Computed tomography machine

This is how it works: The body is scanned with the aid of NVIDIA graphics that show air veins in blue, tissues as beige, bones as white and blood vessels in red. A process that makes the results of an autoposy available in a few hours with the creation of 25 000 images in about 20 seconds.

This new technology has been tried by the Swedish police for detecting vital but invisible causes of death.
Source : www.economist.com or the issue of december 12, 2009

One glaring omission from Prison Photography is ICE detention centres and the prisons specifically designed for immigrants. Apart from the public stunts of Sheriff Arpaio (here and here) I have not featured any photography of immigrant detention or prisons.

This is partly because immigration policy and deportation infrastructures aren’t an area I know much about, but mainly because immigrant jails and prisons are the most invisible of all prisons in America. The media simply cannot get access like they can into state and county sites of incarceration.

As a course of policy, ICE detention sites are kept hidden. Allow me to push back against that a little:

Map courtesy of Global Detention Project.
More resources at the Detention Watch Network

In an attempt to redress this dearth of immigration coverage on Prison Photography, I point you in the direction of Tom Barry’s interview on Fresh Air yesterday. Thanks to Bob for the tip-off.

Here’s some things I learnt:

- Over the past five years immigrant imprisonment has increased 400%
- The policy of immediate deportation for illegal immigrants was replaced by imprisonment and deportation; a deliberate tactic intended to punish and deter future attempts to cross the US border illegally.
- Legal definitions of crime have broadened since 1996. Couple this with a syncopation of agency databases means constant threats of stop, search, detention and deportation of immigrants (both legal and illegal) now exist that did not 5 years ago.
- In this new era distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants have shrunk.
- Legal immigrants are subject to “a separate penal system”.
- 30% of deportees to Mexico don’t speak Spanish.
- The 11 border prisons are intentionally remote and located in economically depressed towns along the US/Mexico border.
- Immigrant prisons have a structure of financing and ownership that is unique. Tom Barry calls it “The Public/Private Prison Complex”, in which tax dollars and private corporations mix and match the funding. In many instances, administrators could not actually state who owned the facilities. This results in diluted accountability.
- The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the Geo group are the two largest private prison companies involved in immigrant detention.
- Privatised prisons were once a rarity in America. CCA and Geo got their start under Reagan winning contracts to house immigrants.
- CCA and Geo have enjoyed record profits over the past 8 years. 45% of their income derives from from state and federal contracts outsourcing immigrant detention.
- The perversely named ‘Operation Reservation Guaranteed’ means that detainees will always be sent to a bed/cell even if it is on the other side of the country. The transportation costs are met by the tax-payer.
- Wackenhut, an arm of Geo group, is the sub-contractor for these long, expensive and unnecessary transportations.
- It is common that detainees are moved without warning or reason. It is common that detainees cannot be located by the private prison companies for long periods.
- And much, much more. Listen, I highly recommend.

Tom Barry covers border security and immigration issues as the Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for International Policy. He has written several books, including The Great Divide and Zapata’s Revenge.

Tom just published A Death in Texas a piece for the Boston Review about a riot at an ICE prison in Texas. The riot was an “act of solidarity” by the detained population following the death of a young prisoner.

Tom maintains the Border Lines blog for the TransBorder Project is a project of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City and the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC..

Moosgo, a new developer of original content for iPhone and iPod Touch, presents its latest applications.

Viola, F. and Barna, G. (2008). Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the roots of our church practices. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers.

Viola and Barna collaborated to bring about this book last year, which falls into the category of counter-institutional ecclesiology.  Viola, the primary author of the book, is a strong advocate of house churches, and he has a strong bias against the institutionalized Protestant church.

Viola and Barna make some strong cases against the way most Protestant churches in the United States typically operate.  They passionately and correctly indicate that the church building receives too high a status and often financially strangles churches; that corporate worship is grossly misunderstood by church staffs and the laity; that the sermon commonly restricts Biblical interpretation to the pastorate; that the office of senior pastor is overly inflated with power; that Sunday morning attire most often serves to exclude certain people groups; and that Christian education is entirely too centralized in the church.  Probably the best argument they make is their support of an every-member functioning church, especially with their strong emphasis on Christ as the head of the church.

They ask the right questions, I think, but the premises behind their questions are problematic.  Viola makes an impassioned argument in the first chapter that the church’s use of pagan rituals is unBiblical.  To an extent, I agree with this: we should not incorporate cultural practices into the church only for the sake of being cultural.  However, just because an institution is pagan in origin does not mean that it cannot be used faithfully in church practice.  Indeed, we have Biblical support for pagan institutions: Paul paid rhetorical reverence to polytheism in his speech to the Athenians; used temples and the Areopagus as speaking environments; gave credence to several Greek philosophers in his speeches and letters; and partook in pagan customs, all for the sake of the Gospel.  Paul was a man, and therefore not perfect, but there is no Biblical evidence to support that any of these actions were unGodly, and they seem, in fact, to be sanctioned, even inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible itself is composed in like manner to similar works of each book’s respective time period, the styles of which are all pagan.  Genesis 1-11 reads like Mesopotamian/Egyptian myth; Kings and Chronicles read like other nations’ monarchal annals; and the Gospels read like Greco-Roman bioi.  The practical message appears through this evidence: use the means available to you to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The Church is to be counter-cultural, yes, but ideologically so.  The practical measures It uses are only the vehicles of the transformational message, and as long as they are recognized as mere media and not holy within themselves, are acceptable.  If we were to remove from our churches all traditions which originated with unBiblical or unGodly practices, we would have very little left to do.

