence. ­After years of struggling with anger, shame, guilt, and depression about the fact that Allen received a life sentence at such a young age—it was his first time being arrested and convicted of any crime, but the judge said that he was ­going to make an example of Allen so that other boys in our community would “stay in line”—­his ­mother and s­ ister worked hard to incorporate him into their daily lives. His name came up with the frequency of one who shared home with them. Their 2011 holiday card was evidence of this commitment. The photo­ graph, staged in prison against an idyllic winter backdrop, is thickly layered with meaning as it circulates through many locations and temporalities. Allen is positioned as the central male figure, customary of ­ family portraiture, and the ­ women—­ his ­ niece, mother, daughter, and sister—­stand at his sides and lean in t­oward him. The prison portrait has been incorporated into another narrative and way of marking time: the holiday greeting card. The message on the card reads, “Have a blessed & prosperous 2011. Love,

Sharon, Cassandra, Allen, Tanasha, & Mariah.” Each ­family member listed in order of age, marking ­family lineage. ­There is one image of Allen that unsettles me. He poses with his ­mother, my m ­ other, and me during a visit in June  2009. My m ­ other and I ­were in town to celebrate the graduation of three younger cousins from high school, a milestone that Allen did not accomplish. In this medium-­range shot, we stand close to him. He hugs my ­mother and Winter holiday greeting me tightly on each side of him. Aunt Sharon leans in, and we wrap our arms card, 2011. around each other’s waists. The w ­ omen, all three of us, smile at the photographer. Our eyes are focused on the moment at hand, documenting our visit, a temporary break in Allen’s routine, a moment of connectedness. Allen’s eyes, his half smile, the creases around his mouth disturb me. His features remind me of ­those of our ­uncle David, our ­mothers’ oldest b ­ rother, who spent a period in prison from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. ­After his release, U ­ ncle David spent the next ­couple of de­cades strung out on crack. He died in May 2011, shriveled on a hospice bed and weighing less than a hundred pounds. The doctors said that his condition arose from a combination of drug abuse and exposure to Agent Orange during his two tours of duty in Vietnam. The doctors said that they had seen other black men his age die in a similar manner. Allen’s face also reminds me of Sherman Fleetwood Se­nior, our grand­father, who died at the age of fifty-­four from the layered structures of racism and class oppression endemic in Midwestern steel-­mill communities: a combination of alcoholism, cancer, and toxic fumes from years of working double shifts in the mill to support his wife and eleven ­children. The steel mill where he worked is up the road from the first prison where Allen was located. I want to erase ­these connections from his face. I want to alter the image—to paint his face over with a cold stare, a mischievous grin, something other than that look of resignation, of being caught up in a narrative that is bigger than the self.

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​ leanor, Allen, Nicole, and E Sharon, June 2009.

To fight the sense of helplessness and the feelings of hopelessness that my ­family carries, I rely on the anecdote and I touch another image from a visit to Allen. I use it to shake loose the stranglehold of this unrelenting narrative, so structurally determined. I zoom in on the staging of the moment, the setup and per­for­mance that the photographer w ­ ill direct and capture. We walk over to the backdrop—­a tropical forest with light radiating from above. It is the only time we move together in the same direction. It feels good to walk next to Allen, even if only momentarily. The emotions are heightened; every­one turns playful before the picture is taken. As we wait for the photographer to set up, Allen punches my bicep playfully. He calls me Boss Hogg, a reference to my childhood nickname—­ rightfully earned for being a l­ittle dictator over my younger cousins. As we find our position and move into our poses, I retort, “I’ll always be your big cousin. I’ll always be older than you.” We squeeze in closely, arms wrapped around each other’s backs and waists. In a few seconds, the photo shoot is over. We all quiet down and stand t­ here for a moment before walking back to the seating area, where he ­will be on one side and we on the other. On our way back, Allen hugs me

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tightly; the money that we pay for each image buys us time to have physical contact. Allen sneaks a whisper to me, “I love you so much, Niki.” Then he sits on his side, facing the guard’s booth, and we wait, knowing that at any moment the guard can announce that our visit is over. On 2 February 2015, Allen was released from an Ohio prison ­after serving almost twenty-­one years. He walked out of the fa­cil­it­y with his ­mother and ­sister accompanying him. Once they reached the f­ amily car they took a group selfie. It was his first photo­graph outside of prison. In the weeks a­ fter his release, Allen used the smartphone that his ­mother purchased for him to take digital images of many of the photo­graphs that his relatives had sent him over the past two de­cades. He sent the digital photo­graphs to us in text messages and emails with notes of love and playful emoticons. Many of the images that he returned ­were of photo­ graphs that we had forgotten about. Allen had archived them. In many re­spects, Sandy, Eleanor, Allen, he has become the keeper of our ­family’s photographic rec­ord. Yvonne, Yvette, and Nicole, One of the photo­graphs from his archives that continues to haunt me was taken August 2001. outside of prison. He had sent it home before his release. In the photo, taken sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, my m ­ other, in jean overalls, leans against a fence at a local park in our hometown. She has deliberately turned her body away from the camera. She stands next to our cousin Janet and another ­woman in a visor whose name I do not know. I, too, am there if in fact the ­little girl whose ponytail appears at the end of the line of bodies is me. It must be me. It must be; I was never more than a few feet away from my mother. I love this photo­graph because it is a mystery to me; so is my ­mother ­here. She looks very dif­fer­ent than how she appears in other photos from my childhood. I ­don’t know who photographed it. I know he’s a man and that my m ­ other ­doesn’t like him by her posture and unwillingness to smile. Janet flirts a bit with him. My ­mother’s friend in the visor follows my ­mother’s cue. This unremarkable photo­graph reappeared in 2009 when Allen sent it home a­ fter it had made its way to a prison in Ohio. It had circulated among prisoners; incarcerated p ­ eople barter and trade in images. My cousin Allen had come across the photo in the collection of an old-­ timer, a man who had been in prison for many de­cades. The man ­wasn’t

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sure how he had acquired it. He ­wasn’t familiar with anyone in it or where it had been taken. He told Allen that he liked it ­because it was a photo of beautiful ­women with ­children. It reminded him of home. Allen took the photo and mailed it home. When Allen sent this photo, I thought of him in prison—­perhaps for life—­ trying to assert himself as a patriarch of the f­ amily line. But now, I imagine that he saw my ­mother’s unwillingness to participate in the photographic capture, and my hiding in the wings. He understands what l­ittle control we had over the camera at that instant and enacts his agency to disrupt its circulation. He understands what it is like to be arrested by photographic capture and to be held captive by an image that he cannot shake loose. With this photo­graph of us, he was able to disrupt its circulation by taking it out of prison and sending it back home, though he was held captive.

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CONCLUSION

Throughout this book I have emphasized how incarcerated artists use art as a relational practice to forge community with other incarcerated ­people, to communicate with nonincarcerated allies and the public, to connect with relatives and loved ones, and to cultivate subject positions that cannot be eviscerated or fully managed by the carceral state. T ­ hese practices, I have argued, are forms of carceral aesthetics—­art-­making u ­ nder penal captivity. I have also tried to convey how nonincarcerated artists, allies, and activists are involved in carceral aesthetics, given the expansive reach that the carceral state has on life and culture in the modern era. Broadly, ­these vari­ous archives of art emerging out of or about the carceral state reflect how the prison industrial complex shapes countless aspects of life for black, indigenous, Latino, and immigrant people and poor people of all races. Mass imprisonment, as Kelly Lytle Hernández notes, is fundamentally about the dispossession, containment, and elimination of targeted populations by the state.1 Relatedly, Joy James theorizes the reach of the carceral state as that of “the penal landscape that is passing for a homeland.”2 But she also cautions that saying the prison is everywhere should not be used by the nonincarcerated to “dispossess the imprisoned” of “the meanings and narratives of their confinement, the meanings and narratives of their re­sis­tance to repression, the meanings and narratives of their lives.”3 Instead she urges a more rigorous and informed interrogation, a vigilant

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and ongoing inquiry, about how the scale and reach of carceral geographies shape our notions of freedom, and how penal democracy functions through confining masses of the dispossessed and t­ hose deemed threats to the state. Dispossession and the reor­ga­niz­ing of life through mass imprisonment reconstitute what is home in a penal democracy. Prison as an institution is fundamentally meant to produce in the incarcerated the felt sense, the constant experience, of being punished by being removed from all that we associate with home. The prison as architecture, institution, and structural relations removes subjects from both the public and the domestic sphere—­home space and home life. Carcerality extends beyond prison walls into other spaces through forms of continued punishment and surveillance, such as h ­ ouse arrest and parole supervision. The truism among the incarcerated, repeated often but never losing its value, is not to make prison one’s home, and more importantly, not to die t­ here. But the real­ity is that of the more than two million incarcerated p ­ eople in US jails and prisons, hundreds of thousands are serving long-­term sentences. They are ­housed for years and de­cades in buildings that are created to be the antithesis of the comforts or familiarity of domestic dwellings, of home. But what is home for the nonincarcerated in the carceral state? What is home when the architecture of public housing mirrors carceral facilities, when the same social and physical engineers who design prisons also build schools and other public institutions? Where is the body at home in the carceral archipelago? Where can the body rest and be ­free? In C.R.E.A.M., interdisciplinary artist and writer Sable Elyse Smith explores dispossession, carceral geographies, and home u ­ nder the vio­lence of racial capitalism. The public sculpture, suspended over the High Line Park in New York City, consists of neon lights that flash the words, “Iron, Wood, Land.” The sign hangs above the neighborhood of Chelsea, and the neon radiates along the ave­nues where art galleries now occupy what used to be manufacturing buildings. The title comes from a rap song by the Wu-­Tang Clan, and the acronym stands for “cash rules every­thing around me,” a commentary on racial capitalism undergirding systems of exploitation, extraction, and exclusion. Using a font style and scale that gesture t­ oward the iconic Hollywood sign, the words in Smith’s flashing sign conjoin the name of Ironwood State Prison in California with “Hollywoodland,” which was “the segregated real estate development that was advertised by the original sign.”4

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Employing vari­ous media and working across image, sound, text, and per­for­ mance, Smith explores the carceral state primarily through its impact on the body and subjectivity. Having spent much of her life in prisons visiting her ­father, who has been incarcerated since she was ten, she employs in her art a relational aesthetic that highlights both the disruption that prison ­causes for black ­family life and social identity, and the intimacies of gendered and sexual formation in the diaphanous and highly regulative lenses of carceral visuality. Art makes vis­i­ble and legible her f­ather’s presence and absence. As one critic comments, Smith’s ­father serves as a muse and a specter in much of her art.5 I would also add that he is her collaborator; penal m ­ atter—­letters, images, and other objects and ephemera from prison—­become the source material in much of her experimentation. It is not only through ­these objects that her ­father’s presence is experienced; she curates an affective space that she and her ­father occupy, using snippets of sound and video clandestinely recorded of her ­father in prison and interspersing them in dream-­like settings that are more emotive than geographic or physical. Like many of the incarcerated artists featured in previous chapters, Smith turns penal ­matter into art, such as BACKBEND, a large geometric sculpture made out of prison visiting-­room t­ ables and benches. Prior to her ­father’s arrest and conviction, Smith and her parents lived as fugitives, moving from state to state, though she was unaware of their status. In this regard, she was both fugitive and captive, living a life in which the norm included moving in the ­middle of the night, leaving a school without notice, and being unable to say good-­bye to friends. For ­those formative years, Smith had no solid sense of home, how long they lived in any place, or how many schools she attended. ­After her ­father was captured and sentenced to life in California, she and her

Sable Elyse Smith, C.R.E.A.M., 2018. Part of Agora, a High Line Commission. On view April 2018–­March 2019.

conclusion

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Sable Elyse Smith, BACKBEND, 2019. Powder-­coated aluminum, 56 × 144 × 68 inches. Installation view, Art Basel.

­ other settled in Los Angeles. Her m m ­ other eventually cut off contact with her ­father and remarried. Smith continued to visit her ­father and still does so to this day, almost twenty-­five years ­later, although now she lives on the East Coast. Her art reveals the limitations of words and cohesive narrative; instead, it foregrounds distance, fragmentation, and the trauma of intimacy and black ­family life u ­ nder the carceral state. In the series DisPlace (2015)—as in this place, as in displacement, as in diss this place—­a frame hangs precariously on the gallery wall in anticipation of its eventual fall. Out has tumbled what it once held. We partially see an aerial photo­graph, collapsed on the floor, of a California prison. The blue of the sky is most vis­i­ble as the grey, beige, and light browns of the sprawling prison buildings and yards merge into the gallery’s concrete floor. In one of t­ hese facilities, confined to a cell, her ­father w ­ ill spend the rest of his life. Influenced by her childhood and her fragmented encounters with her ­father that ­were mediated through fugitivity, prison visiting rooms, and supervised phone conversations, Smith states that fragmentation is one of the key features of her practice: It’s a technique or tool that I’m always employing in writing, in the videos, in objects. It’s always about the fragment. I also think it’s ­because my life is like all t­hese ­little fragments, like t­hese unfinished stories, or bits that just have to be truncated ­because, like, “Oh, we ­can’t talk about that,” or “I ­don’t know what’s happening over ­there,” or “Now ­we’re just ­going to move in the m ­ iddle of the night.” So the stories have actually been fragmented.6

And ­Here Is a List of Names (2016) is a public work installed as part of the Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park, in Queens, New York. Smith centers the fragmentation of identity and the narratives that “we c­ an’t talk about,” which are endemic to the isolation and psychic toll that carcerality produces. The sculpture consists of a flashing signboard that stands over six feet tall and has a pointed arrow, like the ones that provide information about route

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changes and road detours. On one side is a fragmented photo­graph, and on the other is text that reads, “And maybe I want to push / language to a breaking point / and the point where it breaks / leaves just our bodies leaking.” The photo­graph is distorted. About it, Smith says: So you ­can’t make out the identities of the individuals, but it’s implied, or at least you can sort of make out what looks like an older black male figure and a younger black person. Maybe they have some kind of familial or intimate relationship. It’s sort of distorted; so the ­faces are obscured a bit. It’s an image of me and my ­father right in front of one of the prison visiting room murals. I was eleven years old when that photo was taken.7

The signboard is illuminated so that as the day passes into night, the following text, located u ­ nder the photo­graph, emerges: “Washing over a taut stretch.” Smith envisions the text as “a continuation of the first phrase, but since they are sort of separated and it’s kind of hidden, depending on the time of day to view it, it could be viewed or taken in as something separate.”8 The location of And H ­ ere Is a List of Names is symbolic and material. The sculpture park is located near Astoria Houses, a housing proj­ect where Smith has collaborated with some of the young residents on art about criminalization and mass incarceration. She wanted her piece to be a work that drew neighbors into the park, one that crossed the color and class line that separates low-­income housing residents from art sites in many cities. Even if residents d ­ on’t enter the park, the work is at a height that they can still see it as they walk down one of the main corridors between the housing complex and the art park. Smith, like many artists engaged in carceral aesthetics, considers the relationship between color and imprisonment, what I call penal hues. They are the colors that emerge over the course of visits to her f­ ather; they are linked to f­ amily memories and to how prisons fragment and dislocate black kinship structures. Like

Sable Elyse Smith, Avenal, from the series DisPlace, 2015. Digital c-­print, 30 × 40 inches.

conclusion

25 9

Sable Elyse Smith, And ­Here Is a List of Names, 2016. Illuminated flashing-­arrow sign, plastic letters, digital c-­print, plexiglass, 72 × 96 ×  12 inches.

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the artists Derek Jarman and Yves Klein, musicians Fats Waller, Ethel ­Waters, Nina Simone, and Louis Armstrong, and writers from Ralph Ellison to William H. Gass to Maggie Nelson, Smith chooses the color blue to meditate on chromatic schemes, memory, embodiment, and the politics of aesthetics. In the exhibition Blue Is Ubiquitous and Forbidden (2015), she fixates on blue as color, emotion, black musical tradition, and a condition of living for black working-­ class and poor ­people. While her work references other artistic explorations of blue, she also draws our attention to the permutations of the color associated with race and US prisons. In her work, carceral blue is not only the blue of depression or emotional lows. It connects with the history of “prison blues” as emotion and art-­making, and with the larger tradition of blues ­music and what some scholars call the “blues aesthetic” in black art traditions. The carceral blues has much resonance with Fats Waller playing and Louis Armstrong singing, “I’m just another spade / Who c­ an’t make the grade / What did I do? / To be so black and blue.” I ask: What did the tens of thousands of black ­people born in the crossfires of the war on poverty and the war on drugs, and in the always constant war on blackness, who in many states must wear blue uniforms as prisoners, all day and night—in sleep and awake, during visits and alone in the cell, always in blue—­what did they do to be so black and blue, to be born ­under governance as antiblackness? In “The Uses of the Blues,” James Baldwin writes, “It’s this passionate detachment, this inwardness coupled with outwardness, this ability to know that, all right, it’s a mess, and you c­an’t do anything about it . . . ​ so, well, you have to do something about it. You ­can’t stay ­there, you ­can’t drop dead, you ­can’t give up.”9 Similarly, in his poem “On Blueness,” from his collection of poetry The Sobbing Story, Joshua Bennett writes, “I am a­fter / what comes when the law leaves / a dream gutted. The space / between a plea & please. / A m ­ other marching in the name  /  of another ­woman’s dead ­children.”10 In this poem and ­others, Bennett mourns the gratuitous vio­lence of the state’s assault on black life and

the intimate impact of incarceration (in a poem about his ­brother), while insisting on Baldwin’s assertion “you ­can’t give up.” Smith focuses her meditation on the blues of the arid landscape of California’s prison sprawl and the regulation of blue in prisons. Carceral blue arises through this larger paradigm of theorizing and expressing the blues in relation to black unfreedom and subjugation. Carceral blue is a color distinct to late-­modern capitalism and the growth in prisons in the late twentieth ­century, where the dispossessed lands of the settler nation-­state meet institutional architecture meets agribusiness meets failing economies of the urban and rural poor. The blues of carcerality have many shades: The blue sky over the electrified fences, walls, guard towers, fields, and buildings of punitive architecture. The pale-­blue walls of prison cells, once painted white but l­ ater, in some facilities, painted shades of blue when enough evidence had connected white walls to higher levels of depression and suicide attempts among incarcerated p ­ eople. Then t­ here’s the medium and dull blue of the prison clothes worn by many, like my cousins in Ohio. Blue is the dominant color on the prison backdrops in front of which my ­family, Smith and her f­ ather, and o ­ thers and their lovers pose u ­ nder carceral conditions. Smith writes: Blue is also a color I’m forbidden to wear in prison. It’s the color of my incarcerated ­father’s uniform. A slightly dif­fer­ent shade for both his shirt and his pants. Blue is the color of the sky he sometimes does not see. Blue is the color of the Crips. A gang whose context is hyper specific to California; and a narrative that prison guards try to graph onto its black and brown population to validate the severe treatment and other atrocities—­ whether one is gang related or not. My ­father is not in a gang but he has been flagged as a gang member at least once. Blue is the color of the ocean . . . ​blue is the blues . . . ​the color becomes a marker . . . ​11

Smith reimagines the prison portrait genre by deconstructing photo­graphs taken during her visits with her ­father. In The Body Keeps the Score (2015), she has brought to the fore one of the backdrops against which she and her f­ ather posed, which was painted by incarcerated artists. Smith repurposes the photo­graphs, extracting them for color and shape, not trusting them for memory or sentimental

conclusion

26 1

attachment, stating, “I’m so aware of all the conditions that go into the production of them and what the image sort of represents that it ­can’t hold that space of like intimacy or like a connection with the individual anymore. So I never look at them in a way that’s like, ‘Oh, this brings me comfort.’ It’s always like a hyperanalytical kind of way.”12 ­Here the fragmented bits of photo­graph take on a type of formalism, rendered into geometric shapes, colored in shades of blue, grey, black, and white. The legs of the bodies in the black-­and-­white photo resemble modernist figures. The letters “RISONER” on her ­father’s pants mark the body and the scene. Shades of blue color t­ hese visits. On a signboard for the exhibition Blue Is Ubiquitous and Forbidden, she has transferred color into text and public feelings, writing, “Their words passed through with a blue-­greenness the thick of the glass, the fluo­rescent light. It buzzes and c­ an’t be drowned out. If you think it’s ceased it’s ­because the buzz has now become a part of you. You walk around with it. I walk around with it. Becoming.”13 Signboards frequently appear in prison visiting rooms, announcing visiting hours, rules, and costs of items like photo­graphs. Their words communicate color and sound through prison fixtures: the fluo­ rescent lights and the thick glass that separate guest from prisoner in some visiting rooms. The sensory overload of harsh lights and intrusive noises cannot be dimmed or muted. H ­ ere, Smith shifts position from referencing her ­father and herself in third-­person plural from the viewpoint of prison guards and o ­ thers in the waiting room, to first-­and second-­person as they embody the force of the carceral scape, as that space transforms them. They are together in the buzzing blue-­green room, where voices resonate through carceral structures. They are both marked by penal time; their relationship is structured through penal space. Their time together w ­ ill always be marked by carcerality. The text is written in such a way that viewers can insert themselves into the scene, taking up vari­ous positions of you, I, or they. Smith intends for the work to play on hyperspecificity and the ambiguity of who is being addressed and who is addressing. Whereas most of the artists I have discussed in this book create ­under the conditions of punitive captivity, with l­ imited access to art materials, Smith’s exploration emerges from dislocation and a form of unmooring that is endemic to families impacted by incarceration. Smith is among a group of con­temporary nonincarcerated artists, like Titus Kaphar, Rowan Renee, and Duron Jackson,

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whose art reflects how their lives have been impacted by carcerality, especially the mass imprisonment of ­family members, friends, and other loved ones. She reflects the millions of c­ hildren of the mass incarcerated, who grew up with parents and other relatives confined. Smith and other artists whose work interrogates incarceration are involved in relational practices that put them in conversation, in connection, in community with Ojore Lutalo, the Fairton collective, Tyra Patterson, Dean Gillispe, Lisette Oblitas, Eddie Kates, Tameca Cole, ­fathers and ­mothers, siblings and cousins, friends and activists, and o ­ thers held in captivity, excluded from civil society, public life, f­ amily structures. The works of ­these artists and activists extend radical imaginaries and relational practices beyond the regulatory and isolating structures of imprisonment to envision and help create a world without ­human caging.

