A couple of years ago, the amazing Pete Brook of Prison Photography successfully crowd-funded a cross-country trip "8,000 miles across America, interviewing photographers and prison experts who've documented and witnessed the era of mass incarceration." (I backed the project and as a recipient of the mixtape reward, can vouch for Pete's musical taste as well as his drive, as it were.)

Pete has now curated an exhibition which opens in Philadelphia this weekend. "Prison Obscura presents rarely seen vernacular, surveillance, evidentiary, and prisoner-made photographs, shedding light on the prison industrial complex. Why do tax-paying, prison-funding citizens rarely get the chance to see such images? And what roles do these pictures play for those within the system? With stark aesthetic detail and meticulous documentation, Prison Obscura builds the case that Americans must come face to face with these images and imaging technologies both to grasp the cancerous proliferation of the U.S. prison system and to connect with those it confines."

Presented by the John B. Hurford '60 Center for the Arts and Humanities with support from the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

The exhibition opens January 24th, 2014, with a talk by Pete Brook at 4.30 pm. I strongly recommend you go if you can.



Clinical contact holding cage, Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU), C-Yard, Building 12, Mule Creek State Prison, California. August 1, 2008. Brown v. Plata. Photographer Unknown