While the premises behind the questions are problematic, they do lead to good questions, as I indicated before.  However, Viola’s and Barna’s answers to these questions are even shakier than their foundations.  They claim that spontaneous-style house churches are free of pagan institution and are ecclesiologically superior to classic institutional churches.  They disparage the edifice, church offices, planned worship, homiletical style, and nearly all other signs of the visible church.  While I agree with them that these signs are overly revered by most churches, doing away with them wholly is not the only solution to that problem.  Institution, like all models of the church, is not a cancer, but rather a vitamin.  The body needs it to function properly, but it only needs so much of it, and too much of it can be harmful.  The same is true of every other church model, even the mystical communion model of non-hierarchal house churches.

Additionally, there are many things institutional churches can do for the glory of God that house churches effectively cannot.  This is especially true when it comes to church buildings.  Dozens of paraministries, which likely could not otherwise function, use church buildings every week as meeting places; these include Alcoholics Anonymous, Divorce Care, homeless ministries, group therapy sessions, et cetera.  Even more impactful, though, are the scores of community groups with no spiritual affinity which may use the church for meeting space as well, and so be duly influenced by it, including musical groups/recitals, weddings, receptions, school events, et cetera.  If the church edifice is capable of suiting these community needs, therefore providing both a service to the populous and an opportunity to witness, there is no reason it should not do so.  To this end, the edifice may be one of our greatest tools in community outreach, and certainly ministers in a way which the house church cannot fully replace.

Overall, Viola and Barna provide the institutional church with a lot to consider in terms of church practice.  Though their argument is based on problematic premises, they ask questions which I believe every church must consider.  Why do we do what we do?  Is what we do Biblical when we strip it down?  Best of all, this book brings every institution into question, which is something every church should do with every practice.

On the other hand, the authors’ answers to the good questions they present are not satisfying to the church as a whole.  They provide extreme and difficult solutions to what can ultimately be resolved with the current structures in place.  Even if a church was inclined to believe every premise Viola and Barna told them in this book, the brakes would come on as soon as they read the authors’ conclusions.  Very few churches, no matter how convinced by their arguments, would totally revert themselves into house churches and wholly abandon its practices on this basis.  While they present problems churches may wish to address, their recommendations are simply too extreme for nearly any church to undergo.

Ratings

Premises Established: 1/10

Biblical/Theological Support: 3/10

Questions Asked: 8/10

Practicum Provided: 1/10

Rhetorical Persuasiveness: 2/10

Overall: 3/10

No one owns the rights on a mugshot. Mugshots are in the public domain.

This might be a problem for Patrick Tribett (now 8 weeks clean) who is trying to stop the use of his likeness on commercial t-shirts. Change.org has the full scoop.

Tribett’s best hope is the sanction against the use of names or portraits for commercial gain. We will see if this law can be applied to existing mugshots.

Aurora Detention Facility, Aurora, Colorado, Google Earth Screenshot

POSITIONING PRISONS IN SPACE AND IN OUR MINDS

One of the main stated goals of Prison Photography is to bring visual documents of prisons in America and abroad to a wider audience, so I was very excited to hear about Thousand Kites‘ newest initiative.

Incarceration Nation is a prison mapping and image bank that (un)earths the presence of prisons in our communities using Google Earth videos and user generated content. Our goal is to provide bloggers, researchers, activists, and interested citizens access to often suppressed images of the U.S. prison industrial complex.

Thousand Kites artist Nick Szuberla tells it as it is:

There are often strict regulations around film outside and certainly inside prisons. We believe that sunlight is the best sanitizer for human rights violations, and it is often not in a state’s interest to provide access. In Virginia, where we are based, they literally moved the prison gate back, from where you could film, as media scrutiny increased. Prisons are often in rural, hard to reach places. One reason for this is to support faltering rural economies, but the other is an out of sight, out of mind mentality.

PRISONS AND ABANDONED INFRASTRUCTURES

Minutes after viewing the nations’ subdivided carceral systems lounging up against the nations’ desert mountains, rural towns and even sub-divided suburbs, I came across the BLDGBLOG analysis of California City:

In the desert 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles is a suburb abandoned in advance of itself—the unfinished extension of a place called California City. Visible from above now are a series of badly paved streets carved into the dust and gravel, like some peculiarly American response to the Nazca Lines.

Geoglyphs of Nowhere

BLDGBLOG continues:

And it’s a weird geography: two of the most prominent nearby landmarks include a prison and an automobile test-driving facility run by Honda. There is also a visually spectacular boron mine to the southeast – it’s the largest open-pit mine in California, according to the Center for Land Use Interpretation – and an Air Force base.