Sable Elyse Smith, The Body Keeps the Score, 2015, from the exhibition Blue Is Ubiquitous and Forbidden. Digital c-­print, 30 × 40 inches.

conclusion

26 3

NOTES

Preface 1. See artist Alexander Bell’s series No ­Humans Involved—­After Sylvia Wynter, which powerfully addresses how the visual repre­sen­ta­tions of the five youths in NYC newspapers portrayed them as nonhuman, lawless, wild beings: https://­www​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­entertainment​/­archive​ /­2019​/­06​/­when​-­they​-­see​-­us​-­and​-­persistent​-­language​-­black​-­criminality​/­590695​/­. 2. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Abolition Geography and the Prob­lem of Innocence,” in ­Futures of Black Radicalism, ed. Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2017), 234.

Introduction 1. Ronnie Goodman, interview with the author, 21 July 2017. 2. Sharon Luk, The Life of Paper: Letters and a Poetics of Living beyond Captivity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018). 3. Phyllis Kornfeld, Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in Amer­i­ca (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1997), xxv. 4. James “Yaya” Hough, artist statement, Capitalizing on Justice exhibit, presented by Worth Rises, 2018, https://­correctionsaccountability​.­org​/­capitalizingonjustice​/­. 5. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Abolition Geography and the Prob­lem of Innocence,” ­Futures of Black Radicalism, ed. Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2017), 227. 6. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 5.

26 5

7. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Recreation Programs, Inmates, “Program Statement,” P5370.11, 6/25/2008, p. 12. 8. Lucia Davis, “Inside the Angola Prison Hobbycraft Sale, Where Inmates Sell their Creations,” Atlas Obscura, 14 January  2016, https://­www​.­atlasobscura​.­com​/­articles​/­inside​-­the​ -­angola​-­prison​-­hobbycraft​-­sale​-­where​-­inmates​-­can​-­sell​-­their​-­creations. 9. Kornfeld, Cellblock Visions, 12. 10. La. R.S. 14:402(D)(10); Cheryl Mercedes, “Website Obtains, Sells Convicted ­Killer’s Art,” WAFB, 30 January 2012, http://­www​.­wafb​.­com​/­story​/­16635022​/­convicted​-­baton​-­rouge​-­serial​ -­killer​-­sells​-­artwork​-­from​-­prison. Thanks to artist Deborah Luster and to Cormac Boyle of the Justice Center in Louisiana for bringing this law to my attention and sharing resources. 11. Brandon Griggs, “Photographer Describes ‘Scream’ of Mi­grant Boy’s ‘­Silent Body,’ ” CNN​ .­com, 3 September 2015, https://­www​.­cnn​.­com​/­2015​/­09​/­03​/­world​/­dead​-­migrant​-­boy​-­beach​ -­photographer​-­nilufer​-­demir​/­index​.­html. 12. Carol Rosenberg, “­After Years of Letting Captives Own Their Artwork, Pentagon Calls It U.S. Property. And May Burn It,” Miami Herald, 16 November 2017, http://­www​.­miamiherald​ .­com​/­news​/­nation​-­world​/­world​/­americas​/­guantanamo​/­article185088673​.­html. 13. Rachel Heidenry, “ ‘Without the Wall’ Explores Identity and Incarceration at Philadelphia’s City Hall,” Artblog, 9 July 2014, http://­www​.­theartblog​.­org​/­2014​/­07​/­without​-­the​-­wall​-­explores​ -­identity​-­and​-­incarceration​-­at​-­philadelphias​-­city​-­hall​/­. 14. See “Trends in U.S. Corrections, 1925–2016,” Sentencing Proj­ect, 2018, https://­ sentencingproject​.­org​/­wp​-­content​/­uploads​/­2016​/­01​/­Trends​-­in​-­US​-­Corrections​.­pdf. 15. Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 8. 16. Peter Wagner and Wendy Sawyer, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2018,” 14 May 2018, https://­www​.­prisonpolicy​.­org​/­reports​/­pie2018​.­html. 17. Wagner and Sawyer, “Mass Incarceration.” 18. “Virtual life” is defined as a sentence of fifty years or more. According to the report, 48.3 ­percent of ­people serving life or virtual life are black. See Ashley Nellis, Still Life: Amer­i­ ca’s Increasing Use of Life and Long-­Term Sentences (Washington, DC: The Sentencing Proj­ect Research and Advocacy for Reform, 2017), 5. 19. See Emily Bazelon’s Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (New York: Random House, 2019) and Danielle Sered’s ­Until We Reckon: Vio­lence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair (New York: The New Press, 2019) for two accounts documenting efforts to undo punitive prosecution and sentencing. 20. See No Selves to Defend, 2017, https://­noselves2defend​.­wordpress​.­com​/­.

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21. Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? An Open Media Book (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), 18. 22. See Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 23. Mirzoeff, The Right to Look, 3. 24. Luk, The Life of Paper, 4; Kelly Lytle Hernández, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of ­Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 1. 25. Michelle Brown, The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 12. 26. Gil Batle, “Hatched in Prison at Ricco Maresca, 2016,” Gil Batle website, accessed 27 October 2019, https://­www​.­gilbatle​.­com​/­hatched​-­in​-­prison. 27. Dan Piepenbring, “Hatched in Prison, and Other News,” Paris Review, 5 November 2015, https://­www​.­theparisreview​.­org​/­blog​/­2015​/­11​/­05​/­hatched​-­in​-­prison​-­and​-­other​-­news​/­. 28. Robin Pogrebin, “Agnes Gund Sells a Lichtenstein to Start Criminal Justice Fund,” New York Times, 11 June 2017, https://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2017​/­06​/­11​/­arts​/­design​/­agnes​-­gund​-­sells​-­a​ -­lichtenstein​-­to​-­start​-­criminal​-­justice​-­fund​.­html.

1. Carceral Aesthetics 1. Jessica Lussenhop, “Inside Decaying US Prison, Former Inmates Are Guides,” BBC News, 11 May 2016, http://­www​.­bbc​.­com​/­news​/­world​-­us​-­canada​-­36163247. 2. Eastern State is often called “the world’s first penitentiary,” but the Walnut Street Jail, built in 1790 in Philadelphia, predates it. Eastern State, however, became the model and iconic repre­sen­ta­tion of the Pennsylvania system of imprisonment, structured around isolation, solitude, and sensory deprivation. 3. Lussenhop, “Inside Decaying US Prison, Former Inmates Are Guides.” 4. Russell Craig, interview with the author, Philadelphia, PA, 8 September 2016. 5. Simone Browne, Dark ­Matter: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 21. 6. See Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2013). 7. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977); John Bender, Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth-­Century ­England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 5 – 2 6

26 7

Robert A. Ferguson, Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 8. Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995), 19. 9. Bender, Imagining the Penitentiary, 21. 10. Lisa Guenther, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 13. 11. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 201. 12. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, 87–88. 13. Risa Puleo, “Introduction: Opening the Door,” in Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System, ed. Risa Puleo (Miami, FL: NAME Publications, 2018), 26. 14. See “History of Eastern State,” Eastern State Penitentiary website, accessed 11 September 2019, https://­www​.­easternstate​.­org​/­research​/­history​-­eastern​-­state. 15. Jacques Rancière, “ ‘The Politics of Aesthetics’: Jacques Rancière Interviewed by Nicolas Viellescazes,” Naked Punch, 1 December  2009, http://­www​.­nakedpunch​.­com​/­articles​/­48; Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and Its Discontents (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009), 8. 16. See Kandice Chuh, The Difference Aesthetics Make: On the Humanities “­After Man” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), and David Lloyd, ­Under Repre­sen­ta­tion: The Racial Regime of Aesthetics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019). 17. See Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1965). 18. Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, 110–111. 19. Lloyd, ­Under Repre­sen­ta­tion, 43. 20. Fred Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom,” CR: The New Centennial Review 4, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 270. 21. Ferguson, Inferno, 37. 22. J. Reid Miller, Stain Removal: Ethics and Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 112. 23. Mabel  O. Wilson, “Carceral Architectures,” e-­flux, special issue, Superhumanity, 4 October 2006, http://­www​.­e​-­flux​.­com​/­architecture​/­superhumanity​/­68676​/­carceral​-­architectures​/­. 24. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Abolition Geography and the Prob­lem of Innocence,” in ­Futures of Black Radicalism, ed. Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2017), 237. 25. For more, see Lee Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca Is the Prison: Art and Politics in Prisons in the 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Dylan Rodríguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006); Joy James, ed., The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Con­temporary Prison Writings (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005); Johnson and Lubin, eds., ­Futures of Black Radicalism.

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26. My gratitude to an anonymous reader for helping to elucidate this argument. 27. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (Dijon, France: Les presses du réel, 2002 [1998]), 14. 28. See Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2012) for a critique of participatory art practices. 29. Marlon Ross, “Law and Dis / Order: The Banefully Alluring Arts of the Carceral Imaginary,” in The Punitive Turn: New Approaches to Race and Incarceration, ed. Deborah E. McDowell, Claudrena N. Harold, and Juan ­Battle (Charlottesville: University of ­Virginia Press, 2013), 248. 30. Fred Moten, interviewed in Dreams Are Colder than Death, directed by Arthur Jafa and Kahlil Joseph (ZDF, 2013). Los Angeles Film Festival world premiere, 17 June 2014. 31. Sarah Haley, No Mercy ­Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 199. 32. Haley, No Mercy ­Here, 200. 33. Ndume Olatushani, interview with the author, 23 October 2017. 34. Olatushani, interview with the author. 35. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 242. 36. Anoop Mirpuri, “A Correction-­Extraction Complex: Prison, Lit­er­a­ture, and Abolition as an Interpretive Practice,” Cultural Critique 104 (Summer 2019): 47. 37. Marisa Belausteguigotia Ruis, “The Pedagogy of the Spiral: Intimacy and Captivity in a ­Women’s Prison,” in The Global and the Intimate: Feminism in Our Time, ed. Geraldine Pratt and Victoria Rosner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 257. 38. Belausteguigotia Ruis, “The Pedagogy of the Spiral,” 244. 39. Ferguson, Inferno, 15. 40. Stephen Dillon, “The Prisoner’s Dream: Queer Visions from Solitary Confinement,” Qui Parle 23, no. 2 (Spring / Summer 2015): 168. 41. Tameca Cole, telephone interview with the author, 4 April 2019. 42. Reginald Dwayne Betts, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (New York: Avery, 2009), 186. 43. Betts, A Question of Freedom, 178. 44. Guenther, Solitary Confinement, 196. 45. Raymond Towler, telephone interview with the author, 23 January 2018. 46. Towler, interview with the author. 47. ­Because acquiring material, through gifting, purchasing, bartering, or “procuring”—­that is, taking from the state without permission—is such a central preoccupation of incarcerated artists, it is the focus of Chapter 2 of this book, titled “State Goods.”

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26 9

48. Kellie Jones, South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 69. 49. Rodríguez, Forced Passages, 42. 50. See Anti-­Slavery Bugle, 21 June 1851, 160, part of “Chronicling Amer­ic­ a: Historic American Newspapers,” website of the Library of Congress, https://­chroniclingamerica​.­loc​.­gov​/­lccn​ /­sn83035487​/­1851​-­06​-­21​/­ed​-­1​/­seq​-­4​/­. 51. See Priscilla A. Ocen, “Punishing Pregnancy: Race, Incarceration, and the Shackling of Pregnant Prisoners,” California Law Review 100 (2012): 1239–1258; Jennifer G. Clarke and Rachel E. Simon, “Shackling and Separation: Motherhood in Prison, AMA Journal of Ethics (September  2013), https://­journalofethics​.­ama​-­assn​.­org​/­article​/­shackling​-­and​-­separation​ -­motherhood​-­prison​/­2013​-­09. 52. Assata Shakur, “­Women in Prison: How We Are,” in James, The New Abolitionists, 54. 53. Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, ­Ain’t I a ­Woman, dir. Nimi Hendrix, Philadelphia: Secret Society Motion Pictures, 2018, https://­youtu​.­be​/­OcvY7zrPJs0. 54. See Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books, 1988); Angela Davis, “From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison: Frederick Douglass and the Convict Lease System,” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader, ed. Joy James (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 74–96; and Sarah Haley, No Mercy ­Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). 55. See Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003). 56. See for example, Brandon Velez, “City Should Shutter South Bronx Jail Barge, Protestors Say,” CityLimits​.­org, 7 May  2018, https://­citylimits​.­org​/­2018​/­05​/­07​/­city​-­should​-­shutter​-­south​ -­bronx​-­jail​-­barge​-­protestors​-­say​/­; and Babak Bryan, “Look Up: The Minimum Security Prison with a G ­ reat View of Central Park,” Complex, 17 October  2011, http://­www​.­complex​.­com​/­pop​ -­culture​/­2011​/­10​/­look​-­up​-­the​-­minimum​-­security​-­prison​-­with​-­a​-­great​-­view​-­of​-­central​-­park​/­1. 57. Gilmore, “Abolition Geography and the Prob­lem of Innocence,” 225. 58. Sharon Luk, The Life of Paper: Letters and a Poetics of Living Beyond Captivity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018), 10. 59. The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, produced and directed by Brett Story (Oh Ratface Films, 2016), DVD. 60. See Josh Begley, Prison Map, 24 May 2012, http://­prisonmap​.­com​/­; and Puleo, Walls Turned Sideways, 79–81. 61. Duron Jackson, conversation with the author, Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1 February 2013.

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62. Mabel O. Wilson, “Stephen Tourlentes,” Aperture 230, special issue, Prison Nation, Spring 2018, ed. Michael Famighetti and Nicole R. Fleetwood, 129. 63. Pete Brook, “The Feedback of Exile: Interview with Stephen Tourlentes,” Prison Photography website, 28 February 2009, https://­prisonphotography​.­org​/­2009​/­02​/­28​/­the​-­feedback​ -­of​-­exile​-­interview​-­with​-­stephen​-­tourlentes​/­. 64. Puleo, Walls Turned Sideways, 80. 65. Misha Euceph, “Artists Reflect on Living Next to Cook County Jail,” Medill Reports Chicago, 9 March  2016, http://­news​.­medill​.­northwestern​.­edu​/­chicago​/­artists​-­reflect​-­on​-­living​ -­next​-­to​-­cook​-­county​-­jail​/­; also see Maria Gaspar, “Cook County Jail: The Vis­ib ­ le and Invisible,” 2013, https://­mariagaspar​.­com​/­cook​-­county​-­jail​-­the​-­visible​-­and​-­invisible. 66. A 2011 study found that 67 ­percent of detainees w ­ ere black and nearly 21 ­percent w ­ ere Latino; whites made up less than 13 ­percent. ­Women made up slightly ­under 13 ­percent of detainees, with black ­women accounting for 68 ­percent of ­those in the ­women’s unit. For more, see David E. Olson and Sema Taheri, “Population Dynamics and the Characteristics of Inmates in the Cook County Jail,” Cook County Sheriff’s Reentry Council Research Bulletin, February 2012, https://­e commons​ .­l uc​ .­e du​ /­c gi​ /­v iewcontent​ .­c gi​ ?­a rticle​= ­1 000&context​= ­c riminaljustice​ _­facpubs. 67. Wretched and Paramount (Series), Maria Gaspar website, accessed 5 December 2017, https://­mariagaspar​.­com​/­wretched​-­and​-­paramount​-­2. 68. “Proj­ect Description,” Haunting Raises Specters (by A.G.), Maria Gaspar website, accessed 5 December 2017, https://­mariagaspar​.­com​/­haunting​-­raises​-­specters. 69. Spencer Ackerman, “The Hidden: How Chicago Police Kept Thousands Isolated at Homan Square,” Guardian, 13 April 2016, https://­www​.­theguardian​.­com​/­us​-­news​/­2016​/­apr​/­13​ /­homan​-­square​-­chicago​-­police​-­records​-­secret​-­interrogation​-­facility​-­new​-­documents​-­lawsuit. 70. Spencer Ackerman, “The Dis­appeared: Chicago Police Detain Americans at Abuse-­Laden ‘Black Site,’ ” Guardian, 24 February 2015, https://­www​.­theguardian​.­com​/­us​-­news​/­2015​/­feb​/­24​ /­chicago​-­police​-­detain​-­americans​-­black​-­site. 71. Joe Ward, “Protestors Turn Homan Square, Police ‘Black Site,’ into ‘Freedom Square,’ ” DNAinfo, 20 July 2016, https://­www​.­dnainfo​.­com​/­chicago​/­20160720​/­north​-­lawndale​/­protesters​ -­turn​-­homan​-­square​-­police​-­black​-­site​-­into​-­freedom​-­square. 72. Kristiana Rae Colón, “At Freedom Square, the Revolution Lives in Brave Relationships,” Truthout, 7 August 2016, http://­www​.­truth​-­out​.­org​/­opinion​/­item​/­37132​-­at​-­freedom​-­square​-­the​ -­revolution​-­lives​-­in​-­brave​-­relationships. 73. Gilmore, “Abolition Geography and the Prob­lem of Innocence,” 227. 74. Gilmore, “Abolition Geography and the Prob­lem of Innocence,” 227.

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2. State Goods 1. Throughout this study, I refer to my ­family members by their first names, and to all artists, even ­those whom I have come to know personally, by their last names. I do this to follow the convention of referring to artists by last name in scholarship, art criticism, and reviews. 2. Dean Gillispie’s case has been written about in several publications, including False Justice, by former Ohio attorney general Jim Petro and Nancy Petro; Freedom Center Journal’s special edition, Illustrated Truth: Expressions of Wrongful Conviction, vol. 2, no. 2 (Fall 2010); and Rachel Siegel’s “How a ­Lawyer Gave Up Corporate Work to Help Exonerees Re-­Enter Society,” Marshall Proj­ect, June 22, 2019, https://­www​.­themarshallproject​.­org​/­2016​/­06​/­22​/­how​-­a​-­lawyer​ -­gave​-­up​-­corporate​-­work​-­to​-­help​-­exonerees​-­re​-­enter​-­society. 3. Access to art supplies and other material goods is also largely impacted by security level and where one is ­housed. In a ­later chapter, I explore art made by ­people in solitary confinement and other types of isolation units who strug­gle to acquire the barest of materials. 4. Jackie Wang, Carceral Capitalism (South Pasadena, CA: Seimotext[e], 2018), 69. See also Jackie Wang, “Carceral Capitalism,” The New Inquiry, 22 January 2018, https://thenewinquiry​ .com/carceral-capitalism/. 5. Kenneth Reams, email message to author, 11 June 2019. 6. “Artist Statement,” Daniel McCarthy Clifford website, accessed 18 October 2019, https://­ danielmccarthyclifford​.­com​/­statement. 7. Daniel McCarthy Clifford, “Daniel McCarthy Clifford on the ‘Section of Disapproved Books,’ ” Wesiman Art Museum, 28 May  2019, https://­wam​.­umn​.­edu​/­2019​/­05​/­28​/­daniel​ -­mccarthy​-­clifford​-­on​-­the​-­section​-­of​-­disapproved​-­books​/­. 8. See Daniel McCarthy Clifford, Federal Inmate Activity Book, Dizziness of Freedom, 2016, https://­dizzinessoffreedom.​ ­bigcartel​.­com​/­product​/­federal​-­prison​-­inmate​-­activity​-­book​-­daniel​ -­mccarthy​-­clifford. 9. Daniel McCarthy Clifford, “The Leavenworth Proj­ect,” MFA Thesis Research and Writing, University of Minnesota, 2018, 27. 10. In 2017 the Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx hosted an exhibit called State Property that exposed the vari­ous ways in which the carceral state abuses and exploits the ­free and cheap ­labor of incarcerated populations by displaying a vast array of products and ser­vices made in prison and showing how prisoners and their families are driven into deeper levels of poverty by the carceral state. 11. According to ACLU’s online article “Asset Forfeiture Abuse,” “Forfeiture was originally presented as a way to cripple large-­scale criminal enterprises by diverting their resources. But ­today, aided by deeply flawed federal and state laws, many police departments use forfeiture to

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benefit their bottom lines, making seizures motivated by profit rather than crime-­fighting. For ­people whose property has been seized through civil asset forfeiture, legally regaining such property is notoriously difficult and expensive, with costs sometimes exceeding the value of the property.” See ACLU, “Asset Forfeiture Abuse,” accessed 14 September 2019, https://­www​ .­aclu​.­org​/­issues​/­criminal​-­law​-­reform​/­reforming​-­police​-­practices​/­asset​-­forfeiture​-­abuse. 12. For more on Cameron Rowland’s art, see Jackie Wang’s “Cameron Rowland and the Carceral Laboratory,” Freize, 29 October  2018, https://­frieze​.­com​/­article​/­cameron​-­rowland​-­and​ -­carceral​-­laboratory; and Renée Reizman, “A Proj­ect Meticulously Lays Out the Realities of Modern-­Day Slavery,” Hyperallergic, 9 January 2019, https://­hyperallergic​.­com​/­479167​/­cameron​ -­rowland​-­d37​-­moca​-­los​-­angeles​/­. 13. Wang, “Cameron Rowland and the Carceral Laboratory.” 14. Thomas W. Foster, “ ‘Mushfaking’: A Compensatory Be­hav­ior of Prisoners,” Journal of Social Psy­chol­ogy 117 (1982): 115–116. 15. Foster, “ ‘Mushfaking,’ ” 116. Foster notes that the term may have originated in Ohio penitentiaries in the mid-­nineteenth ­century, though the practice can be found in prisons around the world. 16. Moliere Dimanche, email message to author, 16 November 2017. 17. Dean Gillispie, interview with the author, 11 September 2015. 18. Gillispie, interview with the author. 19. Gillispie, interview with the author. 20. Gillispie interview with the author. 21. Amelia Robinson, interview with Dean Gillispie, What Had Happened Was . . . ​, podcast, 19 June 2019. 22. See E. Tammy Kim, “A National Strike against ‘Prison Slavery,’ ” New Yorker, 3 October  2016, https://­www​.­newyorker​.­com​/­news​/­news​-­desk​/­a​-­national​-­strike​-­against​-­prison​ -­slavery; “On 1st Anniversary of Largest U.S. Prison Strike, New Interviews Shed Light on Protest and Retaliation,” Democracy Now, 11 September 2017, eftab720https://­www​.­democracynow​ .­org​/­2017​/­9​/­11​/­headlines​/­on​_­1st​_­anniversary​_­of​_­largest​_­us​_­prison​_­strike​_­new​_­interviews​ _­shed​_­light​_­on​_­protest​_­retaliation. 23. Emile DeWeaver, letter to the author, envelope postmarked 22 March 2017. 24. Jared Owens, interview with the author, 25 August 2015. 25. Jesse Krimes, interview with the author, 29 August 29 2015. 26. Owens, interview with the author. 27. Rivera spent his last two months of prison “in the hole in Philly” and was released in February 2013. He moved to New York City and began work in construction while maintaining his art practice. Owens was released two months l­ ater, in April 2013, from Fairton. Shortly there-

