In 1998 Deborah Luster began photographing inmates, who volunteeredto participate, in three Louisiana prisons—the Transylvania PrisonFarm, a minimum-security facility housing drug offenders and paroleviolator; the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, a 1,000-bedminimum- to maximum-security facility; and the Louisiana StatePenitentiary at Angola, a maximum-security facility housing more than5,000 men. She soon invited poet C.D. Wright to collaborate on theproject.Luster and Wright have worked together on a number ofprojects--sometimes initiated by the photographer, sometimes by thewriter. "I was skeptical that my art could turn itself toward thatenvironment," says Wright. "I agreed to come to Louisiana to see what Icould see, to see what she was seeing. It was a summons." Over the nextthree years, Luster and Wright visited often, taken photographs,conversing with inmates, and corresponding with them when they wereaway. The result is a powerful and haunting body of work, whichthe artists describe as an attempt to produce "an authentic document ofLouisiana's prison population through word and text, a document to wardoff forgetting, an opportunity for the inmates to present themselves asthey would be seen, bringing what they own or borrow or use; work tools,objects of their making, messages of their choosing, their bodies,themselves."

Curated by Jo-Ann Conklin
image: Hustleman, 1999