The prison is the California City Correctional Center, a private prison run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) for federal authorities. If you want to buy shares in CCA and profit from the misery of and warehousing of human beings CCA operates on the stock market under CXW. But, please note: By investing in CCA you automatically qualify as the sperm of the devil and invite a dump-truck of shat-karma to your door and into your life.

The Geometry of Incarceration

Szuberla’s opinion that prisons are hidden is indisputable; prisons are willfully sited in remote locations. Policy provides prisons with predictable, constant, distant operating funds – even when local monies may dwindle.

PRISONS, ECONOMIES, FILM

Prisons, while occasionally a boon to local economic health, are always moral and morale parasites to their host towns.

Prison Town is a great film that follows the workers and residents of Susanville, CA. Initial apprehension, curiosity and hope for what prisons could bring to a suffering economy soon turn to realizations that the prison spurred mainly minimum wage jobs outside the institution and destroyed the will of those working inside.

Prison Valley is a web-documentary in production right now by Frenchmen David Dufresne and Philippe Brault. It looks at Colorado’s prison towns during the recent recession.

Are you currently unemployed? According to the new Canadian citizenship guidebook for prospective immigrants, over 8.6% of unemployed Canadians are not fulfilling the Canadian responsibility of having a job, which now comes with the rights of having a Canadian citizenship.

The new Canadian citizenship guidebook was unveiled last week, redefining what it means to be Canadian. After all, new Canadian immigrants are more likely to be unemployed, which must mean—according to the authors of the guidebook—that their economic difficulties are a result of their failure adopt Canadian values. In addition, the new guidebook tells prospective immigrants, “Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, “honour killings,” female genital mutilation, or other gender-based violence.”

Firstly, earlier this year, a University of British Columbia study found that resumés with English names received 40 percent more callbacks from Toronto employers than identical resumés with Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani names. Canadian employers are engaging in name-based discrimination against job applicants, which has a substantial effect on the employment rate of immigrants, since most Canadian immigrants today originate from Asia (58.3%).

Secondly, the new guidebook suggests that non-Canadians who are thinking of acquiring Canadian citizenship are more prone to barbarism compared to people who were born inside Canada. Additionally, the authors of the guidebook make special mentions of “honour killings” and “female genital mutilation” among non-Canadian prospective Canadians, which normalizes the culture of post-9/11 Islamophobia into government documents.

Most Canadians seem to believe that the post-9/11 rise in news coverage of “honour killings” and “female genital mutilation” done by Muslims reflects an increase in “Muslim fundamentalism” post 9/11. According to their worldview, after September 11th, 2001, Muslims all over the world (separated by different languages and geography) collaborated together to further incense the global anti-Muslim anger by engaging in cultural practices that offended Western sensibilities, and it has nothing to do with U.S. propaganda using Orientalism to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sadly, the new Canadian citizenship guide for immigrants reflects what most Canadians fear the most about immigrants (i.e., that they might be Muslim or Arab, and that they might be “barbaric”), not what most immigrants are (i.e., Chinese, Indian, and Filipin@, of various faiths and non-faiths, and, of course, decent people of all ethnicities and religious/non-religious identities). Like before, the federal government under Conservative leadership entrenches more xenophobic attitudes into the institutional systems of Canada.

In 2007, Hérouxville, Quebec—a small rural town where almost everyone is white, French-speaking, and Catholic—created a code of conduct for immigrants, and it was widely criticized for being ridiculous and xenophobic. The code of conduct ruled that immigrants should not stone women in public, burn them alive, burn them with acid, or circumcise them.

Back in 2007, the world rightly recognized that the Hérouxville code of conduct for immigrants was xenophobic and absurd. However, in 2009, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney unveils an eerily similar Canadian code of conduct for immigrants, and very few Canadians recognize it as the very same xenophobic absurdity on a larger scale.

Still from video shown to the Baha Mousa public Inquiry showing Corporal Donald Payne, formerly of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, shouting and swearing at hooded Iraqi detainees.

The British Army is facing accusations as serious as those leveled against the US military at Abu Ghraib.

Let me offer some context of UK Army abuses in Iraq.

Only one British soldier has ever been sentenced to prison for detainee abuses in Iraq. He is Corporal Donald Payne. Above is a still from this very disturbing video which was released in June of this year into the inquiry of Baha Mousa’s death. A long-running and contradicting narrative followed this case since Mousa’s death in 2003 and the opening of the first inquiry in 2006. BBC has a timeline.

It seems that Corporal Payne and the six other soldiers aquitted during this inquiry may not have been the only British soldiers involved in abuse. I must say that these allegations are still just that – they are unproven, yet to be fully investigated.

Robert Verkaik of the Independent has pursued this story here and here:

One claimants says he as raped by two British soldiers, and others say they were stripped naked, abused and photographed. For the first time, British female soldiers are accused of aiding in the sexual and physical abuse of detainees.