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after, Owens moved to South Carolina, where his m ­ other lived, and continued to make art. Krimes was released in 2014 and took up residence in Philadelphia as an artist and educator. 28. Owens, interview with the author. 29. Gilberto Rivera, interview with the author, 6 September 2015. 30. Seth Ferranti, “A Look at the Prisoner Transport System,” HuffPost, 14 October 2015, https://­www​.­huffpost​.­com​/­entry​/­a​-­look​-­at​-­the​-­prisoner​-­tr​_­b​_­8282180. 31. Rivera, interview with the author. 32. “The Man: The Activist,” International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, accessed 19 October 19, https://­www​.­whoisleonardpeltier​.­info​/­home​/­about​-­peltier​/­activist​/­. 33. Rivera, interview with the author. 34. Rivera, interview with the author. 35. Rivera, interview with the author. 36. Jesse Krimes, interview with the author, 31 March 2017. 37. Krimes, interview with the author, 2017. 38. Krimes, interview with the author, 2017. 39. Krimes, interview with the author, 2017. 40. Owens, interview with the author. 41. Owens, interview with the author. Owens’s complaint about color limitations was something that I heard from many artists. Formerly incarcerated artist Raymond Towler noted that he could not get access to high-­quality oil paints while incarcerated in Ohio: “The brightest reds that I could make ­were made from this material, this mineral, cadmium. And it’s kind of poisonous. You s­ houldn’t get it on your skin. If you can wash it off, ­you’re okay, but ­don’t let it just sit. I see ­people in the movies, they got paint all over them. . . . ​You ­don’t do that. Not working with oil paints, anyway. That is the best color you can get. You kind of learn all the generic names for the minerals, b ­ ecause that’s what most of the paints are made from. Something like black is normally like charcoal or something like that. We got burnt siennas. . . . ​It’s some natu­ral stuff. Cobalt is like a blue. It’s very power­ful. And it’s kind of toxic also. But it’s one of the best blues. T ­ here ­were other reds that you could get. He spoke the truth. . . . ​That cadmium red and yellow, and t­ here’s dif­fer­ent hues of it, it’s the best stuff, but you c­ an’t use it.” 42. See ­Piper Kerman, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a ­Women’s Prison (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2011). 43. Owens, interview with the author. 44. Cheryl Finley, Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2018), 5. 45. See “The Brookes: Visualising the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past and the Institute of Historical Research, 2007, https://­www​

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.­history​.­ac​.­uk​/­1807commemorated​/­exhibitions​/­museums​/­brookes​.­html; “Description of a Slave Ship,” British Museum, accessed 14 September  2019, http://­www​.­britishmuseum​ .­o rg​ /­r esearch​ /­c ollection​ _­o nline​ /­c ollection​ _­o bject​ _­d etails​ .­a spx​ ?­o bjectId​= ­6 93429& partId​=­1. 46. Finley, Committed to Memory, 10. 47. Dylan Rodríguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 231. 48. Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 75.

3. Captured by the Frame 1. Tina Campt, Image ­Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Eu­rope (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 33. 2. Cristi A. Charpentier, “Rendered: Art, Wrongful Imprisonment, and Guantánamo” panel, Welcome to Camp Amer­i­ca: Inside Guantánamo Bay exhibit, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, 28 June 2018. 3. See Juleyka Lantigua-­Williams, “The Elusiveness of an Official ID a­ fter Prison,” Atlantic, 11 August 2016, https://­www​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­politics​/­archive​/­2016​/­08​/­the​-­elusiveness​-­of​-­an​ -­official​-­id​-­after​-­prison​/­495197​/­. 4. Lantigua-­Williams, “The Elusiveness of an Official ID ­after Prison.” 5. Pete Brook, “Prison Index,” Aperture 230, special issue, Prison Nation, Spring 2018, ed. Michael Famighetti and Nicole R. Fleetwood, 109. 6. Ruby Tapia, “The Gendered Problematics of Critical Carceral Visualities,” PMLA 123, no. 3 (May 2008): 684. 7. Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel and Grau), 162. 8. In Chapter 7, I focus on another sanctioned photo practice that takes place in prison: snapshots documenting ­family visits to incarcerated loved ones. 9. Shayne Davidson, “What Is a Rogues’ Gallery Photo?” preface, Captured and Exposed, Apple Books. 10. Although in the con­temporary era, video and film of prisoners and prison life abound, photography remains a dominant visual medium in criminal indexes maintained by law enforcement and departments of correction. 11. Allan Sekula, “The Body and the Archive,” October 39 (Winter 1986): 3–64. 12. Tina Campt, Listening to Images (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 78.

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13. Campt, Listening to Images, 78. 14. Campt, Listening to Images, 79. 15. See George Pavlich, “The Subject of Criminal Identification,” Punishment and Society 11, no. 2: 171–190. 16. Shawn Michelle Smith, American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1999), 70. 17. Smith, American Archives, 71. 18. Smith, American Archives, 86. 19. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban Amer­i­ca (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 33–34. 20. For more, see Sarah Haley, No Mercy ­Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016); Kali Nicole Gross, Colored Amazons: Crime, Vio­lence, and Black W ­ omen in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880–1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); and Cheryl D. Hicks, Talk with You like a W ­ oman: African American ­Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 21. Hicks, Talk with You like a ­Woman, 51. 22. Bruce Jackson, Pictures from a Drawer: Prison and the Art of Portraiture (Philadelphia: ­Temple University Press, 2009), 10–11. 23. Jackson, Pictures from a Drawer, 13. 24. Jackson, Pictures from a Drawer, 19. 25. Jackson, Pictures from a Drawer, 40. 26. Jackson, Pictures from a Drawer, 37. 27. John Tagg, Burden of Repre­sen­ta­tion: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 12. 28. Jackson, Pictures from a Drawer, 15. 29. Jackson helped acclaimed photographer Danny Lyon get permission to photo­graph inside a Texas prison, which led to his well-­known Conversations with the Dead (1971), a photographic study of prisoners in Texas between 1967 and 1968. 30. See Afro-­American Work Songs in a Texas Prison, a film by Toshi Seeger, Daniel Seeger, Peter Seeger, and Bruce Jackson (Folklore Research Films, Inc., 1966), http://­www​.­folkstreams​ .­net​/­film​-­detail​.­php​?­id​=­122; Bruce Jackson and Texas State Prisoners, Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons (Elektra, 1965), vinyl recording. 31. Bennett is an attorney who for years has represented well-­known po­liti­cal prisoner Judith Clark, a former member of the Weather Under­ground and collaborator with the Black

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Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Clark spent thirty-eight years in New York prisons before being released in May 2019. Bennett began photographing ­women impacted by incarceration as part of her advocacy on behalf of Clark. 32. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010), 115. 33. See Ruby Tapia, “Zora Murff,” Aperture 230, special issue, Prison Nation, 116–120. 34. Lou Jones with Lorie Savel, Final Exposure: Portraits from Death Row (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996). 35. See Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Abolition Geography and the Prob­lem of Innocence,” in ­Futures of Black Radicalism, ed. Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2017). Ruby Tapia’s forthcoming book, The Camera and the Cage (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020), offers a brilliant analy­sis of the prob­lem with creating sympathetic and exceptional subjects when photographing incarcerated ­people. 36. Deborah Luster, “The Reappearance of ­Those Who Have Gone,” introduction to One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana (Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Publishing, 2003), https://­static1​ .­s quarespace​ .­c om​ /­s tatic​ /­5 a86bf8364b05f76722d2052​ /­t​ /­5 b8454db0ebbe8560c7d2742​ /­1535399131988​/­Luster+Deborah+Introduction+to+One+Big+Self​.­pdf. 37. Luster, “The Reappearance of ­Those Who Have Gone.” 38. Mark Dean Johnson, “Prison / Culture: An Illustrated Introduction,” in Prison / Culture, ed. Sharon E. Bliss, Kevin B. Chen, Steve Dickinson, Mark Dean Johnson, and Rebeka Rodriguez (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Foundation, 2009), 15. 39. Luster, “The Reappearance of ­Those Who Have Gone.” 40. Deborah Luster, “Artist Talk,” Marking Time: Prison Art and Activism conference, Alfa Art Gallery and Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 9 October 2014. 41. Luster, “The Reappearance of ­Those Who Have Gone.” 42. Homepage, Calhoun McCormick website, accessed 9 July 2019, http://­calhounmccormick​ .­com​/­. 43. Peter Wagner and Wendy Sawyer, “States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2018,” Prison Policy Initiative, June 2018, https://­www​.­prisonpolicy​.­org​/­global​/­2018​.­html, and Adam Gelb and Elizabeth Compa, “Louisiana No Longer Leads Nation in Imprisonment Rate,” The Pew Charitable Trusts, 10 July  2018, https://­www​.­pewtrusts​.­org​/­en​/­research​-­and​-­analysis​ /­articles​/­2018​/­07​/­10​/­louisiana​-­no​-­longer​-­leads​-­nation​-­in​-­imprisonment​-­rate. 44. See Bernard Hermann, The Good Times Rolled: Black New Orleans, 1978–1982 (Lafayette: University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2015). 45. Keith Calhoun, interview with the author, 3 October 2017.

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46. “Population Trends—­Raw Data, 1989–2015,” Department of Public Safety and Corrections, State of Louisiana, p.  10, accessed 21 October  2019, http://­www​.­doc​.­la​.­gov​/­media​/­1​ /­Briefing%20Book​/­Jan%2018​/­population​.­trends​.­jan​.­18​.­pdf. 47. Marianne Fisher-­Giorlando, “Angola Penitentiary,” in Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Facilities, ed. Mary Bosworth (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2005), 33–36. 48. Author interview with prison staff person who wishes to remain anonymous, Louisiana State Penitentiary, 16 November 2017. 49. “Fact Sheet,” Corrections Ser­vices, Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, 30 April 2012, http://­www​.­lajudicialcollege​.­org​/­wp​-­content​/­uploads​/­2012​/­10​/­A​-­1​.­​-­LSP​ -­Angola​-­Demographics​-­4​-­2012​.­pdf. 50. Elizabeth Johnson, “Life in Louisiana: ­People Aging in Prison Seek a Second Chance,” Southern Poverty Law Center website, 5 March 2018, https://­www​.­splcenter​.­org​/­news​/­2018​/­03​ /­05​/­life​-­louisiana​-­people​-­aging​-­prison​-­seek​-­second​-­chance; and Sarah Holtz and Mark Cave, “The Hearse Driver of Angola,” WWNO 89.9 website, 15 June 2017, http://­wwno​.­org​/­post​ /­hearse​-­driver​-­angola. 51. Calhoun, interview with the author. 52. Calhoun, interview with the author. 53. See Deborah Willis, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photog­raphers 1840 to the Pre­ sent (New York: Norton, 2002). 54. Jordan Amirkhani, “Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick Document the Scars of Slavery and Mass Incarceration,” Bmore Art, 14 August  2019, http://­www​.­bmoreart​.­com​ /­2019​/­08​/­keith​-­calhoun​-­and​-­chandra​-­mccormick​-­document​-­the​-­scars​-­of​-­slavery​-­and​-­mass​ -­incarceration​.­html. 55. Calhoun, interview with the author. 56. Dread Scott, video for Postcode Criminals, Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, 15 September 2012, https://­www​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​=­OhRI​_­8QwuB0. 57. “Lockdown,” Dread Scott website, accessed 17 July 2016, http://­www​.­dreadscott​.­net​/­works​ /­lockdown​/­. 58. Jonathan Simon, “Rise of the Carceral State,” Social Research 74, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 471–508. 59. See “Senate Passes Bill to End Prison Gerrymandering in New York,” website of the New York State Senate, 4 August 2010, https://­www​.­nysenate​.­gov​/­newsroom​/­press​-­releases​/­senate​ -­passes​-­bill​-­end​-­prison​-­gerrymandering​-­new​-­york. 60. For more on stop-­and-­frisk policies and practices, see Theodore R. Johnson, “What Stop-­and-­Frisk Means to the Descendants of Slaves,” Atlantic, 27 March 2014, https://­www​ .­theatlantic​.­com​/­national​/­archive​/­2014​/­03​/­what​-­stop​-­and​-­frisk​-­means​-­to​-­the​-­descendants​

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-­of​-­slaves​/­359716​/­; and Daniel Bergner, “Is Stop-­and-­Frisk Worth It?” Atlantic, April 2014, https://­w ww​.­t heatlantic​ .­c om​ /­m agazine​ /­a rchive​ /­2 014​ /­0 4​ /­i s​ -­s top​ -­a nd​ -­f risk​ -­w orth​ -­i t​ /­358644​/­. 61. Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: NYU Press, 2011), xiv. 62. Dread Scott, video for Postcode Criminals. 63. Rachel Williams, “Artists’ Challenge to Stop and Search,” Guardian, 13 March 2012, http://­www​.­guardian​.­co​.­uk​/­society​/­2012​/­mar​/­13​/­young​-­artists​-­liverpool​-­stop​-­and​-­search. 64. Dread Scott, video for Postcode Criminals. 65. Dread Scott, video for Postcode Criminals. 66. In Lorton’s Darkroom trailer, Photo Change LLC website, accessed 10 July 2019, http://­www​ .­photochangellc​.­com​/­. 67. Karen Ruckman, email to the author, 18 April 2019. 68. Samantha Michaels with photos by Lili Kobielski, “Chicago’s Jail Is One of the Country’s Biggest ­Mental Health Care Providers. ­Here’s a Look Inside,” ­Mother Jones, 8 January 2019, https://­www​.­motherjones​.­com​/­crime​-­justice​/­2019​/­01​/­chicagos​-­jail​-­is​-­the​-­one​-­of​-­the​-­countys​ -­biggest​-­mental​-­health​-­care​-­providers​-­heres​-­a​-­look​-­inside​/­. 69. Timothy Williams, “A Psychologist as Warden? Jail and ­Mental Illness Intersect in Chicago,” New York Times, 30 July 2015, https://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2015​/­07​/­31​/­us​/­a​-­psychologist​ -­as​-­warden​-­jail​-­and​-­mental​-­illness​-­intersect​-­in​-­chicago​.­html. 70. “Cook County Jail Is Not the Largest ­Mental Health Care Provider in the US,” Chicago Community Bond Fund, accessed 19 October 2019, https://­chicagobond​.­org​/­2019​/­02​/­07​/­cook​ -­county​-­jail​-­is​-­not​-­the​-­largest​-­mental​-­health​-­care​-­provider​-­in​-­the​-­us​/­. 71. “About,” Humanize the Numbers website, accessed 7 March 2019, http://­humanizethe numbers​.­com​/­about​.­html. 72. See Josh Saul, “Prisoners Use Smuggled Phones and Drones, but Justice Department Plans to Jam Airwaves,” Newsweek, 8 January 2018.

4. Interior Subjects 1. Richard Brilliant, Portraiture (London: Reakton Books, 1991), 7. 2. Brilliant, Portraiture, 11. 3. Adrienne L. Childs, “Exhibition Review of Portraits of a P ­ eople: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth C ­ entury,” Nineteenth-­Century Art Worldwide 5, no. 2 (Autumn 2006): 152. 4. George A. Morton, interview with the author, 31 August 2017. 5. Morton, interview with the author.

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6. James Barron, “Off to Italy to Study Painting: A Former Inmate’s Journey,” New York Times, 21 May 2017. 7. See “Mission Statement,” website of Florence Acad­emy of Art, 1995, https://­www​ .­florenceacademyofart​.­com​/­mission​-­statement​/­. 8. Barron, “Off to Italy to Study Painting.” 9. George A. Morton, email to the author, 16 March 2019. 10. Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 25. 11. Phyllis Kornfeld, Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in Amer­i­ca (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1997), 10. 12. Morton, interview with the author. 13. Gaynel Sheffield, interview with the author, 24 September 2016. 14. Emile DeWeaver, letter to the author, 22 March 2017. 15. See “What Percentage of the State’s Polled Prison Inmates W ­ ere Once Foster Care ­Children?” California Senate, Office of Research, December 2011, http://­www​.­sor​.­govoffice3​.­com​ /­vertical​/­Sites​/­%7B3BDD1595​-­792B​-­4D20​-­8D44​-­626EF05648C7%7D​/­uploads​/­Foster​_­Care​ _­PDF​_­12​-­8​-­11​.­pdf. 16. Kenneth Reams, email to the author, 11 June 2019. 17. Johnson distributes his prints through the website, allowing f­ ree access with the following message: “You are f­ ree to use images found in this gallery. Please credit: Kevin ‘Rashid’ Johnson, Minister of Defense, New Afrikan Black Panther Party—­Prison Chapter.” See http://­rashidmod​ .­com​/­index​.­php​/­nggallery​/­page​/­3​?­page​_­id​=­86. 18. See Jasmine Nichole Cobb, Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth ­Century (New York: New York University Press, 2015). 19. Frederick Douglass, “Pictures and Pro­gress,” digital manuscript, Library of Congress, http://­www​.­loc​.­gov​/­resource​/­mfd​.­28009​/­#seq​-­2. For more on the significance of Douglass’s portraits, see chapter 2 in Nicole Fleetwood’s On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015). 20. Richard Powell, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 20. 21. Simone Drake, When We Imagine Grace: Black Men and Subject Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 43. 22. Drake, When We Imagine Grace, 43. 23. See Jessica Bell Brown, “Kehinde Wiley Paints the Precariousness of Black Life,” Hyperallergic, 20 May  2015, https://­hyperallergic​.­com​/­208374​/­kehinde​-­wiley​-­paints​-­the​-­precarious

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ness​-­of​-­black​-­life​/­; Joel Kuennen, “Kehinde Wiley’s Empire of Vulnerability,” ArtSlant, 20 February  2015, https://­www​.­artslant​.­com​/­ny​/­articles​/­show​/­42111​-­kehinde​-­wileys​-­empire​-­of​ -­vulnerability. 24. Drake, When We Imagine Grace, 43. Also of note, Wiley was chosen by President Barack Obama’s administration to paint Obama’s official presidential portrait. 25. Vikki Tobak, “Visualizing the Overlooked Legacy of Mass Incarceration,” Narratively, 18 January 2016, http://­narrative​.­ly​/­visualizing​-­the​-­overlooked​-­legacy​-­of​-­mass​-­incarceration​/­. 26. Bill Keller, “Titus Kaphar on Art, Race and Justice,” Marshall Proj­ect, 1 February 2017, https://­www​.­themarshallproject​.­org​/­2017​/­02​/­01​/­titus​-­kaphar​-­on​-­art​-­race​-­and​-­justice. 27. David Alm, “In His New Work, Titus Kaphar Examines Racial Injustice in the Prison-­ Industrial Complex,” Forbes, 19 December  2016, https://­www​.­forbes​.­com​/­sites​/­davidalm​ /­2016​/­12​/­19​/­in​-­his​-­new​-­work​-­titus​-­kaphar​-­examines​-­racial​-­injustice​-­in​-­the​-­prison​-­industrial​ -­complex​/­#2e5731bc7c8e. 28. Staughton Lynd, Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011 [2004]), 138–139. 29. See Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Forgotten Places and the Seeds of Grassroots Planning,” in Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship, ed. Charles R. Hale (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 30. For more on Jesse Krimes, see Chapter 2, “State Goods.” 31. Jesse Krimes, interview with the author, 31 March 2017. 32. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 207. 33. Barry Malin, email to the author, 28 September 2016. 34. Jeff Reiman and Paul Leighton, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison (New York: Routledge, 2016). Orig. pub. by Pearson Education in 2001. 35. Reiman and Leighton, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 24. 36. Mark Loughney, interview with the author, 19 March 2019. 37. Mark Loughney, interview with the author. 38. Maurice Chammah, “Five Hundred F ­ aces of Mass Incarceration,” Paris Review, 4 October 2018, https://­www​.­theparisreview​.­org​/­blog​/­2018​/­10​/­04​/­five​-­hundred​-­faces​-­of​-­mass​ -­incarceration​/­. 39. Ronnie Goodman, interview with the author, 21 July 2017. 40. Goodman, interview with the author. 41. The origin of the treadmill is as a form of punishment for prisoners in nineteenth-­century ­England and the United States in which incarcerated p ­ eople had to walk or run on stairs

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attached to large wheels “to provide ­human power for gear-­operated grain mills or w ­ ater pumps.” See Kat Eschner, “In the 19th ­Century, You ­Wouldn’t Want to be Put on the Treadmill,” Smithsonian​.­com, 7 September  2017, https://­www​.­smithsonianmag​.­com​/­smart​-­news​/­19th​ -­century​-­you​-­wouldnt​-­want​-­be​-­put​-­treadmill​-­180964716​/­. 42. Albert Woodfox with Leslie George, Solitary: Unbroken by Four De­cades in Solitary Confinement; My Story of Transformation and Hope (New York: Grove Press, 2019), 177. 43. Quoted in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guttari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizo­ phre­nia, trans. with foreword by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 204. 44. Tyra Patterson, email to the author, 14 July 2017. 45. Ed Pilkington, “The Injustice System: One ­Woman’s Journey to Prove Her Innocence,” video by Laurence Mathieu-­Leger, Guardian, 14 January 2016, https://­www​.­theguardian​.­com​ /­us​-­news​/­ng​-­interactive​/­2016​/­jan​/­14​/­the​-­injustice​-­system​-­us​-­prisons​-­tyra​-­patterson​-­michelle​ -­lai​-­dayton​-­ohio​-­montgomery​-­county. 46. Kevin Coleman, “Practices of Refusal in Images: An Interview with Tina M. Campt,” Radical History Review, no. 132 (2018): 209–219. 47. Lisette Oblitas, interview with the author, 13 May 2017. 48. James “Yaya” Hough, letter to the author, 20 August 2017. 49. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, ed. and intro. Brent Hayes Edwards (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 8. 50. Jennifer Bronson and E. Ann Carson, “Prisoners in 2017,” Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, April 2019), 15, https://­www​ .­bjs​.­gov​/­content​/­pub​/­pdf​/­p17​.­pdf; also see Jeff Guo, “Amer­i­ca Has Locked Up So Many Black ­People It Has Warped Our Sense of Real­ity,” Washington Post, 26 February 2016, https://­www​ .­washingtonpost​ .­com​ /­news​ /­wonk​ /­wp​/­2016​ /­02​/­26​ /­america​ -­has​-­locked​ -­up​-­so​ -­many​ -­black​ -­people​-­it​-­has​-­warped​-­our​-­sense​-­of​-­reality​/­​?­noredirect​=­on&utm​_­term​=­​.­acd59962f6cb. 51. White men are incarcerated at the rate of 397 per 100,000 by comparison. Black ­women are incarcerated at the rate of 92 per 100,000 compared to white w ­ omen at the rate of 49 per 100,000. See Jennifer Bronson and E. Ann Carson, “Prisoners in 2017” (US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 2019), https://­www​.­bjs​.­gov​ /­content​/­pub​/­pdf​/­p17​.­pdf. 52. Russell Craig, interview with the author, 8 September 2016. 53. Craig, interview with the author. 54. See Michael Balsamo, Michael R. Sisak, Colleen Long, and Tom Hays, “Police Officer in ‘I C ­ an’t Breathe’ Death W ­ on’t Be Charged,” Associated Press, 16 July 2019, https://­www​.­apnews​ .­com​/­3c72405c9f874844a84b0ca658402078.