The 33 new cases, which form part of a pre-action protocol letter served on the MoD last week, include allegations of mock executions, dog attacks, rape, exposure to lewd acts and exposure to pornography. The abuses are alleged to have occurred in 2003 – the time as Baha Mousa’s torture and death.

It is suggested it has taken so long for the allegations to come about because the Iraqi’s were fearful of reprisals during the British occupation of Southern Iraq. UK forces pulled out in April, 2009. Three camps are named: Shaat-al-Arab camp (shown below), Shaaibah British camp and Akka in Al-Zubayr.

Shaat-al-Arab camp, Southern Iraq

Details of abuse:

In May 2003, a 16-year-old Iraqi was among a group of Iraqis taken to the Shatt-al-Arab British camp to help fill sandbags. When the Iraqi youth, who wishes to remain anonymous, and his friends had filled the available sandbags, a British soldier indicated that he should enter a room, from where he assumed that he was to retrieve more sand bags, he says.

On entering the room, he claims he saw two British male soldiers engaged in oral sex. As soon as the two men saw him enter, they started to beat and kick him, he alleges. When he fell to the floor, one of the men held a blade to his neck while the other soldier stripped him naked. Although he screamed in protest, the two British soldiers, one after the other, raped him.

More:

They took off our blindfolds and I could see that we were surrounded by seven or eight soldiers. There were five of us. They asked us to pick fights with one another, or fight them. They were laughing at us and taking photos with digital cameras. They made us squeeze in pile-up, as in Abu Ghraib prison photos, while a soldier stood on top of us and started shouting and laughing. I felt so humiliated and treated as a toy they messed up with.

They picked further on a younger man who was good-looking. They made him strip naked and started messing with his penis and taking photos. “On one occasion I refused to pick a fight, then a soldier kicked me hard on my back, which made me fall on the floor. He started hitting me with a baton on my knees. Then he used an electric baton on different parts of my body.”

Source: Independent Saturday, 14 November 2009

Of course one wonders now whether the investigations will publish the photographic evidence or if it will be used only internally.

Personally, I have no desire to see these images. I sympathise with arguments to say that only through release of such images can the world know the full extent of what happened, but I also doubt what we can actually and accurately “know” from photographs that we wouldn’t otherwise learn through full disclosure and description of events.

It is extremely unfortunate that both Google and Daylife image searches for “Shaat-al-Arab camp” result in this image.

British soldiers share a laugh as their comrade walks around dressed as Borat, the Kazakh journalist played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, during Christmas celebrations at the Shatt al-Arab camp in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra on December 25, 2008. The Iraqi parliament has voted to allow the presence of non-US foreign troops after December 31, giving British troops a legal basis to remain beyond the expiry of a UN mandate. © ESSAM AL-SUDANI/AFP/Getty Images

But the madness, brevity, violence, stress, justified escapism, testosterone and “laws” of war are vastly different than in any other milieu.

It just seems to me that the internet has collided stories and images here that could be as valid a critique of 20th century war as any of the great American Vietnam films.

____________________________________________________________

Interestingly, Shaat-al-Arab camp was erased by Google from their maps three years ago for security reasons. This action seems warranted as Shaat-al-Arab camp was a common target for insurgents – as Abu Ghraib was. Details are described half way through this article.

Thanks to Sean for the tip off.

Aside the Coca-cola vending machines and Cheetos, portraits and photo-keepsakes are probably the most ubiquitous objects in prison visiting rooms.

I have speculated before about a massive, dispersed collection-without-walls made up of the millions of prison Polaroids; a sprawling, bittersweet and neglected vernacular photo-archive of true American experience.

Polaroid cameras are still the standard for prison visiting rooms as they provide instant results and they don’t have the “security issues” associated with he transferability of digital files. No matter the format, Friends Beyond the Walls will help construct your photo-idyll:

Through the use of digital technology, Composite Magic brings you, your family and loved one(s) together in an exciting new way, featuring dozens of the most beautiful full-color dramatic background locations that make ALL the difference!

Just send us your favorite Polaroid or 35mm snapshot … We’ll take your image out of those prison photo backgrounds, and place you and yours “inside” the romantic or exotic location that has previously been outside your reach!

No more explaining where the photos were taken!

Some companies simply “paste” your image on a photo background. For the most realistic and unique effect, Photos Beyond The Wall specializes in placing you “inside” the photo! See how the Composite Magic process works! ESCAPE from the confines of those boring “click click” backgrounds, and be released to the free world … right into the photo location of your choice!

There is plenty of scope here to pour scorn upon the low-brow photo-manipulation, and there is (justifiable) reason to question the financial gains of the company involved in providing such a basic service, but I won’t go there.

People aren’t stupid. They won’t invest their emotions in “Composite Magic” if they don’t want to. But if someone does make use of this service then so be it – we all spend silly money on items foreign and bizarre to one another.

I will say this: prisoners and their families develop fast and hardened interactions with correctional authority. The procedures of the visit become as routine picking up the paper or grabbing a morning coffee. It makes sense that some of that population would take the opportunity to leave that dictated reality behind and reclaim (visual) identifiers that don’t belong to  departments of corrections and criminal justice.

Therefore, the only real way to discuss this niche photo-aesthetic and grow a legitimate appreciation would be to talk to the sitters, consumers and owners of this niche photo-aesthetic. That could be the territory for anthropologists and sociologists or, as easily, it could be the chatter of ordinary people who still take an interest in other ordinary people.

A Developing Story is a new joint venture by Johnny Bennett, Phil Maguire and Benjamin Chesterton of duckrabbit.

In an email a few months ago, Ben said to me his interest lies in “getting under the skin of NGOs” and have them realise that they can deliver their stories and campaigns in far more effective ways. A Developing Story wants the stories told in Government & NGO international development campaigns to outlast the short term objectives of said campaigns.

A Developing Story proposes that the media of these campaigns is deposited in a common silo, accessible by all (usually under a Creative Commons license) so stories – once created – can tell themselves infinitum.

While we believe that there’s clear value in bringing together this public-facing, awareness-raising communication material, we also want to do something similar for communications that are used in international development – e.g. radio scripts, posters, mobile text messaging campaigns, etc, used in health campaigns, etc.

Unfortunately, almost none of this material is available in the public domain. A public health campaign about the risks of HIV is run in South Africa, for example, but the artwork and radio scripts aren’t available to someone doing the same thing in Malawi six months later. And that’s what we want to change.

We believe that all Government funded communications for use in international development should be available in a central, easily accessible database under Creative Commons licenses. A database where photographs, posters, scripts, public information leaflets, etc, can be downloaded, copied, translated and adapted for local audiences, saving practitioners time and money and therefore ultimately saving lives.

In an age where we recycle many of our physical objects, it seems strange that most of the international development communications work funded by Governments, IGOs and even NGOs is completely lost after the short campaigns they promote.

Given the primacy of Creative Commons and open-source content, Matt and Scott at DVAfoto needed clarification on A Developing Story’s impact on the photographer (which was provided). I have fewer worries as I feel this venture is aimed at transforming media sharing practices among government funded and NGO initiatives rather than another pressure on the distribution and remuneration of individuals’ works.

I would anticipate that the payments made to photographers and journalists by media campaign management will continue and that photographers will take on assignments in the knowledge that their work can be used repeatedly for non-profit purposes.

That said, A Developing Story is very open to individual contributions. This is the most relaxed approach to collaboration I’ve witnessed!

We’re always looking for contributing editors. So whether you’re a blogger, a photographer, an academic or an aid worker we’re keen to hear from original voices.

We’re particularly interested in multimedia work, so if you want to post monthly podcasts from the Congo, or a slideshow from Myanmar, then do get in touch. There’s no obligation attached to being a contributing editor, you only have to contribute once, and you can post as infrequently as you like.

So, as Ben asked, “Can You Help?”

In the past I have provided varied perspective on Guantanamo. I put together a rudimentary Directory of Visual Resources. I alerted readers to important coverage of exceptional events here and here (granted, all events related to Gitmo are out of the extraordinary) and I have provided reflection on Guantanamo through the lenses of Bronstein, Clark, Gilden, Linsley, Pellegrin, Toledano and Lieutenant Sarah Cleveland.

Ultimately, none of these posts come close to describing or making sense of that most nonsensical of places. And so to ACLU’s latest video. My good mate Stan (cheers pal) posted earlier today:

Elsewhere, a friend of Prison Photography alerted me to the online journal JumpCut. Julia Lesage has assembled the most comprehensive webpage of Guantanamo links I’ve ever come across. Some of the links are already 404, but I would encourage you to peruse – I have still not exhausted the many resources. Leasge also contributes to the Spring 2009 issue with a section on ‘Documenting Torture’.

456452     การลงโทษและการแก้ไขผู้กระทำผิดในสถาบัน     Punishment and Institutional Corrections

ประวัติ วิวัฒนาการ ปรัชญา วัตถุประสงค์ แบบรูป การลงโทษและแก้ไขผู้กระทำผิดทฤษฎี เทคนิค แนวโน้มในการปฏิบัติต่อผู้กระทำผิดในสถาบัน กฎหมาย ระเบียบและการบริหารองค์กรแก้ไขผู้กระทำผิด มีการศึกษานอกสถานที่

(History, evolution, philosophy, objective, pattern, punishment, and correction. Theory, technique, trend in institutional treatment of offenders. Laws, regulations and administration of institutional correction. Field trip.)

(456452 มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์)

Past and present ruminations about what is and isn’t a photograph have been a source of frustration for me. For one, people can draw whatever lines they wish to determine the point at which manipulation tricks out a photograph and thus qualifies it as photo-illustration. And for another, as Errol Morris keeps banging on about, ALL photography is lies (and manipulation).

These debates are not about truth. Interventions – power relations, habit, photographic custom, complicity among subjects, props, political agendas (and framing), cropping, tweaking of exposure levels before and after development, digital alterations – mean that photography can never be, will never be truthful.