2 82

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5. Fraught Imaginaries 1. Joseph Lea, “The Proj­ect,” in Shared Dining, W ­ omen of York (San Francisco: Three Guineas Fund, 2015), unnumbered page. 2. Lisette Oblitas, email to the author, 21 October 2019. 3. Lisette Oblitas, interview with the author, 21 August 2015. 4. For example, Oblitas was featured in a Wall Street Journal article, and she participated in an artist’s talk at the Brooklyn Museum. See Jennifer Smith, “Feeding the Spirit: Inmate Art Pays Tribute to Female Heroes,” Wall Street Journal, 9 August 2015, https://­www​.­wsj​.­com​ /­articles​/­feeding​-­the​-­spirit​-­inmate​-­art​-­pays​-­tribute​-­to​-­female​-­heroes​-­1439169667. 5. See the artists’ reflection pieces in the Shared Dining cata­log. 6. The ­People’s Paper Co-op, Reentry Think Tank, http://­peoplespaperco​-­op​.­weebly​.­com​ /­reentry​-­think​-­tank​.­html. 7. For example, see Treacy Ziegler’s criticism of a collaboration between nonincarcerated artist Gregory Sale and a group of prisoners from Arizona in which Sale invited the prisoners into a museum where he had a residency to paint black and white stripes on the walls. Treacy Ziegler, “Art of Social Responsibility,” From an Open Door, 5 April 2017, http://­fromanopendoor​ .­com​/­2017​/­04​/­05​/­art​-­of​-­social​-­responsibility​/­. 8. Treacy Ziegler, interview with the author, 3 August 2017. 9. Baz Dreisinger, Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons around the World (New York: Other Press, 2017), 129. 10. Liza Jessie Peterson, All Day: A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island (New York: Center Street, 2017), 2. 11. See Chapter 1 of this book for more on carceral aesthetics and Western art traditions. 12. Tim Stott, “An Interview with Grant Kester,” Circa Archive, 1 September 2006. Reprinted from Circa 117 (Autumn 2006): 44–47, http://­circaartmagazine​.­website ​/­  backissues ​/­  c117​-­article​-­an​-­interview​-­with​-­grant​-­kester/. These practices build on older traditions of street art, po­liti­cal art, and avant-­garde art. The shift ­toward social engagement or participatory art has also come u ­ nder considerable criticism. Among the most cited analy­sis is Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2012), in which she argues that we need “to find ways of accounting for participatory art that focus on the meaning of what it produces, rather than attending solely to pro­cess” (9). 13. Laura Bieger, Ramón Saldívar, and Johannes Voelz, “The Imaginary and Its Worlds: An Introduction,” in The Imaginary and Its Worlds: American Studies ­after the Transnational Turn, ed. Bieger, Saldívar, and Voelz (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2013), vii. 14. Bieger, Saldívar, and Voelz, “The Imaginary and Its Worlds,” xi.

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15. Bieger, Saldívar, and Voelz, “The Imaginary and Its Worlds,” viii. 16. Joseph Lea, interview with the author, 10 March 2017. 17. Anoop Mirpuri, “A Correction-­Extraction Complex: Prison, Lit­er­at­ure, and Abolition as an Interpretive Practice,” Cultural Critique 104 (Summer 2019): 42. 18. Mirpuri, “A Correction-­Extraction Complex,” 44. 19. For a power­ful engagement with collaboration and its role in transformative justice, see Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017). Thanks to Emile DeWeaver for introducing me to this work. 20. T ­ here is an extensive history of art and ­music being used as rehabilitative tools in prisons and other institutional settings. I am interested in proj­ects that are framed around the idea of collaboration and exchange that are quite dif­f er­ent from rehabilitative models, although sometimes they rely on a similar under­lying ideology or conception of the prisoner. 21. Lee Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca Is the Prison: Art and Politics in Prisons in the 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 7. 22. Donald Noble, Peter Butler, Frank Lott, Carl Jones-­El, and Herbert Blyden X., “The Attica Liberation Faction Manifesto of Demands and Anti-­Depression Platform (1971),” Race and Class 53, no. 2 (2011): 28–35. 23. See Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the W ­ ater: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (New York: Pantheon, 2016). 24. Thompson, Blood in the ­Water, 562. 25. Susan E. Cahan, Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 69. 26. Black Emergency Cultural Co­ali­tion (BECC) Archives, box 2, folder 13, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. 27. “We, the men of Attica Prison, have been committed to the N.Y.S. Department of Corrections by the ­people of society for the purpose of correcting what [have] been deemed as social errors in be­hav­ior. Errors which have classified us as socially unacceptable u ­ ntil programmed with new values and more thorough understanding as to our values and responsibilities as members of the outside community. The Attica Prison program in its structure and conditions have been enslaved on the pages of this Manifesto of Demands with the blood, sweat, and tears of the inmates of this prison. “The program which we are submitted to ­under the façade of rehabilitation, is relative to the ancient stupidity of pouring w ­ ater on a drowning man, inasmuch as we are treated for our hostilities by our program administrators with their hostility as medi­cation. “In our efforts to comprehend on a feeling level an existence contrary to vio­lence, we are confronted by our captors with what is fair and just, we are victimized by the exploitation and the denial of the celebrated due pro­cess of law.” 284

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Noble et al., “The Attica Liberation Faction Manifesto of Demands and Anti-­Depression Platform (1971),” 30. 28. Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca Is the Prison, 16–17. 29. The Black Emergency Cultural Co­ali­tion Inc., By-­Laws, “Attachment to Form 1023 filed by The Black Emergency Cultural Co­ali­tion, Sept 25, 1972,” BECC Archives, box 1, folder 1. 30. “Prison Arts Program Directory,” BECC Newsletter, 1980, 11–13. 31. See BECC correspondence to teaching artist Louanie Elke confirming teaching schedule in San Quentin. BECC Archives, box 1, folder 22. 32. Ronald G. King, “Art and the Ex-­Con,” BECC Newsletter, 1980, 18. 33. Rodney G. King, “Art and the Ex-­Con,” BECC Newsletter, 1980, 18. 34. Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca Is the Prison, 86. Originally published in Benny Andrews, Echoes: Prisons, U.S.A. (New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, n.d. [1977]), n.p. 35. BECC’s prison art program was featured in an article in the March–­April 1973 issue of Art in Amer­i­ca written by Alexandra C. Anderson. Benny Andrews is quoted as stating that the program “ ‘serves as an instrument to bridge the gap between the ­free and incarcerated. It includes art instruction, vari­ous informative discussions about current activities in the art world and a chance to exchange ideas and experience. The communication that takes place between us (the artists) and the inmates ­really transcends teaching art: it becomes a ­human exchange experience, and our being artists quickly becomes secondary’ ” (14). 36. BECC Archives, box 1, folder 18. 37. Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca Is the Prison, 7. 38. Bern­stein, Amer­ic­ a Is the Prison, 130. 39. Bern­stein, Amer­ic­ a Is the Prison, 81–82. 40. Lea, interview with the author. 41. “The Return of Pell Grants for Prisoners?” SpearIt, Criminal Justice (Summer 2016), https://­www​.­americanbar​.­org​/­content​/­dam​/­aba​/­publications/​ ­criminal​_­justice​_­magazine/​ ­v31​ /­SpearIt​.­authcheckdam​.­pdf. 42. Bern­stein, Amer­ic­ a Is the Prison, 183. 43. The Alabama Prison Arts + Education Proj­ect and the Ohio Prison Arts Connection ­were greatly influenced by the William James Association and the Arts in Corrections model. 44. Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca Is the Prison, 80, 81. 45. See “Prison Arts Proj­ect: 40 Years and ­Going Strong!,” William James Association, Prison Arts Proj­ect, Newsletter, March 2017, http://­hosted​.­verticalresponse​.­com​/­458689​/­76c350141a​ /­1491500906​/­752c13e9d4​/­. 46. Laure Brooks, Executive Director of William James Association, interview with the author, 19 April 2013. N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 6 5 – 1 7 0

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47. Many artists who work in programs that lack an artist facilitator find that one of the biggest challenges to teaching in prison is arranging to have prison staff available to accompany them to the class area and to bring students to class. DonChristian Jones, a teaching artist at Rikers Island Correctional Fa­cil­it­y in New York, explains: “Working at Rikers is in­ter­est­ing ­because you can have all this stuff set up beforehand, all the logistics. You get ­there, and no one knows why y­ ou’re ­there. No one’s ready for you, and y­ ou’re left scrambling. They are left scrambling, trying to figure out, ‘Oh, they need an escort,’ ‘Oh, they need youth [participants].’ And they d ­ on’t even have a team for you.” DonChristian Jones, interview with the author, 20 January 2017. 48. “Prison Arts Proj­ect: 40 Years and G ­ oing Strong!” 49. Alma Robinson, email to the author, 17 October 2019. 50. Jack Bowers, email to the author, 17 October 2019. 51. Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca Is the Prison, 101. 52. For more consideration of this topic, see the video of Asian American Writers’ Workshop panel, “How We Talk about Prison: Rewriting the Language of Incarceration,” 22 January 2019, https://­www​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​=R ­ 9IhmEa46TQ. 53. Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee, and Dean Spade, “Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer Movement,” in Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, ed. Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2011), 35. 54. DonChristian Jones, interview with the author, 16 January 2017. 55. Jones, interview with the author, 2017. 56. See “Mayor de Blasio Announces City Jail Population Is Below 9,000 for the First Time in 35 Years,” The Official Website of the City of New York, 27 December 2017, https://­www1​.­nyc​ .­gov​/­office​-­of​-­the​-­mayor​/­news​/­778​-­17​/­mayor​-­de​-­blasio​-­city​-­jail​-­population​-­below​-­9​-­000​-­the​ -­first​-­time​-­35​-­years; Michael Schwirtz, “What Is Rikers?,” New York Times, 5 April  2017, https://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2017​/­04​/­05​/­nyregion​/­rikers​-­island​-­prison​-­new​-­york​.­html. 57. Nick Pinto, “Report: Rikers Still Full of New Yorkers Who ­Can’t Afford Bail,” Village Voice, 19 May 2017, https://­www​.­villagevoice​.­com​/­2017​/­05​/­19​/­report​-­rikers​-­still​-­full​-­of​-­new​-­yorkers​ -­who​-­cant​-­afford​-­bail​/­. 58. See Jennifer Gonnerman, “Before the Law,” New Yorker, 6 October 2014, http://­www​ .­newyorker​.­com​/­magazine​/­2014​/­10​/­06​/­before​-­the​-­law; and Jennifer Gonnerman, “Kalief Browder, 1993–2015,” New Yorker, 7 June 2015, https://­www​.­newyorker​.­com​/­news​/­news​-­desk​ /­kalief​-­browder​-­1993​-­2015. 59. Jones, interview with the author, 2017. 60. Treacy Ziegler, “Freedom of Moth,” BroadStreetReview​.­com, 3 March 2014, http://­www​ .­broadstreetreview​.­com​/­art​/­freedom​-­of​-­a​-­moth#.

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61. Ziegler, “Art of Social Responsibility.” 62. See Lisa Guenther, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Art in solitary confinement is the subject of Chapter 6 of this book. 63. Robin Paris and Tom Williams, interview with the author, 10 May 2018. 64. Thanks to Treacy Ziegler for introducing me to Eric Gardenhire. Grafton is one of the prisons where she has volunteered. 65. Eric Gardenhire, interview with the author, 17 October 2017. 66. Prison Re­nais­sance: A Journal and a Movement, https://­www​.­prisonrenaissance​.­org​/­. 67. Emile DeWeaver, interview with the author, facilitated by Camille Griep, 17 March 2017. 68. “Philosophy,” Prison Re­nais­sance: A Journal and a Movement, https://­www​.­prison​ renaissance​.­org​/­philosophy. 69. Camille Griep, email to the author, 7 July 2017. 70. Griep, email to the author. 71. Emile DeWeaver, “Artist’s Statement,” Incarceratedly Yours, issue i (2018): unnumbered page, https://­static1​.­squarespace​.­com​/­static​/­5a1e7357d7bdce95bf1ecf35​/­t​/­5b0e293070a6ad6b049d5fb8​ /­1527654823343​/­INCARCERATEDLY+YOURS+%281%29​.­pdf. 72. Emile DeWeaver, Metropolis Opening Conversation, 13 April 2018, https://­vimeo​.­com​ /­273046664. 73. “Metropolis: Public Proj­ect and Exhibition,” website of Southern Exposure, 13–28 April 2018, https://­www​.­soex​.­org​/­projects​-­exhibitions​/­metropolis. 74. Emile DeWeaver, Metropolis Opening Conversation, 13 April 2018, https://­vimeo​.­com​ /­273046664. 75. Brown, Emergent Strategy, 18–19. 76. Dreisinger, Incarceration Nations, 138. 77. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 248.

6. Resisting Isolation 1. Sal Rodriguez, “Suicide of California Hunger Strike Participant Draws National Attention to a Broken System,” Solitary Watch, 30 July 2013, https://­solitarywatch​.­org​/­2013​/­07​/­30​ /­suicide​/­. 2. Sadhbh Walshe, “California Prison Hunger Strike Is a Call for Justice, Guardian, 16 July 2013, https://­www​.­theguardian​.­com​/­commentisfree​/­2013​/­jul​/­16​/­california​-­prison​-­hunger​ -­strike​-­message.

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3. George Lavender, “Suicide or Not, First Known Death in CA Hunger Strike Reflects Inhumane Prison Conditions,” In ­These Times, 1 August 2013, https://­inthesetimes​.­com​/­uprising​ /­entry​/­15390​/­first​_­known​_­death​_­in​_­CA​_­hunger​_­strike. 4. See Steve Gorman, “California Prisons, Hunger-­Strike Backers Clash over Inmate Death,” ­Reuters, 28 July 2013, https://­www​.­reuters​.­com​/­article​/­us​-­usa​-­prisons​-­california​/­california​ -­prisons​-­hunger​-­strike​-­backers​-­clash​-­over​-­inmate​-­death​-­idUSBRE96R01O20130728. 5. Lisa Guenther, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), xii. 6. Bill Sell, letter to Treacy Ziegler, 18 June 2012. My sincere thanks to Treacy Ziegler for sharing her correspondence with Sell and allowing me to cite it ­here. 7. Sell, letter to Ziegler, 26 August 2012. 8. Guenther, Solitary Confinement, 179. 9. Ziegler, letter to Sell, 19 July 2012. 10. Ziegler, letter to Sell, 20 May 2012. 11. Sell, letter to Ziegler, 10 March 2013. 12. Sell, letter to Ziegler, 28 April 2013. 13. Sell, letter to Ziegler, 16 June 2013. 14. I refer to t­hese types of units interchangeably as “isolation cells” and “solitary confinement.” Also, see Guenther, Solitary Confinement, 161. 15. Guenther, Solitary Confinement, 161. 16. Samuel Freeman Miller and Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Reports: Medley, Petitioner, (134 U.S. 160. 1889), 168, periodical, https://­www​.­loc​.­gov​/­item​/­usrep134160​/­. 17. See ACLU of Texas, “A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas,” 5 February 2015, https://­www​.­aclutx​.­org​/­en​/­report​/­a​-­solitary​-­failure. 18. Guenther, Solitary Confinement, 130. 19. A report by the ACLU states that in 1984 ­there was one supermax prison in the United States, and by 1999 ­there ­were sixty supermax prisons in thirty states. See ACLU of Texas, “A Solitary Failure.” 20. See Valerie Kiebala and Sal Rodriquez, “Solitary Watch: FAQ,” Solitary Watch, last updated December 2018, https://­solitarywatch​.­org​/­facts​/­faq​/­. Solitary Watch reports that the numbers of ­people in isolation units have gone down since the 2012 peak of over eighty-­nine thousand ­people, suggesting that advocacy against solitary confinement has led to some reform efforts. 21. Jason Lydon with Kamaria Carrington, Hana Low, Reed Miller, and Mahsa Yazdy, Coming Out of Concrete Closets: A Report on Black and Pink’s National LGBTQ Prisoner Survey, October 2015, 9, https://­www​.­blackandpink​.­org​/­coming​-­out​-­of​-­concrete​-­closets.

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22. See “Growing Up Locked Down: Youth in Solitary Confinement in Jails and Prisons Across the United States,” report by H ­ uman Rights Watch and ACLU, 2012, pp.  53–54, https://­www​.­aclu​.­org​/­report​/­growing​-­locked​-­down​-­youth​-­solitary​-­confinement​-­jails​-­and​ -­prisons​-­across​-­united​-­states. 23. According to the editors of Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement, “In California’s prisons, ‘evidence’ such as a letter, name, drawing, or possession of the wrong book is enough to ‘validate’ someone as a gang member or associate, which results in indefinite placement in solitary confinement. Many ‘validated’ prisoners have never committed a violent act in or out of prison, but they are deemed guilty by association. The only chance they have to return to the prison’s mainline is to ‘debrief,’ which means providing information, often false, about other prisoners. Villa was re-­validated by gang investigators in 2008, then again in 2013 when a corrections officer said he heard Villa hollering a phrase down the corridor in Nahuatl, an indigenous Mexican language banned at Pelican Bay.” Jean Casella, James Ridgeway, and Sarah Shourd, eds., Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement (New York: New Press, 2016), 35. 24. Lorna A. Rhodes, “Changing the Subject: Conversation in Supermax,” Cultural Anthropology 20, no. 3 (2005): 389. 25. See Uzair Paracha, “Innocent in the Eyes of the Law,” in Hell Is a Very Small Place, 43–53; and the case of Luis Felipe discussed in Jan Hoffman, “Testing the Limits of Punishment: Unusually Severe Life Sentence vs. Society’s Need for Safety,” New York Times, 26 October 1997, https://­www​.­nytimes.​ ­com​/­1997​/­10​/­26/​ ­nyregion/​ ­testing-​ ­limits-​ ­punishment-​ ­unusually-​ ­severe​ -­life​-­sentence​-­vs​-­society​-­s​-­need​-­for​.­html. 26. See David Abel, “Colorado Prison ‘A High-­Tech Version of Hell,’ ” Boston Globe, 26 April 2015. 27. Guenther, Solitary Confinement, 165. 28. Bonnie Kerness, “Race and the Politics of Isolation in NJ Prisons, NJ,” lecture and written speech, Campaign against Isolated Confinement, Rutgers Law School, 25 February 2018. 29. William Blake, “A Sentence Worse than Death,” in Hell Is a Very Small Place, 27. 30. Survivors Manual: Surviving in Solitary: A Manual Written by and for ­People Living in Control Units, comp. and ed. Bonnie Kerness, fifth printing (June 2012), p. 9. 31. Judith Vazquez, “On the Verge of Hell,” in Hell Is a Very Small Place, 55–60. 32. Guenther, Solitary Confinement, 199. 33. Shanka Senghor, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison (New York: Convergent Books, 2016). 34. Quote from Lynne Broadway, Omar’s ­mother, in An Omar Broadway Film, directed by Douglas Tirola and Omar Broadway, 2008.