People forget that often it is the ingenious tricks that have spurred the largest wonder among viewing public – think Oscar Rejlander’s Two Ways of Life, Spirit Photography and – in a different sense – Ansel Adams’ Zone System.

It is therefore, with some relief that an artist like Azzarella comes along using photo-manipulation as the tactic and purpose for his work.

Last week, I questioned Anton Kratochvil’s Homage to Abu Ghraib, mainly because I think it makes little contribution to the discourse on the political aesthetics of Abu Ghraib. The blurry references to torture in Kratochvil’s images are in response only to a personal, conscious and willing point of view. I understand that Kratochvil’s work was an exercise in self-therapy but that shouldn’t stop me comparing it to Azzarella’s broader concerns about more general and unconscious reactions to well-circulated images.

If I w re to wr t th s sent nce wi h lette s m ss ng, you can still read it. The human brain is a wonderful instrument drawing on past experience to quickly filter out the non-possibilities. Just as the brain instantaneously deciphers gaps in text so it does with gaps in images.

With every passing hour the Spectacle suffuses itself further. It isn’t so much us reading images but images reading us. Our involuntary responses to images are predictable, predicted, precoded. The redacted action of violence in Azzarella’s pictures plays second fiddle to the original image, for it is the original image we drooled over and devoured.

The hooded detainee, dead student, wailing child or falling soldier needn’t even be present; our internal, emotional feedback spun by these images will forever be the same. We fill in the gaps and short circuit to prescribed disgust, sadness and politics, thus confirming our prevailing bias.

Azzarella’s works expose the fraud in us all … and our cheapened, robotic response to image.

ALL IMAGES © JOSH AZZARELLA. FROM TOP TO BOTTOM: UNTITLED #13 (AHSF); UNTITLED (SSG FREDERICK); UNTITLED #24 (GREEN GLOVES); UNTITLED #35 (CAFETERIA); UNTITLED #39 (265); UNTITLED #20 TRANG BANG; UNTITLED #43 (PAR115311).

Okay, Jeff Barnett-Winsby did not aide and abet anyone.

He was, however, indelibly tied to a fugitive pair of lovers – one an inmate, the other a prison volunteer. Winsby had done a couple of photo series at Lansing Correctional Center, Michigan. He knew – and photographed – both John Manard and Toby Young before Young drove a van out the prison with a dog-crate in the back. Manard was in the dog-crate. They were on the run for twelve days until the authorities caught up with them in Tennessee.

All the details about the police hunt and climactic high speed car chase, car crash and return to custody can be found here.

Toby was the founder and coordinator of the Safe Harbour Program, and John Manard, a dog-handler and Young’s escort within the prison. She was vulnerable, he was hopeful, they were close. Manard did most of the planning. “By the time he brought me in to what he was doing, I was in love with him and I couldn’t say no,” Young said. “I was not in a safe and sane place in my life, but I still could’ve said no, but I didn’t.” It seems like a straight up case of manipulation; a true power imbalance.

This tale is like something out of a movie. Jeff has muttered things about making a movie. We’ll see. At the very least, we can all look forward to his book published J&L Books and due out any time now.

I was reminded of this story again by the Too Much Chocolate’s recent feature. TMC’s coverage is good, but Feature Shoot has a more liquid dissection of the events as Barnett-Winsby experienced them:

‘Early on, after the escape, I was contacted by the prison. I had taken the latest photos of John and they needed images which featured his newer tattoos. These photos ran on America’s Most Wanted and in other newspapers around the country. I was obligated to give these photos and felt pretty conflicted.

‘After they were transfered back to Kansas, John wrote an open letter to a Kansas City TV station professing his love and Toby’s innocence. I started writing to John in response to this and we traded several letters over a couple months. In them, he covered much of the escape story and described what sounded like a honeymoon.

‘Post graduation, I decided I needed to see where they had been so I headed to Tennessee, rented the same cabin and stayed there for several days. I thought a lot about how I should be spending my time while in Tennessee.

‘What I realized was that my interest in this story was not specifically about the escape, it was about what they were escaping for. I think I was down there trying to honor that’.

Barnett-Winsby’s gloss portraiture is pretty atypical of prisoner representations. It’s very giving.

The accompanying images of prisoners and their dogs work as a foil to the straight portraits. Instantly, our response to the inmate changes. Barnett-Winsby plays on visual dissonance. He exposes our inbuilt prejudice and softness toward animals: “If someone loves an animal they can’t be violent, right?”

As well as Safe Harbor, Barnett-Winsby also photographed the objects in single occupancy cells for his project Marks of Intention. The two deliberate projects are very much separate and the third, Love Notes and Promised Freedom, was born of the luck photographers dream about when hunting for a good story.

Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele have been in the news recently for their Facing Climate Change initiative. They were featured by PDN as photographers who cared and secured a $10,000 Grant4Change.

I was super happy then, to see them diversify and change focus from massive global issues to the environmental issues of our region here in Washington State.

They teamed up with Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, Evergreen State College and The Sustainable Prisons Project (which I have talked about before) to produce a 7-minute multimedia piece with a gorgeous mix of inmate, staff, student and academic volunteer voices. They also deliver the goods for the stills gallery.

__________________________________________________________

The Sustainable Prison Project has proved that environmental justice, social justice and fiscal conservatism can be delivered all in the same package. I teach in a prison and the resolve to try new programs and learn new skills is not something left wanting.

Drummond and Joy Steele’s documents make it clear more than ever that prisons often are not – and really never should be – the intimidating “neverwheres” that media (often TV and film) depict them as.

006451 การจัดบริการอาหารในสถาบัน Institutional Food Management

หลักการจัดบริการอาหารในสถาบันต่าง ๆ การบริหารงานบุคคลและการเงิน การวางแผนอาคารและอุปกรณ์ การจัดซื้อและการเก็บรักษาวัสดุและอุปกรณ์ การควบคุมคุณภาพและราคา การปรับตำรับให้เหมาะกับการประกอบอาหารจำนวนมาก

(Principles of food service in various institutions. Personnel and budget management. Building and equipment layout. Purchasing and storage of materials and equipment. Quality and price control. Recipe standardization relevant to quantity cookery.)

(006451 มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์)

this is not my image. i got it from http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bemorton/Neuroscience/Neurophilosophy/Singularity.jpg

Over the past couple of weeks I have experienced a unique consolidation of feminist ideas/issues/critical crises and to be honest, I haven’t posted much here about it because I have been fruitlessly trying to find a way to synthesize all that I’ve seen. Concurrently my bathroom reading has consisted of sections from McKinnon’s chapter on rape from “Toward a Feminist Theory of the State.”

I gotta say, even though a lot of liberal/contemporary feminism sort of ostracizes McKinnon, especially in her critique of sexuality, that particular chapter in her book goes right along with what I have been reading on the blogosphere about rape culture and male supremacy. I just don’t see sex and sexuality as existing as some abstract, monolithic entity apart from violence and male supremacy, and I think a lot of contemporary feminist theory on sexuality tries to frame it in that way. I understand that this comes from a desire to create feminist sexuality, but I feel that women as a whole have been duped into internalizing male supremacist sexuality as that theoretical “objective” sexuality. I don’t think of rape as “violence, not sex.” I think of rape as very violent sex and I think that the way that our legal system treats it – making it difficult to define, and defining it in very male-centric terms- turns it into a valid form of sex. Now, note that I’m not saying that it *should* be valid, but that it *is* valid.

We are expected to internalize the idea that sexuality *has* to look only one way, the way deemed “natural” by white supremacisty, misogynisty, capitalism. We aren’t supposed to question it. It’s supposed to be good an healthy. In all forms.

What I’m saying is that the existence of rape proves that this isn’t true, because rape is a socially-acceptable form of sex that is violent and painful and dehumanizing. I mean, just look at all the folks who came out in support of Roman Polanski. Just look at how hard it is to prove whether or not someone has been raped in a court of law. Just look at how often women don’t report it.

Reading this thread and this one on Shapely Prose was very validating to me, because these did well to illustrate and consolidate thoughts that I have had in respect to sex, male supremacy, rape culture, etc. for a number of years, but the articles were not written by radical feminists- though the analysis therein seemed to mirror a lot of the analysis that I have related to personally and theoretically, and had difficulty expressing. It was just so good to hear liberal feminists come out with this hardcore analysis.

And as I am struggling and scrambling to keep up with all the stuff out there in ‘Sphere-land, I find this on The Rotund, which links back to this at 2 Zaftig Chicks. Needless to say, my head is spinning with all the implications.

I think it all just goes to show that the various forms of oppression can’t be “cured” discretely. It’s a bit meaningless to talk about how fat people should have “equal rights” (whatever that means under the current system of divide/conquer/control/rinse/repeat) without very thorough analysis of the other oppressions that tie into a person’s fatness. I don’t think that my “right” as a fat woman to be considered “hot” or “fuckable” is as important as my right as a Fat Person to  basic human dignity. I have to examine these other ideas and ask myself, is that basic human dignity I’m asking for, or am I asking to be oppressed in a more tolerable way that the way to which I am accustomed? Am I demanding my place at the table or am I saying, hey, it’s better to be a cute pampered poodle than it is to be a mangey stray?

So anyway. Reading comment after comment, I kept stumbling over the word “kyriarchy” and went out looking for definitions for it. This seems to be a pretty good one; but I gotta say. To be honest there are memes floating around this term that I’m not quite sure I’m analytically comfortable with. I am still mulling it over. It seems that the point of the term is to highlight intersectionality of oppression, and as I read more about it I hear people talk about how they use it and “patriarchy” to describe different things. Ok. I get that. And I get that there isn’t any one good word to encompass all forms of hierarchically-derived oppression. From what I am reading about this new terminology, however, I wonder how much it really helps to enrich understanding. I mean, when I see examples that cite BD/SM relationships as places where “patriarchy” isn’t always applicable, I have to question it, because I thoroughly do NOT think that a flipped-script adoption of a particular sexual role by a member of an oppressed class is necessarily an example of “liberation.” Not even momentarily, IMHO.