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35. See Alice Speri, “New York Gang Database Expanded by 70 ­Percent ­under Mayor Bill de Blasio,” Intercept, 11 June 2018, https://­theintercept​.­com​/­2018​/­06​/­11​/­new​-­york​-­gang​-­database​ -­expanded​-­by​-­70​-­percent​-­under​-­mayor​-­bill​-­de​-­blasio​/­. 36. Anna Flagg, Alex Tatusian, and Christie Thompson, “Who’s in Solitary Confinement?,” Marshall Proj­ect, 30 November 2016, https://­www​.­themarshallproject​.­org​/­2016​/­11​/­30​/­a​-­new​ -­report​-­gives​-­the​-­most​-­detailed​-­breakdown​-­yet​-­of​-­how​-­isolation​-­is​-­used​-­in​-­u​-­s​-­prisons. 37. Simone Browne, Dark ­Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015). 38. Quote from Ron Holvey, creator of STGMU and principal investigator of the gang intelligence unit in the New Jersey Department of Corrections, An Omar Broadway Film. 39. Simone Browne, Dark ­Matter: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 21. 40. “N.J. Closes High-­Risk Gang Unit at Northern State Prison in Newark,” NJ​.­com, 7 May 2010, http://­www​.­nj​.­com​/­news​/­index​.­ssf​/­2010​/­05​/­nj​_­closes​_­high​-­risk​_­gang​_­unit​.­html. 41. Noah Cohen, “Man Wanted for Murder of His Nephew Kills Himself as Police Surround Home, Officials Say,” NJ​.­com, 10 June  2017, http://­www​.­nj​.­com​/­essex​/­index​.­ssf​/­2017​/­06​ /­homicide​_­suspect​_­kills​_­himself​_­as​_­police​_­try​_­to​_­ma​.­html; and Graham Winfrey, “HBO Documentary Co-­Director Commits Suicide amid Murder Investigation,” Indiewire​.­Com, 20 June 2017, http://­www​.­indiewire​.­com​/­2017​/­06​/­hbo​-­documentary​-­suicide​-­murder​-­investigation​ -­an​-­omar​-­broadway​-­film​-­tribeca​-­film​-­festival​-­1201843710​/­. 42. Dylan Rodríguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 44. 43. “Dimanche v. Brown,” Justia, 18 April 2015, https://­us11thcircuitcourtofappealsopinions​ .­justia​.­com​/­2015​/­04​/­18​/­dimanche​-­v​-­brown​/­. 44. Moliere Dimanche, interview with the author, 13 November 2017. 45. Moliere Dimanche II, It Takes a Criminal to Know One: How the Inspector General and I Are One and the Same (self-­published, 2016), 460. 46. Dimanche, It Takes a Criminal to Know One, 12. 47. See Eyal Press, “Madness,” New Yorker, 2 May  2016, https://­www​.­newyorker​.­com​ /­magazine​/­2016​/­05​/­02​/­the​-­torturing​-­of​-­mentally​-­ill​-­prisoners; and Eyal Press, “A Death in a Florida Prison Goes Unpunished,” New Yorker website, 23 March 2017, https://­www​.­newyorker​ .­com​/­news​/­daily​-­comment​/­a​-­death​-­in​-­a​-­florida​-­prison​-­goes​-­unpunished. Press describes systemic torture and killing of prisoners in the ­mental health unit, called the Transitional Care Unit, of Dade Correctional Institution. 48. Dimanche, interview with the author. 49. Dimanche, “Introduction,” It Takes a Criminal to Know One, unnumbered page.

290

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50. Dimanche, It Takes a Criminal to Know One, 473. 51. Dimanche’s ­legal work culminated in a federal case, Dimanche v. Brown, in which he acted as both plaintiff and l­ egal advocate to sue the correction officers who had abused him. Though he lost the case, he considers it a victory in that it forced the state to show up and hear the abuses he experienced and witnessed. In a letter to me he writes: “It was a radical move, and I practically butchered them, but it may have been too soon for a case like that to go before a jury with no black ­people. I even exposed how one of the defendants, Cliff Yaney, was involved in the attempted rape of a 14-­year old girl at knife point. ­Every defendant squirmed on the stand and I could see the jury get visibly shaken up. But I wondered if it was ­because they ­were tired of hearing lies from the defendants, or b ­ ecause they hoped the defendants did better against my cross examinations? In any event, they ­were saved, but I made my point clear: civil rights are retained by prisoners. What pleased me most is that FDOC sent the new recruits from the acad­emy to watch the older generation of officers answer to an inmate for their misdeeds. That was priceless.” 52. Joy James, “Introduction,” The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Con­temporary Prison Writings, ed. Joyce James (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), xxxii. 53. Fred Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom,” CR: The New Centennial Review 4, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 279. 54. Anoop Mirpuri, “A Correction-­Extraction Complex: Prison, Lit­er­a­ture, and Abolition as an Interpretive Practice,” Cultural Critique 104 (Summer 2019): 57. 55. Dimanche, It Takes a Criminal to Know One, 488. 56. James, “Introduction,” The New Abolitionists, xxv. 57. Dimanche, It Takes a Criminal to Know One, 480–481. 58. David Lloyd, ­Under Repre­sen­ta­tion: The Racial Regime of Aesthetics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019), 10. 59. Bonnie Kerness, interview with the author, 3 June 2016. 60. Dan Berger, The Strug­gle Within: Prisons, Po­liti­cal Prisoners, and Mass Movements in the United States (Oakland, CA: PMP Press, 2014), 10. 61. Bonnie Kerness, “The Hidden History of Solitary Confinement in New Jersey’s Control Units,” Solitary Watch, 13 March 2013, https://­solitarywatch​.­org​/­2013​/­03​/­13​/­the​-­hidden​-­history​ -­of​-­solitary​-­confinement​-­in​-­new​-­jerseys​-­control​-­units​/­. 62. Ojore Lutalo, interview with the author, 3 June 2016. 63. John Leach, “Psychological ­Factors in Exceptional, Extreme and Torturous Environments,” Extreme Physiology and Medicine, June  2016, https://­www​.­ncbi​.­nlm​.­nih​.­gov​/­pmc​ /­articles​/­PMC4890253​/­. 64. Leach, “Psychological ­Factors in Exceptional, Extreme and Torturous Environments.”

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65. Bonnie Kerness, “Fighting for Justice: On the ‘War at Home,’ ” in Marking Time: Prison Arts and Activism Resource Guide, comp. and ed. Institute for Research on ­Women (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 2015), 6. Also available at http://­irw​.­rutgers​.­edu​/­images​/­MT​ _­Guide​_­RESOURCE​_­GUIDE​_­web​.­pdf. 66. Guenther, Solitary Confinement, 210. 67. Ojore Lutalo, interview with the author, 3 June 2016. 68. Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and Its Discontents (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009), 47. 69. Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom,” 275. 70. Stephen Dillon, “The Prisoner’s Dream: Queer Visions from Solitary Confinement,” Qui Parle 23, no. 2 (Spring / Summer 2015): 166. 71. Lydon et al., Coming Out of Concrete Closets, 9. 72. Dennis Childs, Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 96–97. Accessed at http://­www​.­jstor​ .­org​/­stable​/­10​.­5749​/­j​.­ctt14btgmr​.­6. 73. See Robert King, “Experience: I Spent 29 Years in Solitary Confinement,” Guardian, 27 August  2010, https://­www​.­theguardian​.­com​/­lifeandstyle​/­2010​/­aug​/­28​/­29​-­years​-­solitary​-­confine​ ment​-­robert​-­king; David Cole, “For Herman Wallace Solitary Confinement Amounted to a Death Sentence,” Washington Post, 24 October 2013, https://­www​.­washingtonpost​.­com​/­opinions​ /­f or​ -­h erman​ -­w allace​ -­s olitary​ -­c onfinement​ -­a mounted​ -­t o​ -­a​ -­d eath​ -­s entence​ /­2 013​ /­1 0​ /­2 4​ /­d37f452a​-­39ab​-­11e3​-­b6a9​-­da62c264f40e​_­story​.­html​?­utm​_­term​=​.­­e6fde3757f50; “­After De­cades in Solitary, Last of the ‘Angola 3’ Carry on Their Strug­gle,” All ­Things Considered, NPR, 19 March 2016, https://­www​.­npr​.­org​/­2016​/­03​/­19​/­470828257​/­after​-­decades​-­in​-­solitary​-­last​-­of​-­the​ -­angola​-­3​-­carry​-­on​-­their​-­struggle. 74. Albert Woodfox with Leslie George, Solitary: Unbroken by Four De­cades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope (New York: Grove Press, 2019), 192. 75. See Brooke Shelby Biggs, “Camp J, Red Hats, and the Hole: Inside Angola’s Three Circles of Solitary-­ Confinement Hell,” ­Mother Jones, 5 March  2009, https://­www​.­motherjones​.­com​ /­politics​/­2009​/­03​/­camp​-­j​-­red​-­hats​-­and​-­hole​/­; and Grace Toohey, “Angola Closes Its Notorious Camp J, ‘A Microcosm of a Lot of ­Things that Are Wrong,” The Advocate, 13 May 2018, https://­www​ .­t headvocate​.­c om​/­b aton​_­r ouge​/­n ews​/­c rime​_­p olice​/­a rticle​_­b 39f1e82​-­4 d84​-­1 1e8​-­b bc2​ -­1ff70a3227e7​.­html. 76. Woodfox, Solitary, 167. 77. See James Ridgeway and Jean Casella, “Torturous Milestone: 40 Years in Solitary,” ­Mother Jones, 17 April 2012, http://­www​.­motherjones​.­com​/­politics​/­2012​/­04​/­angola​-­prison​-­3​-­herman​ -­wallace​-­albert​-­woodfox​-­40​-­years​-­solitary​-­confinement.

2 92

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78. See Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace, The House that Herman Built (Stuttgart, Germany: Akademie Schloss Solitude, 2006). 79. See hermanshousethefilm​.­com. 80. Reynolds, quoted in Jane Carr, “On ‘Legislative Art’: Laurie Jo Reynolds and Tamms Year Ten,” Brooklyn Quarterly, 12 November 2013, http://­brooklynquarterly​.­org​/­on​-­legislative​-­art​ -­laurie​-­jo​-­reynolds​-­and​-­tamms​-­year​-­ten​/­. 81. Pete Brook, “In Assessing ‘Photo Requests from Solitary’ Let’s Ask if the Image Meets the Prisoner’s Brief?,” Prison Photography, 11 July  2017, https://­prisonphotography​.­org​/­tag​ /­solitary​-­confinement​/­. 82. “About Tamms C-­Max,” website of Tamms Year Ten, accessed 11 April 2013, http://­ tammsyearten​.­mayfirst​.­org​/­node​/­2. 83. See Steve Estes, I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 2, 138. Also note the claim to the category of ­human, specifically manhood, made throughout black freedom strug­gles, for example, in Josiah Wedgwood’s 1787 abolitionist medallion Am I Not a Man and a ­Brother? Martin Berger discusses Wedgwood’s medallion in Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 32, http://­www​.­bbc​.­co​.­uk​/­history​ /­british​/­abolition​/­africans​_­in​_­art​_­gallery​_­02​.­shtml. 84. Beth E. Richie, Arrested Justice: Black W ­ omen, Vio­lence, and Amer­ic­ a’s Prison Nation (New York: NYU Press, 2012), 112–115. 85. “About PRFS,” Photo Requests from Solitary, 18 July 2019, http://­photorequestsfromsolitary​ .­org​/­information​/­. 86. See Peter Moskowitz, “Photo Requests from Solitary,” Aljazeera Amer­i­ca, 30 September  2013, http://­america​.­aljazeera​.­com​/­articles​/­2013​/­9​/­30​/­photo​-­requests​-­fromsolitary​ .­html. 87. See Priscilla Frank, “Prisoners in Solitary Confinement Requested Photos of the Outside World—­and ­Here They Are,” HuffPost, 20 September 2013 (updated 6 December 2017), https://­www​.­huffpost​.­com​/­entry​/­solitary​-­confinement​-­phot​_­n​_­3950622. 88. Jeanine Oleson, email to the author, 10 September 2019. 89. Dillon, “The Prisoner’s Dream,” 162. 90. Quoted in Pete Brook, “Visions from Solitary: Prisoners’ Imaginations Made Real by Activists’ Photo­graphs,” Prison Photography, 19 November 2012, https://­prisonphotography​.­org​ /­2012​/­11​/­19​/­views​-­from​-­solitary​-­prisoners​-­imaginations​-­made​-­real​-­by​-­activists​-­photographs​/­. 91. Quoted in Brook, “Visions from Solitary.” 92. Dillon, “The Prisoner’s Dream,” 164.

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29 3

7. Posing in Prison 1. Tayari Jones, “What Nelson Mandela Lost,” New York Times, 6 July 2018, https://­www​ .­n ytimes​.­c om​/­2 018​/­0 7​/­0 6​/­o pinion​/­s unday​/­n elson​-­m andela​-­t ayari​-­j ones​-­p rison​-­l etters​ .­html. 2. David Adler, quoted in Harry Cheadle, “Click Clicks in the Clink Clink,” Vice, June 2012, http://­www​.­vice​.­com​/­read​/­taking​-­pictures​-­in​-­prison. 3. Geoffrey Batchen, “Vernacular Photographies,” History of Photography 2, no. 3 (2000): 262. 4. Alyse Emdur, Prison Landscapes (London: Four Corner Books, 2012). Between 2011 and 2015, I purchased images in several prisons in Ohio for $2.00 to $2.50 each. It is difficult to find data on how much money prisons make from operating ­these studios as it is not considered a formal program. According to Dave Adler, who has interviewed a few wardens about photographic practices, they describe it as a “ser­vice” that prisons offer to the imprisoned and their visitors. Still, the costs of ­these photo­graphs are significant given the low wages of prison laborers. For more on wages paid to incarcerated people, see Wendy Sawyer, “How Much Do Incarcerated People Earn in Each State?,” Prison Policy Initiative, 10 April 2017, https://www​ .­prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/. 5. See Allan Sekula, “The Body and the Archive,” October 39 (Winter 1986): 3–64. 6. See Pete Brook’s invaluable blog, Prison Photography, for more on the significance of photography to documenting the carceral state and the histories of prisons and detention centers: https://­prisonphotography​.­org​/­. 7. For more on the exhibit, see Chloe Wyma, “ ‘Prison Has Its Own Art Culture’: Curator Dave Adler on the Clocktower’s Poignant Inmate Photo Show,” ArtInfo​.c­ om, 16 August 2012, http://­www​.­artinfo.​ ­com​/­news​/­story​/­818876​/­prison​-­has​-­its​-­own​-­art​-­culture​-­curator​-­dave​-­adler​ -­on​-­the​-­clocktowers​-­poignant​-­inmate​-­photo​-­show. 8. T ­ hese vernacular and carceral collections are gaining greater recognition and value as documents of prison life and culture. Of note is a collection of four hundred Polaroid photo­graphs from California prisons taken in the 1970s and 1980s labeled “The Los Angeles Gang and Prison Photo Archive”; the collection has moved through many dealers since it hit the market in 2011 and, at one point, had a price tag of $45,000. See Pete Brook, “Prison Yard to Paris Photo LA: How an Art Market Hustle Put a $45K Price-­Tag on Prison Polaroids,” Prison Photography, 2 May 2013, http://­prisonphotography​.­org​/­2013​/­05​ /­0 2​ /­p rison​ -­y ard​ -­t o​ -­p aris​ -­p hoto​ -­l a​ -­a rt​ -­m arket​ -­h ustle​ -­a nd​ -­f low​ -­p uts​ -­4 5k​ -­p rice​ -­t ag​ -­o n​ -­prison​-­polaroids​/­. 9. See James Wyman, Introduction, Afterimage 24, no. 5, special issue, From the Background to the Foreground: The Photo Backdrop and Cultural Expression, March / April 1997, ed. James

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Wyman. Wyman acknowledges London daguerreotypist Antoine Claudet for patenting backdrops in 1841. 10. Avon Neal, “Folk Art Fantasies: Photog­raphers’ Backdrops,” Afterimage 24, no. 5 (1997): 13. 11. Arjun Appadurai, “The Colonial Backdrop,” Afterimage 24, no.  5: 4–7, https://­web​-­a​ -­ebscohost​-­com​.­proxy​.­libraries​.­rutgers​.­edu​/­ehost​/­detail​/­detail​?­vid​=­1&sid​=­03985a18​-­a436​-­42e2​ -­acd6​-­7df07f295c3c%40sessionmgr4008&bdata​=J­ nNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN​ =­9703172174&db​=­aph. 12. Appadurai, “The Colonial Backdrop.” 13. Alyse Emdur, Prison Landscapes, unnumbered pages. 14. Tina Campt, Image ­Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Eu­rope (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 24. 15. Campt, Image ­Matters, 7, 24. 16. Jennifer Bronson and E. Ann Carson, “Prisoners in 2017,” Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, April  2019), 3, https://­www​.­bjs​.­gov​/­content​/­pub​/­pdf​/­p17​.­pdf. 17. Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, “Introduction,” in Intimate ­Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care, ed. Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 5. 18. Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of H ­ uman Feeling, 20th anniv. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003 [1983]), 7. 19. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 183. 20. See the writings of Parreñas and Boris, for example their edited collection Intimate ­Labors. 21. “ODRC Visitation Guidelines,” accessed 15 July  2019, https://­drc​.­ohio​.­gov​/­visiting​ -­guidelines. 22. Jan Ransom, “­Women Describe Invasive Strip Searches on Visits to City Jails,” New York Times, 26 April 2018, https://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2018​/­04​/­26​/­nyregion​/­strip​-­search​-­new​-­york​ -­city​-­jails​-­lawsuits​.­html. 23. Lauren Berlant, “Intimacy: A Special Issue,” Critical Inquiry 24, no. 2 (1998): 283.

Conclusion 1. Kelly Lytle Hernández, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of H ­ uman Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). 2. Joy James, “Introduction: Violations,” in Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy, ed. Joy James (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 4.

N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 3 8 – 2 5 5

29 5

3. James, “Introduction: Violations,” 5. 4. “Vari­ous Artists, Agora, April 2018–­March 2019,” High Line Art, accessed 21 June 2018, http://­art​.­thehighline​.­org​/­project​/­agora​/­. 5. Cora Fisher, “An Artist’s Bond with Her Imprisoned F ­ ather,” Hyperallergic, 11 November  2017, https://­hyperallergic​.­com​/­410947​/­sable​-­elyse​-­smith​-­ordinary​-­violence​-­queens​ -­museum​-­2017​/­. 6. Sable Elyse Smith, interview with the author, 27 September 2016. 7. Smith, interview with the author. 8. Smith interview with the author. 9. James Baldwin, “The Uses of the Blues,” in The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (New York: Vintage, 2011 [1964]), 73. 10. Joshua Bennett, “On Blueness,” in The Sobbing School (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 66. 11. Sable Elyse Smith, email to the author, 24 January 2017. 12. Smith, interview with the author. 13. Sable Elyse Smith, The Body Keeps the Score, from the exhibition Blue Is Ubiquitous and Forbidden, SOHO20 +/−­Proj­ect Space, New York, NY, 2015. http://­www​.­sableelysesmith​.­com​ /­Blue​-­is​-­Ubiquitous​-­and​-­Forbidden​-­SOHO20.