I think to take the focus off of the ruling class (which in this day and age is a white, male, able-bodied, heterosexual, christian, capitalist class [and feel free to ad-lib if I have left out any pertinent descriptors]) as a “target,” if you will, leads to even more divisiveness and doesn’t foster unity in action, which is what is needed if the world is ever going to look anything like fair and still have human beings roaming around in it alive. Which is what I would like to see, personally. We might fight amongst each other, and that’s an awful thing. We might act as gatekeepers towards one another- again. Awful. I KNOW!

But here’s the thing, and here’s the reason that it’s important to keep the eyes sharply focussed on that sliver of society I mentioned earlier: THEY HAVE ALL OF OUR STUFF. ALL OF IT! And they want to keep it all. So this complex pyramid is incredibly important in so many ways, and must be understood. But a woman whose only income comes from acting like she’s dominating a man (while she’s really carefully playing out what the man has most likely scripted for her) isn’t in actuality holding a position of institutional power over that man.

In our culture all but the most powerful in an institutional sense- and money does equal institutional power when you start talking about the legal system and systemic violence- have to rely on “the Great White Father” to get their “fair shake” or their “day in court.”

So much to think about. And it’s not even Thursday yet. Jeebus.

note- this image is not mine. it comes from mactheory.wordpress.com

ILLUSTRATORS 52 is now accepting entries online and Nora Krug, Associate Professor of Illustration, is Chair of the competition this year!

To upload your entries, please format your artwork to these specs:

72 dpi, RGB, JPEG file, 700 pixels on the longest side.

Please provide all of the appropriate credit information for each entry. THIS INFORMATION MUST BE COMPLETED TO BE JUDGED!

ELIGIBILITY

Any illustration created or initially published between October 1, 2008 and November 1, 2009 that has not been accepted in the Annual previously, is eligible. International entries are welcome. Each submission will receive consideration by every member of the jury for its category. Please be certain that the original art will be available for exhibition and can remain at the Society from January through March 2010. High-quality prints will be hung in the case of digitally created art only.

ILLUSTRATORS 52 ANNUAL BOOK

All accepted entries will be reproduced in full color in the Illustrators 52 Annual. Complete credit will accompany the image, including size, media and artist’s and/or rep’s phone number(s). The Hanging/Publication fee is required for reproduction in the book, whether or not the work was displayed in the exhibition.

AWARDS

Gold and Silver Medals will be presented to the illustrators and art directors whose works are judged the best in each category. Medals will be presented only if original art is available to hang in the exhibition. A high-quality print will qualify in case of digitally created work.

GALAS

The Sequential Gala will take place on Friday, January 8, 2010.

The Editorial and Book Gala will take place on Friday, February 5, 2010.

The Advertising, Institutional and Uncommissioned Awards Gala will take place on Friday, March 5, 2010.

Ticket information will follow.

EXHIBITIONS

Sequential: January 6- January 23, 2010

Editorial and Book: January 27 – February 20, 2010

Advertising, Institutional and Uncommissioned- February 24- March 20, 2010

CATEGORIES

All work whether published or not, should be entered in one of the first six categories:

COMICS/SEQUENTIAL
Any multi-image project for which a sequence of images is necessary to fully convey an idea or story. Examples: work that has been produced or published as comics, visual journalism or short visual narratives and picture stories, or graphic novels. Individual images from sequential may also be submitted in their respective categories. Self-published projects must be published in a run of at least 500 copies. Children’s book entries should be entered in the Book category only, not Sequential.

EDITORIAL
Examples: work commissioned by newspapers or magazines, medical and scientific journals or online magazines.

BOOK
Examples: all illustrations originally commissioned for use inside or on the covers of hardbound and paperback books, including fiction and non-fiction; children’s and young adult literature and comic books. Promotional posters or advertisements depicting book art must be submitted in the book category.

ADVERTISING
Examples: illustrations for advertisements appearing in newspapers, magazines or on television; video and CD covers; brochures, fashion, point-of-purchase and packaging illustration; movie and theater posters.

INSTITUTIONAL
Examples: work appearing on merchandise, announcements, annual reports, calendars, corporate projects, government service projects, greeting cards, newsletters, in-house publications, philatelic work and collectibles.

UNCOMMISSIONED
This includes all self-generated work such as portfolio samples, sourcebook ads and uncommissioned stock that are currently unpublished except as promotion for the artist or artist’s representative. Commissioned but un-published work appearing as self-promotion should be entered in the category for which the work was originally created. There will be no art directors or clients credited for uncommissioned works.

ENTRY FEES

$30 per entry for non-members of the Society of Illustrators.

$20 for members of the Society of Illustrators entering their own illustrations.

$35 per entry for non-members of the Society of Illustrators entering Comics/Sequential

$30 for members of the Society of Illustrators entering their own Comics/Sequential

Art directors and designers pay the non-member fees.

Deadline for entry is October 30th!

Illustration by Lorenzo Mattato. Design by Arem Duplessis. Chair: Nora Krug. Co-Chair: Edel Rodriguez