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N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 5 5 – 2 6 2

A C K N O W L­E D G M E N T S

Over the course of the nine years of researching and writing this book, many have offered guidance, advice, and support. I am deeply grateful to all the artists who shared their work and life experiences with me. I could not have written this book without the generosity, creativity, and insights of the following artists: Muhammad Ansi, Gil Batle, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, Sara Bennett, Courtney Berger / Mark Strandquist and The P ­ eople’s Paper Co-­op / Reentry Think Tank, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Omar Broadway and Buddy Randolph, Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, Aron “Akili” Castlin, Cleveland, Daniel McCarthy Clifford, Tameca Cole, Russell Craig, Emile DeWeaver and Prison Re­ nais­ sance, Moliere Dimanche, Edward, Maria Gaspar and 96 Acres Project, Dean Gillispie, Justin Goh, Ronnie Goodman, Calvin Gorham, Brian Harrington, James “Yaya” Hough, Carnell Hunnicutt Sr., Duron Jackson, Asia Johnson, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, Titus Kaphar, Eddie Kates, Reuben Kenyatta, Yashua Klos, Jesse Krimes, Deana Lawson, Mark Loughney, Deborah Luster, Ojore Lutalo, Ricky D. Matthews, Susan Meiselas, Maxwell Melvins, George Anthony Morton, Michael Moses El, Zora Murff, Lydia Muwanga, Lisette Oblitas, Ndume Olatushani, Jared Owens, Robin Paris and Tom Williams, Tyra Patterson, Leonard Peltier, Jessica Posner, Kenneth Reams, Laurie Jo Reynolds, Sarah Jane Rhee, Gilberto Rivera, Cameron Rowland, Karen Ruckman and the Lorton Proj­ect, Billy Sell, Gaynel Sheffield,

29 7

Dread Scott and Joanne Kushner, Isaac Scott and The Confined Arts program, Sable Elyse Smith, Todd (Hyung-­Rae) Tarselli, Raymond Towler, Stephen Tourlentes, Kevin Veal, Herman Wallace and Jackie Sumell, Jerome Washington, Kehinde Wiley, a­ nd Women of York. Thank you also to the countless backdrop artists, muralists, and photog­raphers whose names I do not know. I could not have ventured into this work without the fearless vision of many black feminist and prison abolitionist scholars and activists. At ­every step of the way, I have returned to the work of Angela Y. Davis. Thank you for showing so many of us how to envision and create another world. I have been deeply inspired by the work of Michelle Alexander, Fred Moten, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Kali Nicole Gross, Sarah Haley, Kelly Lytle Hernández, Cheryl Hicks, Elizabeth Hinton, Mariama Kaba, Donna Murch, Bryan Stevenson, and many ­others. This book reflects ongoing conversations that I have had on visual culture, aesthetics, and prisons with Russell Craig, V ­ irginia Grise, Ronak Kapadia, Bonnie Kerness, Jesse Krimes, Ojure Lutalo, Jared Owens, Gilberto Rivera, and Ruby Tapia. Their brilliance, generosity, and insights have taught me more than I can share in ­these pages. Thanks so much to the writers, educators, attorneys, artists, activists, relatives of incarcerated p ­ eople, nonprofit organ­izations, and p ­ eople working in criminal justice reform and prison abolition who have contributed in countless ways to this book: David Adler, Lois Ahrens, Laurie Brooks and the William James Association, Pete Brook, Robyn Buseman, Da Real Prison Art, Doris Davis, Shakyra Diaz, Eric Gardenhire, Leslie George, the Gillispie family, Jessie Glover and the Ohio Prison Arts Connection, Jane Golden and Mural Arts Philadelphia, Linda Green, Camile Griep, Jasmine Heiss, Jessica Helsinger, Leslie Hendricks, Kendra Hovey and Healing Broken Circles, Beth D. Jacob, Wendy Jason and the Justice Arts Coalition, DonChristian Jones, Sean Kelley, Bonnie Kerness, Phyllis Kornfeld, Joseph Lea, Donna Loughney, Jason Lydon, Barry Malin and Malin Gallery, J. D. McGuire, Joan O’Beirne, Alma Robinson of the California ­Lawyers for the Arts, Katie Sellers, David Singleton and Ohio Justice and Policy Center, Wendy Tatter, Erin Thompson, Lewis Wallace, Claudia Willen, Fury Young and the Die Jim Crow proj­ect, and Treacy Ziegler and Prisoner Express. My deepest thanks to Cathy Davidson, David L. Eng, Cheryl Finley, Sarah Haley, Fred Moten, Jeani O’Brien, and anonymous reviewers who read the manuscript in

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its entirety and offered incredible feedback. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas was the first person I talked to about this proj­ect, and she encouraged me to do it. Gregory Anand Jost read multiple drafts and supported me through much of the pro­cess. Thank you! I am grateful to friends and colleagues who offered feedback on chapters or sections of the manuscript: Lisa Arellano, Lee Bern­stein, Vaughn Booker, Ricardo Abreu Bracho, LeRonn Brooks, La Marr Jurelle Bruce, Marie Buck, Tina Campt, Daniel Carlton, Ed Cohen, Lisa Gail Collins, Aimee Meredith Cox, Jeff Decker, Eve Dunbar, Paulla Ebron, Julius Fleming, Michael Gillespie, Saidiya Hartman, Shona Jackson, Ronak Kapadia, Robin D. G. Kelley, Julie Livingston, Bakirathi Mani, Anoop Mirpuri, Doug Mitchell, Minoo Moallem, Danai Mupotsa, Tei Okamoto, Jeanine Oleson, Lissa Soep, Ruby Tapia, Greg Tate, Krista Thompson, and Treacy Ziegler. ­Others have offered invaluable support and guidance: Chris Agans, Radhika Balakrishnan, Alex Bell, Rudy Bell, Kimberly Benston, Rich Blint, Jack Bowers, Cara Bramson, Garnette Cardogan, Soyica Colbert, Ebony Coletu, Simone Drake, Erica  R. Edwards, Harry Elam, Michele Elam, Kevin Jerome Everson, Allen Feldman, Yomaira Figueroa, Leslie Fishbein, Tanisha Ford, Kate Fowle, Behrooz Ghamari, Angus Gillespie, Julian Kevon Glover, Gayatri Gopinath, Che Gossett, Zeynep Gursel, Diedra Harris-­Kelley, Doug Jones, Michelle Jones, Suvir Kaul, David Kazanjian, Eleza Kelley, Shannon King, Marci Kwon, Sussu Laaksonen, Mike Lesser, Sarah Lewis, Ania Loomba, Anita Mannur, Yolanda Martinez­San Miguel, Suzanne Modica, Victor Morrow, Kevin Murphy, Jennifer Christine Nash, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Fahamu Pecou, Juno Parreñas, Tacuma Peters, Monifa Porter, Eyal Press, Lindsay Reckson, Ramon Rivera-­Servera, Shana Redmond, Francisco Eduardo Robles, Donald Roden, Juana Maria Rodríguez, Ruddy Roye, Marisa Belausteguigotia Ruis, Josie Saldana, Matt Sandler, Susan Sidlauskas, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Kwabena Slaughter, Bayeté Ross Smith, Michelle Stephens, James Swenson, Brandi Thompson Summers, Noah Tamarkin, Lisa B. Thompson, Mary Trigg, Henry Turner, Rene Valdez, Deb Vargas, Priscilla Wald, Mary Wheatley, Deborah Willis, Craig Wilson, Ivy Wilson, Ken Wissoker, Christopher Wolfe, Yukiko Yamagata, Chi-ming Yang, and Andres Zervigon. The Carceral Studies Working Group at Rutgers, cofacilitated by Che Gossett and me, has been an invaluable space to workshop papers, learn from each other, and or­ga­nize around our mutual commitments. The working group includes Itzel

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29 9

Corona Aguilar, Michael Casiano, Todd Clear, Laura Cohen, Kali Nicole Gross, Daonne Huff, Donna Murch, Sarah Tobias, Christien Philmarc Tompkins, Andrew Urban, and Niina Vuolajarvi. I’ve had opportunities to collaborate with several organ­izations, artists, and curators on public programming and exhibitions. Thanks to all of my collaborators over the years: Laurie Brooks, Donna Gustafson, Sarah Tobias, Bianca Tylek and Worth Rises, Sean Kelley, Lawrence Bartley, Walter Puryear and the Andrew Freedman Home, Amy Rosenblum Martín, Julia Lourie, Olga Lozano, Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, the New Brunswick F ­ ree Library, Jane Golden and Mural Arts Philadelphia, Mountainview Program, Alfa Art Gallery, American Friends Ser­ vice Committee’s Prison Watch Program, PUEG Center at UNAM (National University of Mexico), Rutgers–­Camden Center for the Arts, School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers–­Newark, University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Proj­ect, William James Association, and Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers–­New Brunswick. Working with Michael Famighetti, Brendan Embser, and Aperture Foundation on Prison Nation, a traveling exhibition and special issue of Aperture magazine, was incredibly enriching and generative. To every­one who has helped along the way with exhibitions, public programming, documenting, and archiving this proj­ect, I am forever grateful: Eleanor and Calvin Wilson, Maricella Infante, ­Virginia Grise, Gregory Anand Jost and ­family, Ashara Renfroe, Scarlett Wieliczki, Crystal Durant, Aimee Meredith Cox, Julia Pagnamenta, Lauren Goldenberg, and designing the WE. The proj­ect has benefited tremendously from the feedback and engagement of audiences at the American Studies Association Annual Convention, the 2019 Society for Photographic Education National Conference in Cleveland, the Arts in Corrections Conference at Santa Clara University, Brooklyn Museum, Con­ temporary Arts Museum Houston, Colby College, Columbia University, Cornell University, Cleveland Public Library, Critical Ethnic Studies Association, CUNY Gradu­ate Center, Duke University, Fordham University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Haverford College, Howard University, Institute for Contemporary Arts-London, Mas­sa­chu­setts College of Art and Design, Northwestern University, New York University, Pratt College, the Poetry Project, Revolution Books, Rutgers University–­Newark and New Brunswick, Stanford University, Uni-

3 00

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versity of Basel–­Switzerland, University of California Berkeley, University of Delaware, University of Mary­land, University of Minnesota, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, Vassar College, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Wesleyan University, Wits University–­South Africa, Yale University, and Zimmerli Art Museum. An ­earlier version of Chapter 7, titled “Posing in Prison: ­Family Photo­graphs, Emotions ­Labor, and Carceral Intimacy,” was published in Public Culture 27, no. 3 (2015): 487–511. I thank Duke University Press for permission to reprint text from that article ­here. Harvard University Press has been a dream to work with. My editor, Andrew Kinney, has been a huge champion of this book and has offered rigorous and supportive feedback along the way. Also thanks to editorial assistant Olivia Elizabeth Woods and the design team at the press. My gratitude to Kimberly Giambattisto and the team at Westchester Publishing Ser­vices for the fine care they provided during the book’s production. Mishana Garschi carefully proofread and indexed the book; many thanks! David Lobenstine provided a deep and critical engagement with the manuscript. His careful reading gave me valuable guidance to move the proj­ect forward. Louis Masur offered advice on all issues related to publishing the manuscript. David L. Eng has been a guiding force throughout my ­career and an enormous supporter of this proj­ect since day one. Deborah Willis remains a model of generosity, integrity, and providing a platform for ­others. I am thankful to my colleagues in the Department of American Studies at Rutgers who have supported me since the inception of this proj­ect: Matt Backes, Louise Barnett, Sylvia Chan-­Malik, Jeff Decker, Leslie Fishbein, Angus Gillespie, Allan Isaac, Louis Prisock, Michael Rockland, Ben Sifuentes-­Jáuregui, and Caroline Wigginton. Elix Colon, Mark Lockwood, Ben Perolli, Jordan Pringle, and Zak Wojnar provided research assistance and program assistance, and transcribed interviews. Maco Faniel provided timely research support and helped with programming. Argenis Apolinario, Peter Merts, Jay Yocis, and Kevin Jerome Everson took many of the photo­graphs that appear in the book. Residencies at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, Rocke­fel­ler Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Denniston Hill, and Bennington College provided me with much-­needed space and resources to write and revise. During my time at the Cullman Center I benefited from conversations with my

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301

fellow fellows and library staff, especially Carys Davies, Paul Delaverdac, Angela Flournoy, Jon Gertner, Lauren Goldenberg, Saidiya Hartman, Sally Wen Mao, George Packer, Julia Pagnamenta, Salvatore Scibona, and Jonathan Stevenson. I cherish E. Patrick Johnson for our conversations, his wonderful mentorship, and the incredible week in Asheville, North Carolina, writing and dreaming together. Thanks to my stepfather, Calvin Wilson, who spent time with my son while I was away on a writing retreat. The book has been supported by grants, programming funds, and fellowships from the American Council for Learned Socie­ties, Whiting Foundation, Ford Foundation, New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and Puffin Foundation. To all, I am deeply grateful. Special thanks to Daniel Reid, John Paul Christy, and Jean Strouse. I am grateful to the Art for Justice Fund and community, especially Agnes Gund, Cat Gund, and Helena Huang, for underwriting a special edition of this book to be distributed at no cost to ­people in prison. My ecstatic joy and heartfelt thanks to Kate Fowle and the staff of MoMA PS1 for collaborating on the exhibition, Marking Time; my deep appreciation to the curatorial team for the show, especially Amy Rosenblum Martín and Jocelyn Miller. My ­family has been with me e­ very step of the way, even when this work has exposed us in painful and challenging ways. I could not have begun the proj­ect without the blessings of Allen Thompson, De’Andre Allen, and Eric Fleetwood. I deeply love and admire my aunt Sharon and cousin Cassandra for their undying love and being willing to show and talk about the toll that imprisonment takes on black ­women and ­children. My ­mother, Eleanor Wilson, has enthusiastically supported me, attending many events and encouraging me on the journey. Kai Aubrey Fleetwood Greene, thank you for being patient with me and understanding your ­mother’s commitments, obsessions, limitations, and love. I write this for every­one who shared their art and stories with me, and their visions and strug­gles for freedom, justice, and belonging.

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I L L U S T R AT I O N C R E D I T S

xxvi 5 5 9 11 17 24 35 36 41 43 44 49 50 51 53 61 63 67

Courtesy of Ronnie Goodman. Photo by Peter Merts. Courtesy of James “Yaya” Hough and Worth Rises. Courtesy of James “Yaya” Hough and Worth Rises. Courtesy of Todd (Hyung-­Rae) Tarselli and the Prison Watch Program of the American Friends Ser­vice Committee. Courtesy of Muhammad al Ansi. Courtesy of Ricco / Maresca Gallery. © Gil Batle. Courtesy of Russell Craig and Nicole R. Fleetwood. Photo by Argenis Apolinario. Courtesy of Ndume Olatushani. Left: Courtesy of Eddie Kates. Right: Library of Congress, Prints and Photo­graphs Division, LC-­D4-16155. Courtesy of Tameca Cole and Die Jim Crow. Courtesy of Raymond Towler. © Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter. Courtesy of Duron Jackson. Courtesy of Stephen Tourlentes. Courtesy of Maria Gaspar. Courtesy of Sarah Jane Rhee. Courtesy of Kenneth Reams and Worth Rises. Courtesy of Daniel McCarthy Clifford. Courtesy of Dean Gillispie. Photo by Argenis Apolinario.

303

67 67 77 79 81 85 86 95 95 99 99 101 105 105 108 113 114 115 119 119 121 125 127 131 134 136 137 139 140 141 144 145 148 148 151

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Courtesy of Dean Gillispie. Photo by Jay Yocis. Courtesy of Dean Gillispie. Photo by Jay Yocis. Courtesy of Gilberto Rivera. Photo by Argenis Apolinario. Courtesy of Jesse Krimes. Courtesy of Jesse Krimes. Courtesy of Jared Owens. Courtesy of Jared Owens and Nicole R. Fleetwood. Photo by Argenis Apolinario. Collected and edited by Bruce Jackson. Collected and edited by Bruce Jackson. Courtesy of Sara Bennett. Courtesy of Sara Bennett. Courtesy of Zora J Murff. Courtesy of Deborah Luster and Jack Shainman Gallery. Courtesy of Deborah Luster and Jack Shainman Gallery. Courtesy of Chandra McCormick. © Dread Scott. © PhotoChange LLC and Calvin Gorham. © PhotoChange LLC and Michael Moses El. Courtesy of Doris Davis. Photo by Kevin Jerome Everson. Courtesy of Doris Davis. Photo by Kevin Jerome Everson. Courtesy of Daniel McCarthy Clifford. Courtesy of George Anthony Morton and Julia Lourie. Courtesy of James “Yaya” Hough. Courtesy of Titus Kaphar. Courtesy of Jesse Krimes. Courtesy of Mark Loughney. Courtesy of Mark Loughney. Courtesy of Ronnie Goodman. Photo by Peter Merts. Courtesy of Peter Merts. Courtesy of Tyra Patterson. Courtesy of Lisette Oblitas. Courtesy of James “Yaya” Hough and Russell Craig. Photo by Argenis Apolinario. Courtesy of Russell Craig. Photo by Kisha Bari, provided by the Soze Agency. Courtesy of Russell Craig. Photo by Argenis Apolinario. Courtesy of Susan Meiselas. © Susan Meiselas / Three Guineas Fund Proj­ect.

153 156 173 177 179 181 183 187 191 195 199 202 205 208 209 216 218 221 227 228 230 232 236 237 238 239 239 243 248 249

Courtesy of Susan Meiselas. © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos. Courtesy of The Reentry Think Tank in collaboration with artist Kate DeCiccio. Courtesy of Peter Merts. Courtesy of DonChristian Jones. Courtesy of DonChristian Jones. Courtesy of Jerome Washington and Prisoner Express. Courtesy of Ron Cauthern and Robin Paris. Courtesy of Prison Re­nais­sance. Courtesy of Prisoner Express. Courtesy of Carnell Hunnicutt Sr. Reproduced from Who Eye Am, courtesy of Aron “Akili” Castlin and LC DeVine Publishing. © 2018. 4th Row Films. 4th Row Films. Left: Courtesy of Moliere Dimanche Jr. Right: Courtesy of Moliere Dimanche Jr. Left: Courtesy of Moliere Dimanche Jr. Right: Courtesy of Moliere Dimanche Jr. Courtesy of Ojore Lutalo and the Prison Watch Program of the American Friends Ser­vice Committee. Courtesy of Ojore Lutalo and the Prison Watch Program of the American Friends Ser­vice Committee. Courtesy of Ojore Lutalo and the Prison Watch Program of the American Friends Ser­vice Committee. Courtesy of Tamms Year Ten. Photo by Justin Goh. Courtesy of Tamms Year Ten. Photo by Laurie Jo Reynolds. Courtesy of Photo Requests from Solitary. Photo by Jessica Posner. © The Fleetwood ­Family. Artwork © Deana Lawson. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago. Courtesy of David Adler. Courtesy of David Adler. © The Fleetwood ­Family. © The Fleetwood ­Family. © The Fleetwood ­Family. © The Fleetwood ­Family. © The Fleetwood ­Family.

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305

250 251 252 253 257 258 259 260 263

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© The Fleetwood F ­ amily. © The Fleetwood F ­ amily. © The Fleetwood F ­ amily. © The Fleetwood F ­ amily. Courtesy of Sable Elyse Smith, Friends of the High Line, and JTT, New York. Photo by Timothy Schenck. Courtesy of Sable Elyse Smith and JTT, New York. Courtesy of Sable Elyse Smith and JTT, New York. Courtesy of Sable Elyse Smith and JTT, New York. Courtesy of Sable Elyse Smith and JTT, New York.

INDEX

abolition: activists, 4, 14, 116, 189; geography of, 54; ­imaginaries, 154; politics, 8, 26, 52, 53, 101, 132, 174; scholarship on, xxiii; and slavery, 84 Abrons Arts Center, 17, 138 abstract art, 73, 75, 86 abstract expressionism, 73, 80, 82 Acoli, Sundiata, 212 Actor’s Gang, 171 Adler, David, 234, 237–238 “administrative segregation.” See solitary confinement ADX Florence, 197 aesthetics (Western), 83, 157; Enlightenment era, 28; and freedom, 29, 30, 157, 212; of portraiture, 122–123, 129; and punishment, 28, 30; and race, 29–30; and state power, 28–29; of white property, 33. See also white Western man AFSC. See American Friends Ser­vice Committee Agamben, Giorgio, 78, 196 ­Ain’t I a ­Woman (Baxter), 44–46 Aiyana Jones (Craig), 149 AJ (son of Eddie Kates), 35, 37

Alabama Prison Arts + Education Proj­ect, Auburn ­University, 40, 158 Alexander, Marissa, 14 Alexander, Michelle, 100 Allen (author’s cousin), xxii, 55–57, 231–232, 239, 242–243, 244, 247, 249–254 Alliance for California Traditional Artists, 171 Amer­i­ca Is the Prison, 163 American Friends Ser­vice Committee (AFSC), 198, 199, 212–215 American Indian Movement, 74 And ­Here Is a List of Names (Smith), 258–259 Andrews, Benny, 164, 166 Angelina, Michelle, 220 Angola prison, 9, 10, 30–31, 102, 103–104, 106–108, 222; museum, 104 Angola Three, 222, 224 Angolite, The, 70 Anishinaabe Nation, 74 Ansi, Muhammad al, 10, 11 Aperture Foundation, 89

307

Aperture (magazine), 89 Apokaluptein 16389067 (Krimes), 76–80 Apokaluptein 16389067: II (Krimes), 80, 81 Appadurai, Arjun, 239–240 Architect’s Dream, An (Castlin and Matthews), 199 Armstrong, Louis, 260 arrest photo­graphs. See mug shots “Art and the Ex-­Con” (King), 166 art establishments: exclusion of incarcerated artists from, 3, 32, 42, 73, 114; relationship to prisons, xxiii, 3, 7, 18 Art for Justice Fund, 18, 158 Artforum, 73 Art in Amer­i­ca, 72, 73 Artistic Noise, 157 Artists Magazine, 73 art materials, scarcity of, 7, 12, 23, 44, 58, 83, 120, 132, 139–140, 142, 192. See also clandestine practices Art News, 73 Arts in Corrections workshop. See William James Association asset forfeiture, 62 Attica Book, 165, 166 Attica Prison uprising, 163–165 Avenal (Smith), 259 Aztlán de Leavenworth, El, 70 BACKBEND (Smith), 257–258 backdrops in vernacular prison photography, 235–240, 242 Baldwin, James, 260 banned books, 60 Barbed Wire Angel #2 (Westley F), 139 “bare life,” 196–197 Basquiat, Jean Michel, 144 Batchen, Geoffrey, 235 Batle, Gil, 17

308

I nde x

Baxter, Mary Enoch Elizabeth, 44–46 BCO. See brutal correction officer Bearden, Romare, 164 Beasley, Jeffrey T., 211 Beathea, Rainey, 128 BECC. See Black Emergency Cultural Co­ali­tion (BECC) “becoming unhinged,” 191 Begley, Josh, 46, 48 Being Persecuted for Po­liti­cal Thoughts (Lutalo), 216 Belausteguigotia Ruis, Maria, 38–39 Bender, John, 27 Bennett, Joshua, 260–261 Bennett, Sarah, 98; Keila on the Subway, Life After Life in Prison, 100; Tracy, Life After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Project, 98, 100 Bennett, Tony, 27 Bentham, Jeremy, 28 Berger, Dan, 213 Berlant, Lauren, 246 Bern­stein, Lee, 163, 165, 166, 167–169 Bertillon, Alphonse, 91 Bêtes Noire (Owens), 82 Betts, Reginald Dwayne, 40 Beware the Lily Law (Handelman), 28 Bieger, Laura, 158 Billops, Camille, 164 biological racism, 93 Birmingham Work Release, 39 BLA. See Black Liberation Army Black and Pink Network, 138, 196, 220, 222 Blackboard Series (Jackson), 48 black captivity, 40, 46, 84, 106, 108, 124, 165, 210, 222 black criminality, xvi, 23, 30, 32–33, 188; countering, 129–130; label of “gang member,” 201–202; and social sciences, 93

Black Emergency Cultural Co­ali­tion (BECC), 32, 164–169; Prison Arts Program, 166–168, 285n35; Prison Cultural Exchange Program, 164–165 black feminist methodology, xxii black hyperincarceration, 48, 50, 84, 93, 102, 106, 109–110, 124, 130, 237; rate of, 145, 271n66 Black Jesus (Dimanche), 208 “Black Jesus” (form of torture), 208 Black Liberation Army (BLA), 212–213 Black Lives ­Matter, 52 Black Lives Splattered (Cole), 40 black mothering, 45, 225–226, 249–250 Black Panther Party, 214, 223 black radicals, 32, 128–129. See also Angola Three; Lutalo, Ojure black radical traditions, 25, 26, 31–33, 219, 260 black studies, 32, 34 black subjectivity, 146–147 black subjugation, 6, 39, 106, 108, 109, 146, 211, 261 black ­women: criminality of, 93–94; enslaved, 45; mug shots, 93–94; prison ID photos, 95–96; reproductive ­labor, 45–46, 225; in solitary confinement, 225–227; in US prisons, 33, 45–46, 103, 271n66, 282n51. See also black mothering; Destiny (Kaphar); emotional ­labor black youth: in ­England, 111; incarceration of, 40, 100; photography of incarcerated, 100–101; policing of, 100 Black Youth Proj­ect, 52 Blake, William, 199 Blue Is Ubiquitous and Forbidden (Smith), 260–261 “blues aesthetic,” 260 Body Keeps the Score, The (Smith), 261–262 “Bomba Con Buya,”at Freedom Square (Rhee), 53 Boris, Eileen, 243 Bourriaud, Nicolas, 32 Bowers, Jack, 171

“box, the.” See solitary confinement Breathing Room, 52–53 Brewster, Larry, 171 Brilliant, Richard, 122 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 21–22 Broadway, Omar, 201–204 “Broken Win­dows” policing, 73 Brook, Pete, 225; Prison Photography blog, 49, 88–89 Brooks, Laurie, 170 Browder, Kalief, 177–178 Brown, Adrienne Maree, 162, 186–188 Brown, Callie, 95–96 Brown, Michael, 188 Brown, Michelle, 16 Browne, Simone, 25, 203, 204 brutal correction officer (BCO), 207 Byzantine iconography, 130 Cahan, Susan, 164 Cain, Burl, 222 Calhoun, Keith, 104, 106–109 California Arts Council, 170, 171 California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), 170–171 California ­Lawyers for the Arts, 170 California State Prison, Corcoran, 190 Camp J, 222 Campt, Tina, 88, 92, 142, 241 Capitalization (Reams), 59–60, 61 carceral aesthetics, 2, 17, 25–26, 32, 33, 54, 122, 130, 235, 255; and po­liti­cal organ­izing and social movements, 31; as relational practice, 26, 31–32, 35, 154; upending dominant frameworks, 31 carceral archipelago, 128, 163, 224, 256 carceral continuum, 45, 46

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carceral geographies, 25, 45, 47, 135, 153, 158, 234, 256; and abolition geographies, 54; and prison art, 83 carceral index, 6, 16, 24–25, 275n10. See also criminal index; ID photos; mug shots carceral logics, xxiii, 26, 101, 153, 154, 189; of freedom, 33; “inside” and “outside,” 6; reinforcing of, 87; and slave ship, 85; undoing of, 16, 228, 236 carceral state, xvi, xxiii, 2, 8, 13–14, 45, 47, 88–89, 147, 176; and carceral aesthetics, 25; landscapes of, 49; punishment regime of, 195; reach of, 54, 98, 104, 127; shaping prison and public life, 15 carceral visuality, 87, 96, 256. See also criminal index; ID photos; mug shots Castlin, Akron “Akili,” 199 Cauthern, Ron, 183 CCR (closed cell restricted) unit, 107, 222 “cellblock art.” See prison art “cell extraction,” 204 Center for Justice at Columbia University, 182 Central Park Five, xvi Chain Gang (Kates), 36–37 chain gangs, 36–37, 95 Chambers, Greg, 240 Charpentier, Cristi A., 88 Chicago, Judy, 151 Chicago Community Bond Fund, 117 childbirth in prison, 45–46 Childs, Adrienne, 122–123 Childs, Dennis, 222 Chillicothe Correctional Institution, 64 Chuh, Kandice, 28–29 Chukwu, Chinonye, 141 Church Studios, 80 citizen subject, 26, 29, 210 civic life and incarcerated ­people, 3, 15, 16, 23, 25, 32, 87–88, 234, 256

310

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civil rights movement, 13, 213 clandestine practices: of acquiring art materials, 2, 6, 23, 57, 58, 63–65, 66, 69, 75, 76, 82; of appropriating commodities, 58, 59; of art-­making, 25, 58, 64–65; of other incarcerated ­people, 65, 69, 78; as prison art, 257 Clifford, Daniel McCarthy, 60, 62, 120; One Ton Ježek, 63 Clinton, Hillary, xvi closed cell restricted (CCR) unit, 107, 222 Cobb, Jasmine Nichole, 129 code-­switching, 172 cognitive dissonance, 172 Cole, Tameca, 39–41 collaborations. See prison arts collaborations “collective ideation,” 188 Colón, Kristiana Rae, 53 colonized ­peoples, 29 color: carceral blue, 260–261; creating, 44; limited access to, 44, 82, 83; in prison art, 34–35, 43–44, 76, 83–85; in / of prisons, 34, 43, 44, 83, 124; as re­sis­tance, 34, 44, 122; as symbol of power relations, 83 Comfort, Megan, 242 community building, 16, 18–19, 50, 52–54, 57, 65, 69, 75, 114, 154, 183 conceptualism (art form), 73 “constitutive technology of vio­lence,” 205 consumerism, 79 “Contraband Scholars,” 37 convict ­labor, 33 “convict race,” 132 “convict unity,” 132 Cook County Jail, 50–52, 116–117 “correction-­extraction complex,” 161 Corrections (Murff), 100 cotton picking, 92, 102, 106 Craig, Russell, 18, 21–25, 125, 127–128, 144–149; Locks, 147, 148; Self Portrait, 146–147, 148; State ID, 23–25, 28, 43, 146

C.R.E.A.M. (Smith), 256–257 C.R.E.A.M. (Wu-­Tang Clan), 256 creative practices of incarcerated p ­ eople, xxi, xxiii, 7, 23, 25, 26, 33, 58, 59, 60, 82, 120, 124. See also clandestine practices “Crime Line,” 207 criminal index, 87–89; appropriating of, 130; challenge to, 90–91, 101, 106, 135, 234; and photography, 91–92; in prison art, 122, 130; repurposing of, 103, 130, 133. See also ID photos; mug shots criminality, 29, 30, 32, 97, 142, 172; as mea­sur­able, 92–93. See also black criminality criminalization, xxiii–­xxiv, 13, 87–88, 92, 98, 100, 132, 134, 159; of black hair, 147; of blackness, 33, 62, 93, 110, 114, 129–130, 145, 259; of indigenous p ­ eoples, 236; of Latinos, 110 criminology, 92–93 “Crooked Smile” (J. Cole), 149 Cummins Prison Farm, 94 ­Daddy’O, 108 daguerreotypes, 129 Dakota Nation, 74 Dalí, Salvador, 41 Davis, Angela, 3, 15, 46 Davis, Doris, 118–120, 124 Davis, Jordan, 211 “dead time,” 198 De’Andre (author’s cousin), 232, 244–249 death row, 10, 34, 35, 59, 101, 128, 181, 197 DeCarrio (son of Doris David and Kevin Jerome Everson), 118, 124 Degrees of Visibility (Hunt), 49 deindustrialization, xv, 13 Demir, Nilüfer, 10 Demourelle, Glenn, 107 Department of Defense, US, 10–11 Destiny (Kaphar), 131–132

detention facilities, 52 DeWeaver, Emile, 39, 70–71, 127, 184–187 Dial, Thornton, 82 “dialogical practice,” 32 Die Jim Crow (initiative), 39 Die Jim Crow—­The Movement (Cole), 40 “diesel therapy,” 73 Dillon, Stephen, 39, 220, 227, 229 Dimanche, Moliere, 64–65, 206–212; Black Jesus, 208; It Takes a Criminal to Know One, 207–210; Pills and Potion, 209; Tango, 209 Dimanche v. Brown, 206, 291n51 Dinner Party, The (Chicago), 151 DisPlace (Smith), 258–259 dispossession, 39, 83, 104, 165, 197 Divine Comedy (Dante), 78 ­Doing Time Together (Comfort), 242 Doris (­mother of DeCarrio), 118–120, 124 “double-­cell solitary,” 202–203 double consciousness, 144–145 Douglas, Emory, 214 Douglass, Frederick, 129 Down but Not Out (Peltier), 142 Drake, Simone, 130 “Drawing from Life” (art course), 192 Dreisinger, Baz, 155, 190 dress code for female prison visitors, 245 D37 (Rowland), 62 Du Bois, W. E. B., 144 “dungeon, the.” See solitary confinement Earnshaw, Jessica, 101 East Carroll Parish Prison Farm, 102 East Jersey State Prison, 37 Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, 21–22, 28, 45, 47, 80, 194

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Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, 150–151, 153 Ellapsium, master & Helm (Owens), 84–85, 86 Ellapsium I Descent of the Nephilim (Owens), 83 Ellis, Eddie, 110 Emdur, Alyse, 236, 240 Emergent Strategy (Brown), 186–188 Emerging Artist Fellowship, 258 emotional ­labor, 242–244, 246; of teaching artists in prison, 176 Enlightenment era, 26–28, 30 Epps, Ronald, 199–200 Eric Garner (Craig), 147 Everson, Kevin Jerome, 118–119 exhibitions of prison art, 16–17. See also individual exhibitions Exonerated Five, xvi “expropriations,” 213 Fairey, Shepard, 143 Fairton collective, 71–73. See also Krimes, Jesse; Owens, Jared; Rivera, Gilberto Fairton Federal Correction Institution, 71–73, 83–84 ­family: disruption of, 25, 38, 45, 60, 127, 228, 256; documented in vernacular prison photos, 236, 237, 239, 241; gendered dynamics of maintaining familial bonds, 242–243 Farm, the. See Angola prison Federal Bureau of Prisons, 8 Federal Prison Inmate Activity Book (Clifford and unnamed incarcerated artist), 62 feminist prison art, 150–151, 182 Ferguson, Robert A., 30, 39 Final Exposure (Jones), 101 Finley, Cheryl, 84 First Date (Gillispie), 66–67

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Florence Acad­emy of Art US, 123 formerly incarcerated artists, xxiii, 6, 12, 18, 39, 60, 182. See also Batle, Gil; Baxter, Mary Enoch Elizabeth; Clifford, Daniel McCarthy; Cole, Tameca; Craig, Russell; DeWeaver, Emile; Dimanche, Moliere; Gillispie, Dean; Goodman, Ronnie; Krimes, Jesse; Lutalo, Ojure; Morton, George Anthony; Oblitas, Lisette; Olatushani, Ndume; Owens, Jared; Patterson, Tyra; Rivera, Gilberto; Towler, Raymond Foster, Thomas, 63–64 foster care to prison pipeline, 127–128 Foucault, Michel, 27, 71, 82 4th row films, 204 fragmentation, 258, 259, 262 “fraught imaginaries,” 158–159, 172, 178, 180, 181 fraught relationships, 180, 182 freedom, 32, 34, 54, 189, 256; and aesthetic traditions, 25, 29; and black radical tradition, 31; carceral logics of, 33; interde­pen­dency of, xix, 33; and modernity, 29; movements for, 26; strug­gles for, 142; and unfreedom, 9, 16, 25, 32, 54, 154, 157, 162, 229, 235; and Western institutions, 27 Freedom Now Day, 52 Freedom Square, 52–53 fugitivity, 257, 258; “fugitive planning,” 25; fugitive risk, 84 furtive practices, 33 gangs: affiliations, 73, 75, 175; databases, 202; and solitary confinement, 196, 201–202; stigma in prison, 76, 289n23; vio­lence in prison, 203 Gardenhire, Eric, 183 Gardner, Alexander, 103 Garner, Eric, 110, 149 Garringer, Donald, 101 Gaspar, Maria, 46, 50–51, 52

gender: binaries in prison classification, 220; construction of, 31; nonconforming, 13, 174, 195, 196 “get missing,” 207 “ghosting” (photography method), 100 Gillispie, Dean, 55–57, 65–69; First Date, 66–67; Spiz’s Diner, 67, 68–69; Spiz’s Dinette, 66–67 Gilmore, Ruth Wilson, xxiii, 4, 7, 31, 38, 47, 54, 132, 189, 244 Giuliani, Rudolph, 73, 110 Godsey, Mark, 56 Goh, Justin, 227 Goodman, Ronnie, xxvi, 1–2, 38, 135, 137–138, 140, 171; San Quentin Arts in Corrections Art Studio, xxvi, 1–2, 38; Self-­Portrait with Boots, 135, 139 graffiti, 73 Grafton Reintegration Center, 182–184 Graterford State Prison, 126, 128, 143 Gray, Freddie, 110, 211 Greenfield Jail, 114 Guantánamo Bay detention camp, 10–11, 28 Guardian, 52, 141 Guenther, Lisa, 27, 41, 181, 191, 192, 194, 198, 200, 216 guilt and innocence, xxiii–­xxiv, 35, 69 Gund, Agnes, 18 Haley, Sarah, 33, 46, 93 Hamitic curse, 30 Handelman, Michelle, 28 Harlem on My Mind (exhibition), 164 Hatched in Prison (Batle), 17 Healing Justice, 57 Hermann, Bernard, 106 Herman’s House (documentary), 224 Hernández, Kelly Lytle, 16, 255 Hicks, Cheryl D., 93–94

Hinton, Elizabeth, 13, 109 HIV-­positive ­people, incarcerated, 138 “hole, the.” See solitary confinement “Hollywoodland,” 256 Homan Square, 52 home, notion of, 256 Hough, James “Yaya,” 43, 126–127, 143–144; How Big House Products Make Boxer Shorts, 4–6, 22, 23; I Am the Economy, 4–5; Portrait of Yaya, 143, 145 House that Herman Built, The (Sumell and Wallace), 224 How Big House Products Make Boxer Shorts (Hough), 4–6, 22, 23 How the Other Half Lives (Riis), 97 ­human / nonhuman categories, 28, 29, 123, 157 Humanize the Numbers, 117 Hunnicutt, Carnell, 194–195 Hunt, Ashley, 46, 49–50 Hunter College East Gallery, 182 “I Am a Man” poster campaign, 225 “I Am a Mom” Proj­ect, 225–226 I AM A MOM with Brenda (Reynolds), 227 I Am the Economy (Hough), 4–5 “I am Tyra Patterson” campaign, 141 Ian (client of Bryan Stevenson), 91 Iberia Parish Jail, LA (Jackson), 48 ID photos, 87–88, 94–96, 130; reimagining of, 24, 145, 215, 229 I Just Want to Come Home (mural), 178 imaginary (concept), 158 imagination: of incarcerated ­people, 2, 22, 23, 35, 64, 122, 198, 238; radical, 226–230 immigrants, 59 immobility, 46, 47, 58, 97, 157, 191, 197, 200, 203 Incarceratedly Yours, 186

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incarcerated ­people: commodification of, 62; dehumanization of, 43, 117; as state property, 43, 46, 60, 78 indigenous ­peoples, 29, 39; imprisoned activists, 74; and prison art, 142 “inmate art.” See prison art Inmate Grievance procedure, 207, 209 innocence. See guilt and innocence Innocents, The (Simon), 101 Insight Prison Proj­ect, 186 Institutional Nightmare, An (Rivera), 76–77 “interrelational subjectivity,” 191 In the Yard (Craig), 128 intimacy: public, 245–246; regulation of, 246; trauma of, 257. See also vernacular prison photos invisibility: challenge to, 154; and hypervisibility, 16, 48; of incarcerated ­people, xvi, 6, 15, 22, 25, 49, 135; of prisons, xvi, 15, 47, 48, 49, 50–51; of surveillance, 2 In Your Eyes (Oblitas), 143, 144, 152–153 Isis tha Saviour (Baxter, Mary Enoch Elizabeth), 44–46 isolation: as penal ­matter, 197; in prisons, 3, 6, 23, 25, 57, 191. See also solitary confinement isolation cells, 194, 199, 213. See also solitary confinement It Takes a Criminal to Know One (Dimanche), 207–208 Jackson, Bruce, 94–95, 97–98 Jackson, Duron, 46, 48, 130, 262; Rikers Island Jail, NY, 49 Jackson, George, 3, 71, 138 Jacobs, Christopher, 116 James, Joy, 210–211, 255 Jerome at 15 (Murff), 100, 101 Jerome Proj­ect (My Loss) (Kaphar), 130–131 Jim Crow era, 33, 36–37, 208; and prisons, 98 Jim Crow Playbook (Cole), 40 John Jay College Prison-­to-­College Pipeline program, 155 Johnson, Kevin “Rashid,” 128–129 Johnson, Mark Dean, 103

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Jones, Aiyana, 149, 211 Jones, DonChristian, 174–178, 179 Jones, Kellie, 42 Jones, Lou, 101 Jones, Tayari, 233 Juvenile InJustice (Ross), 100 Kaba, Mariame, 14 Kant, Immanuel, 29–32 Kaphar, Titus, 130–132, 135, 262; Destiny, 131–132; The Jerome Proj­ect (My Loss), 130–131 Kates, Eddie, 36–37, 263; Chain Gang, 36 Keep Your Head Up (mural), 179 Keila on the Subway (Bennett), 99 Kelley, Robin D. G., 46 Kerness, Bonnie, 198, 212, 213 Kester, Grant, 32, 158 King, Robert, 222–223 King, Rodney G., “Art and the Ex-­Con,” 166 Kingdom and the Glory, The (Agamben), 78 kinship: black structures of, 241, 259, 263; disruption of, 126–127; nonlineal, 226, 230 Kochiyama, Yuri, 128 Kornfeld, Phyllis, 4, 10, 125, 152 Krimes, Jesse, 18, 28, 58, 71–73, 75, 76–80, 86, 132–133, 134, 135; Apokaluptein 16389067, 76–80; Apokaluptein 16389067: II, 80, 81; Purgatory, 132–133, 134 Kurdi, Alan, 10 Kushner, Joanne, 110–112 ­labor exploitation, of incarcerated ­people, xxii, 3, 6, 59–60, 62, 70, 78, 93, 97, 102, 104, 108, 227, 272n10 Lakota Nation, 74 Lascaux Review, 185 Latina ­women, birth in prison, 45 Latin Kings, 73, 75

Latinos: 50, 59, 126; criminalization of, xvi, 202, 232; hyperincarceration of, 110, 237; incarcerated artists, 77; po­liti­cal activists, 74; vernacular culture, 77. See also Rivera, Gilberto law-­and-­order policing, 13, 169 Lawson, Deana, 130, 236–237 Lea, Joseph, 150, 160, 168 Leach, John, 215 Leavenworth federal prison, 62, 74 Leavenworth Proj­ect (Clifford), 62 “legislative art,” 225 Let Us Breathe Collective, 52 Levine, Ron, 101 Lewis, Norman, 164 LGBTQ ­people: activists, 174; incarcerated artists, 138; nonincarcerated artists, 174; in solitary confinement, 196, 220, 222; war on, 13, 174 liberal humanism, 159, 161 liberation: ideology, 7; visions of, 54 Lichtenstein, Roy, 18 Life ­after Death and Elsewhere (Williams and Paris), 181 Life ­After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Proj­ect (Bennett), 98, 99 Life of Paper, The (Luk), 3–4 light (concept of), in prison art, 137–138 Linn County Juvenile Detention and Diversion Ser­vices, 100 Liverpool, ­England, 111–112 Lloyd, David, 28–29, 212 Lockdown (Scott), 109 Locked in a Dark Calm (Cole), 40–41 Locks (Craig), 147, 148 Lombroso, Cesare, 92–93 Lorton Correctional Fa­cil­i­ty, 113–114 Loughney, Mark, 132, 133–135, 136–137 Louisiana Correctional Institute for ­Women, 102 Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 102

Louisiana State Penitentiary. See Angola prison Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans, 104 Lucasville, Ohio, State Death House (Tourlentes), 49, 50 Lucasville prison, 41, 132 Luk, Sharon, 3–4, 16, 47 Luster, Deborah, 101–104 Lutalo, Ojure, 18, 212–219; Being Persecuted for Po­liti­cal Thoughts, 216; Seeing Is Believing, 218, 219; Torture Chamber, 220–221 Malcolm X, 128, 144 Malin, Barry, 133 Malin Gallery, 133 Management Control Unit (MCU), 213–214. See also solitary confinement Mars (Morton), 123, 125 Martin, Trayvon, 188, 211 mass incarceration, xv, xvi, 51, 98, 112, 114, 135, 174, 185, 256; business of, 65; efforts to end, 18, 188; in ­England, 110–113; growing public awareness of, 158; impact beyond prisons, xviii, 12, 14, 38, 47, 104, 106–109; impact on aesthetics and culture, 12–13, 27; impact on art world, 18, 25; origins of, 13, 162–163; photo studies of, 89 McBride, Renisha, 188 McCormick, Chandra, 104, 106–109; Young Man, 108 McGuire, J. D., 37 MCU (Management Control Unit), 213–214 Meiselas, Susan, 151 Melendez, Phil, 186–187 Memorial Trays (Clifford), 62 Men ­Going to Work (Calhoun and McCormick), 108 ­mental health facilities, 207 mentoring, 22, 23, 59, 71, 124, 126, 184, 185 Metropolis (exhibition), 186–188 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 164

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315

Meza, Juan, 184–185 military prisons, 13. See also Guantánamo Bay detention camp; United States Disciplinary Barracks Miller, J. Reid, 30 Mirpuri, Anoop, 38, 161, 211 Mirzoeff, Nicholas, 15, 124 Missouri History Museum, 91 Mohawk Correctional Fa­cil­i­ty (Lawson), 236–237 Montana, Chief Darryl, 109 Moon (Patterson), 140–141 Morton, George Anthony, 123–125 Moses El, Michael, 114, 115 Moten, Fred, 29–30, 33, 211, 219 Moth and Light (Washington), 180, 181 ­Mothers Reclaiming Our ­Children, 244 movement (concept of), in prison art, 137–139 Moyes, Anne-­Marie, 35 Mugs (Clifford), 120–121 mug shots, xvi, 15; circulation of, 94, 130; development of, 92–93, 94; interpretations in prison art, 17, 87–88, 131, 132 Mugshot Study (Wiley), 130 Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, 93 Mural Arts Philadelphia, 23, 80, 143, 157 Murch, Donna, 109 Murff, Zora, 100; Corrections, 100; Jerome at 15, 100, 101 museums, 26–28; BECC campaign against, 164; entanglement with prisons, 26–28 “mushfake,” 63–64 Muslims, in ­England, 111 My Picture with Blue Sky (for Roberto) (Reynolds), 228 National Endowment for the Arts, 166 national strike against prison slavery, 70 Neal, Avon, 238

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Neal, Larry, 163 neoliberalism, 13, 38, 161, 193–194 “(neo)slave narratives,” 210–211 New Monument for Nashville (Cauthern), 183 New Yorker, 207 New York Police Department, 111 New York State Council on the Arts, 166 New York Times, 79, 123 91020000 (Rowland), 62 1960s and 1970s: prisoners’ rights movements, 70, 163, 220–222; radical movements, 3, 32, 163–169, 194, 222 96 Acres Proj­ect, 50–51 NJ-­STEP, 37 No New Jails NYC, 177 nonincarcerated allies, xxiii, 9, 16, 25, 38, 70, 190, 197, 224, 255 nonincarcerated photog­raphers, 90, 97–104, 107–113; and politics of access, 106 nonprofit organ­izations: contract ­labor, 175–176, 180; donation of prison art to, xxii; as fraught, 159–160, 175–176, 180; grant dependent, 158–160; politics of, 159–160; race and gender politics of, 159, 176; relationship with prisons, 160, 162, 167; tensions within, 172–173, 180 Northern State Prison, 201 Northern State Prison, NJ (Jackson), 48 No Selves to Defend (ed., Kaba), 14 “no-­touch torture,” 214–215, 217 Obama, Barack, 143, 281n24; in prison art, 210 O’Beirne, Joan, 114 Oblitas, Lisette, 142–143, 152–153; Phyllis Porter Place Setting, 153; In Your Eyes, 143, 144 Oculus (Owens), 83–84, 85

Ode to the Sea (exhibition), 10 Of Length and Mea­sures (Tourlentes), 49 Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC), 55, 57, 179, 183 Ohio Innocence Proj­ect, xxiv, 42, 56, 57, 69 Ohio Justice and Policy Center, 141 Olatushani, Ndume, 18, 33–35, 44 Oleson, Jeanine, 226 Omar Broadway Film, An, 202–205 “On Blueness” (Bennett), 260–261 One Big Self (Luster and Wright), 102 One Ton Ježek (Clifford), 62, 63 On the Inside (exhibition), 138–139 Open Philanthropy, 158 other / imaginary worlds, 25, 35 Owens, Jared, 6, 28, 71–73, 75, 80–86, 120; Bêtes Noire, 82; Ellapsium: master & Helm, 84–85, 86; Ellapsium I Descent of the Nephilim, 83; Oculus, 83–84, 85 Pane, Vince, 186 panopticon, 27, 28 paños, 77–78 PAP (Prison Arts Proj­ect), 169–171 Paris, Robin, 181, 189 parole, 39, 147 Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar, 243 Passing Time (Towler), 41, 43 Patterson, Tyra, 126, 139–142, 147, 263 “pedagogy of the incarcerated,” 70 Pelican Bay hunger strike, 70, 190–191 Pelican Bay State Prison, 70, 190, 196 Peltier, Leonard, 74, 142 penal democracy, 256 penal farms, 95, 97, 108, 222. See also Angola prison penal hues, 259–263. See also color

penal ­matter, 7–8, 12, 25, 37, 42, 43, 54, 58, 73, 120, 158, 257; black body as, 45; negotiation of, 154; queering of, 220, 229; reappropriation of, 58, 59, 60, 76–77, 82–83; reinvention of, 64 penal space, 2, 7–8, 12, 23, 25, 37–38, 54, 58, 73, 117, 120, 135, 138, 158, 175; queering of, 220, 229; reimagining of, 123 “penal spectatorship,” 16 penal time, 3, 7–8, 37, 39, 54, 58, 103, 117, 120, 133–134, 135, 138, 158; burden of, 25; management of, 74, 82, 123, 183; marking of, 142, 242, 262; negotiation of, 154; and procurement, 66, 68; queering of, 229; regulation of, 12, 23 PEN Amer­i­ca “Writing for Justice” program, 158 penitence (notion of), 133 Pennsylvania Acad­emy of the Fine Arts, 28 Pentagon. See Department of Defense, US ­People’s Paper Co-op, 154 Peterson, Liza Jessie, 157 photography: aerial, 48; as challenge to criminal index, 88–91, 117; conceptual, 50–51; landscape, 49; penal, as portraiture, 95; and politics of consent, 90, 100–101; of prison intimacy, 101, 104; and prison photo studies, 90; social documentary, 96–98, 109; as state power, 87, 91; and tradition of black documentary photog­raphers, 106–109 Photo Requests from Solitary, 226, 227 Phyllis Porter Place Setting (Oblitas), 153 Pills and Potion (Dimanche), 209 “place-­making,” 54; and workshops in carceral facilities, 113–114, 116–117 policing, xvi, 109; and racial profiling, 110–113 po­liti­cal prisoners, 197, 198, 213. See also black radical Poor, Nigel, 89 Porter, Phyllis, 142–143, 153 Portrait of Yaya (Hough), 143, 145

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portraiture / portraits: and activism, 141; and acquisition by nonprofits, 126; by black artists, 129; choreography of, in prisons, 134; commissioning of, 125–126; and fantasy, 135, 138–140; as form of po­liti­cal alliance, 128; as memorialization, 118–120, 124, 131, 149; mug shots as, 130; as practice of “countervisuality,” 124; as prison art, 118–121, 123–128, 130; as prison currency, 125; recognition for, 120, 123; self-­portraiture, 142–146; serialized, 131–133; by James Van Der Zee, 233; and Western art traditions, 122–124, 129 Posner, Jessica, 230 Postcode Criminals (Kushner and Scott), 110–113 post-­Reconstruction era, 93 Powell, Richard, 129 “practices of refusal,” 142 premature death, 25 Priceless Moments in a Blink, 116 prison art, xvi–­xvii, 26; access to art making, 10; as act of freedom, 6, 35, 42, 46; circulation of, xxii, 2, 154; and black radical tradition, 31, 77; collecting of, 9, 18, 120; commissioning of, 9, 118; contestation of, 11–12; exhibitions and cultural programs, 16–17; friendships through, 57; by hate groups, 26; as healing, 152; laws and regulations over, 8–9, 10–11; as liberatory, 167; as maintaining institution of prison, 9; owner­ship of, by artist, xxii, 10–11; as practice of survival, xxiii, 6, 13, 34, 40, 59, 64, 65, 125, 132; as prison currency, 59, 125; profit from, 10, 126; as rehabilitative, 8, 116, 126, 153, 155, 159, 172, 185; as re­sis­tance, 3, 6, 13, 23, 34, 132, 133, 140; risks of creating, 6, 7; selling of, 8, 182, xxiii; and selfhood, 18, 23, 142; sold or “gifted” to prison staff, xxii, 75; subject ­matter of, 25; symbols of freedom in, 63, 138; terminology of, 12–13; as therapeutic, 8; workshops, 32, 58, 135, 143. See also portraiture / portraits; prison arts collaborations

318

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prison arts collaborations: benefit to incarcerated participants, 162, 171; carceral logics of, 155; collective brainstorming technique, 174–175; envisioning new worlds, 188–189; funding for, 157–160, 169; between incarcerated artists, 37, 71; between incarcerated and nonincarcerated artists, 3, 12, 25, 38, 52, 103, 109–110, 117, 224–225; increased visibility of, 158, 160; limitations of; 172; in 1960s and early 1970s, 163–168; between nonincarcerated artists, 109–113; notion of consent, 161; power dynamics of, 155, 157, 175–176, 182; racial makeup of art classes, 155; reimagining of, 162, 181–188; relationship with prisons, 169–171, 175–176; strategic participation in, 171–172; as a tool of prison management and control, 155, 159, 167, 171, 183; with universities, 158, 161, 186 Prison Arts Program, 166–168 prison arts programs. See prison arts collaborations Prison Arts Proj­ect (PAP), 169–171 “prison blues,” 260 Prison Cultural Exchange Program, 164–165 Prison Culture (website), 14 Prisoner Express, 179, 192 Prisoner Fantasies (Adler), 237, 238 “prison gerrymandering,” 110 prison industrial complex, 4, 7, 14, 59, 62, 161, 211, 255 Prison in Twelve Landscapes, The (Story), 47–48 Prison Landscapes (Emdur), 240 prison lit­er­a­ture, 3–4 Prison Map (Begley), 48 Prison Nation, 89 prison organ­izing, 26, 70, 194, 132, 213. See also Pelican Bay hunger strike Prison Photography (Brook), 49, 88 prison population, US, 13, 47, 271n66, 282n51; aging, 101; rate of incarceration 13–14, 106, 145. See also black criminality; black ­women

Prison Re­nais­sance, 70, 184–187 prisons: academic studies of, 161; as aesthetic proj­ect, 23, 28; architecture of, 27, 28, 33, 38, 46, 47, 48–49, 50–51; art classes in, 10, 37, 162–174; assumptions about, 22; and black culture, 32; centrality to con­temporary art and culture, 3, 12–13, 22; disciplinary power of, 26–27; education in, 37, 161; entanglement with museum, 26–28; environmental toll of, 49; extractive practices of, 4, 6, 59, 62, 106, 161, 256; functioning of, 7, 26; impact on modern life, 14, 15, 38, 47–49, 135, 154, 161, 210, 255; justification for, 15; managing incarcerated ­people, 8, 73; origins of, 26; photography of, 49–51; popu­lar repre­sen­ta­tions of, 3, 15–16; and public sphere, 15, 25, 54, 70, 154; racial segregation in, 70–71, 75, 97, 154; as solution, 19. See also mass incarceration “prison to prison pipeline,” 45, 46 prison uprisings, 132, 163–165 Prison Watch Program (AFSC), 198, 212–215, 219–220 “prison within a prison.” See solitary confinement probation, 38, 47, 100 “procurement,” 63, 65–66 “protective custody.” See solitary confinement Prototype (Craig), 145–146 “provisional public,” 25, 153 proximity (notion of), 184–185, 186 public, the: alternative formation of, 33; exclusion of incarcerated ­people from, 16, 25, 87–88, 154, 186, 193; ­shaped by racialized penality, 32, 47. See also art establishments; white Western man Puleo, Risa, 27–28, 49 Purgatory (Krimes), 132–133, 134 Purifoy, Noah, 42 “pyrrhic defeat,” 134 Pyrrhic Defeat (Loughney), 133–135, 136–137

“quality of life crimes,” 73 Question of Freedom, A (Betts), 40 racial capitalism, 6, 30, 31, 37, 45, 70, 108, 123, 129, 161, 210, 222, 244, 256 racial captivity, 197, 210, 211. See also black captivity racialized apartheid, 47; in prisons, 97–98, 227 racialized criminality, 23, 39, 93, 255. See also black criminality; Latino racialized index. See carceral index; criminal index racial vio­lence: perpetrated by the state, 211, 260; repre­sen­ta­ tion of, 30 racism, pseudoscientific, 93 radical imprisoned intellectuals, 7, 62, 163; tradition of, 128, 164–169. See also political prisoners radical po­liti­cal figures, 128 Rancière, Jacques, 28, 219 Randolph, Buddy, 201–204 Rauschenberg Foundation, 18, 158 Reagan administration, 166–167 Reams, Kenneth, 59–60, 61, 128 Reconstruction era, 30–31 Reentry Bill of Rights, 154, 156 rehabilitation: framework of, 8, 155, 165, 167–168, 169; and retribution, 96–97, 167–168; state-­mandated notions of, 23 Rehabilitation through the Arts, 157 relational aesthetics, 32, 158, 257 relational art practices, 18, 25, 26, 51, 58, 126, 154, 230, 241, 263 relational possibilities, 25, 90, 155, 229 Renee, Rowan, 262 repre­sen­ta­tion of incarcerated ­people, xvi, 88; criminal index, 90–91, 101, 103, 107; desire to challenge, 76, 90–91, 103, 117, 123–124, 129–136, 142–145, 154, 225–230, 236; ethical challenges, 90, 100–101

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re­sis­tance. See prison art “restrictive-­housing unit.” See solitary confinement Reynolds, Laurie Jo, 225, 229; My Picture with Blue Sky (for Roberto), 228 Rhee, Sarah Jane, 53 Rhodes, Lorna A., 196 Ricco / Maresca Gallery, 17 Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, The (Reiman and Leighton), 133–134 Right of Return Fellowship, 18 Riis, Jacob, 97 Rikers Island, 157, 174, 175, 177, 178 Rikers Island Jail, NY (Jackson), 48, 49, 89 Ringgold, Faith, 163, 164, 165 Rios, Victor, 109, 110 Rivera, Gilberto, 71–76, 86; An Institutional Nightmare, 76–77; Walking It, 76 Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, 181 Robinson, Alma, 171 Rodríguez, Dylan, 7, 43, 84, 206 Rodríguez, Joseph, 89 rogues’ gallery collection, Missouri History Museum, 91 rogues’ gallery photos. See mug shots Rose, Annette, 103 Ross, Marlon, 32 Ross, Richard, 100 Rowland, Cameron, 4, 6, 62, 130 Roye, Ruddy, 109 Ruckman, Karen, 113 ­running (in prison), 138 Rush, Benjamin, 27 Saint Jerome, 130–131 Saldívar, Ramón, 158 Sanctuary (Batle), 17 San Quentin Arts in Corrections Art Studio (Goodman), xxvi, 1–2

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San Quentin Marathon, 138 San Quentin Rock Band, 89 San Quentin State Prison, 1, 70, 89, 184–185, 186; art classes in, 166, 171, 173 Scales, Corey, 117 Scott, Dread, 109–112; Lockdown, 109; Postcode Criminals, 110–113; Stop, 111–113 Scott, Isaac, 182 Section of Disapproved Books (Clifford), 60 “secured housing unit” (“SHU”). See solitary confinement Security Threat Group Management Unit (STGMU), 201–204 Seeing Is Believing (Lutalo), 218 Sekula, Allan, 91 Self Portrait (Craig), 145–146, 147 Self-­Portrait with Boots (Goodman), 135, 139 self-­representation of incarcerated ­people, 114, 120, 129, 142, 236 Sell, Billy, 190–193 Senghor, Shaka, 200 sensory assault, 198, 200, 205, 217 sensory control, 28, 190, 197 sensory deprivation, 34, 58, 198–200, 205, 212, 214, 225, 242 sensory overload, 58, 214, 219, 262 sexual abuse in prisons, 51, 215, 229 Shabazz, Jamel, 89 Shakur, Assata, 45, 46, 212 Shared Dining (­Women of York), 150–152 Sharpe, Christina, 85 Sheffield, Gaynel, 126 Simon, Jonathan, 110 Simon, Taryn, 101 Singleton, David, 141 slave plantations and prisons, 30, 97, 102, 106, 222. See also Angola prison

slavery, 29, 37; in Eu­ro­pean portraiture, 122–123; links to prison, 62, 97, 108, 165, 210, 222; narratives of, 211; in prison art, 84; transatlantic slave trade, 84 Slavery: The Prison Industrial Complex (Calhoun and ­McCormick), 108 Slave Ship (Turner), 84 slave ships, 84–86 smart phones, 117, 253 Smith, Bayeté Ross, 109 Smith, Eloise, 169 Smith, Lester, 21, 23 Smith, Page, 169 Smith, Sable Elyse, 130, 256–263; And ­Here Is a List of Names, 258–260; Avenal, 259; BACKBEND, 257–258; The Body Keeps the Score, 261–262, 263; C.R.E.A.M., 256–257 Smith, Shawn Michelle, 92 soap, as medium, 132–133 socially engaged artists, 25, 51, 130, 154, 165 social networks. See community building “social practice art,” 180 solidarity, xviii, 111, 114, 129, 165. See also “convict race” Solitary (Woodfox), 138, 222 solitary confinement, 14, 18, 58, 75, 107, 132, 138, 181; access to art materials in, 207–208, 214; effects on touch, 200; effects on visual depth perception, 192, 194, 198; efforts to make vis­i­ble, 10, 204, 206, 210; fecal ­matter as re­sis­tance in, 217; forms of violent abuse in, 201–205, 207, 213, 215; methods of communication in, 196–197; obscurity of, 195; obsessive thinking in, 212; overload of sound, 200; and penal m ­ atter, 198, 203, 204; and penal space, 198, 204; and penal time, 198, 204, 214, 215–216; as protection, 196; relationship to self, 214, 215; sensory deprivation in, 198–200; and social and po­liti­cal death, 198, 229; statistics of, 196 Solitary Watch, 226 Soros Foundation, 18 Southern Chain Gang, A, 36

South Lawndale, Chicago, 50–51 Soze Agency, Right of Return fellowship, 158 Spellman, A. B., 166 “Spiz.” See Gillispie, Dean Spiz’s Diner (Gillispie), 67, 68–69 Spiz’s Dinette (Gillispie), 66–67 Stanford University, Prison Re­nais­sance chapter, 186 State Correctional Institute, PA (Jackson), 48 state goods, 59, 63, 65, 77, 120. See also penal ­matter State ID (Craig), 23–25, 28, 43, 146 Staying above the ­Water (mural), 175, 177 Steele, Lorenzo, 89 Stevenson, Bryan, 91, 184 STGMU (Security Threat Group Management Unit), 201–204 stigma of incarcerated ­people, xv, 6, 15, 22, 23, 25, 59, 76, 88, 132, 154 Stinney, George, Jr., 128 Stop (Scott), 111–113 “stop and frisk” policing, 73, 110–111 Story, Brett, 47–48 “strip method,” 207 subjectivity: impact of carceral state on, 256; of incarcerated artists, 122, 191 Sumell, Jackie, 222, 224 Sunset over ­Water for Geri (Posner), 230 “Superman” (DeWeaver), 185 Supermax Cell at Northern C.T. (Hunnicutt), 195 supermax prisons, 194–195, 196. See also Tamms Correctional Center superpredators, xvi surrealism, 41 surveillance: of incarcerated ­people, 10, 13, 16, 23, 28, 38, 87; represented in prison artwork, 2; through photography, 91, 94 Survivors Manual, 199–200

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Tagg, John, 97 Tamms Correctional Center, 224–228 Tamms Year Ten, 225 Tango (Dimanche), 209 Tapia, Nneka Jones, 116 Tapia, Ruby, 90, 100 Tarselli, Todd (Hyung-­Rae), 7, 9, 128–129, 197 teaching artists, in prisons, 170, 173–180 Thomas, Rashaan, 184–186 Thompson, Heather Ann, 163–164 Three Guineas Foundation, 151 Tobak, Vikki, 130–131 Torture Chamber (Lutalo), 221 touch, theory of, 104 Tourlentes, Stephen, 49 Towler, Raymond, 18, 41–42, 43 trans ­people, 28, 220, 229 Trump administration, 153 Truth, Sojourner, 45 Turner, J. M. W., 84 Tutwiler Prison, 39 “undersight,” 203 unfreedom, 9, 25, 31, 85, 90, 97, 130, 147, 211, 261. See also freedom UNICOR, 78, 79 Union Supply Group, 60 United States Administrative Maximum Fa­cil­i­ty, 197 United States Disciplinary Barracks, 62 United States of Attica (1971–1972) (Ringgold), 165 University of Michigan, Prison Creative Arts Proj­ect, 158 “use of force” (administrative term), 207 “Uses of the Blues, The” (Baldwin), 260 Van Der Zee, James, 233 Vazquez, Judith, 200

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Venice Biennale, 108 vernacular photo­graphs / photography, 141, 233, 235 vernacular prison photos, 233–235; circulation of, 236; cost of, 236, 294n4; and digital technology, 238; emotional ­labor of, 234, 243–244; and gender roles, 242; haptic nature of, 242; imagination of, 233; and intimacy, 233–234, 236, 241, 244, 245; and penal time, 234; physical contact and, 244, 245, 246, 253; public recognition of, 294n8; relational possibilities of, 241; staging love in, 243 Villa, Cesar, 196 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 14 Violent Person Restraint Chair (VPRC), 220 “virtual life” sentencing, 14 Visions of Confinement (exhibition), 15, 182 Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, xvii visual culture of mass incarceration, xvii, 4, 13, 14, 15, 23 visuality as tool of the state, 15 Voelz, Johannes, 158 von Furstenberg, Tatiana, 138 Voting Restoration and Democracy Act (2018), 186 voyeurism of incarcerated ­people, 157, 160 vulnerability, 175 Walking It (Rivera), 76 Wallace, Herman, 222–224 Waller, Fats, 260 Wang, Jackie, 59, 62 “wanted” posters, xvi, 130 War on Crime, 194. See also law-­and-­order policing War on Drugs, 13, 102, 114 War on Poverty, 13 War on Terror, 13, 97 Washington, Jerome, 180, 181 Weekley, Joseph, 149 Weisman, Jack, 180

Westley F, 139 white masculinity, 79 white property rights, aesthetics of, 33 white supremacy, 208 white Western man, aesthetic traditions of, 25, 31, 212 white ­women: aesthetic ideal of beauty, 79–80, 123; as nonprofit organ­ization staff, 159 Wiley, Kehinde, 129–130, 135, 281n24 William James Association, 169–171, 173; Arts in Corrections workshop, 1–2, 135, 140, 157, 170–171 Williams, Tom, 181 Wilson, Mabel O., 30, 49 Winds of Change (Olatushani), 34–35 Wingard, Isaac, 117 Without the Wall (exhibition), 12 ­women: incarceration of, 48, 98, 102; and prison art, 139, 150–151, 182; reentry of, 98

­women of color: incarcerated, 14; as subjects of prison art, 140 ­Women of York, 150 Woodfox, Albert, 222–223 working class communities, multiracial and multiethnic, 50–51; white, 59, 79, 126 Wretched and Paramount (Gaspar), 51–53 Wright, C. D., 102 wrongful conviction, xxiv, 35, 42, 56, 101 York Correctional Institution, 142, 150–151 Young, Fury, 39 Young Man (McCormick), 108 youth, incarcerated: criminalization of, 98, 100; photography of, 100, 101. See also black youth Ziegler, Treacy, 12, 155, 178–180, 192–193

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