DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Pictures from a Drawer

Prison and the Art of Portraiture

Bruce Jackson author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Temple University Press,U.S.

Published:6th Apr '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

Pictures from a Drawer cover

Features ID photos collected by the author while he was visiting the Cummins Unit, a state prison farm in Arkansas. This book also contains a description of everyday life at Cummins prison in the 1950s.A remarkable collection of prison "portraiture" photos

"In a stimulating introductory essay accompanying this collection of extraordinary photographic portraits, Jackson (The Story Is True) recalls visiting in 1975 Arkansas's Cummins state prison farm, where an inmate invited him to fill his pockets with about 200 discarded prisoner identification photographs, likely dating from 1915 to 1940.... Shrewdly, Jackson balances their remarkable refurbishment with a strong sense of provenance (retaining staple holes and creases, for example), while eschewing any attempt to connect each haunting image with a particular crime or narrative. Given unprecedented and (from the perspective of their original purpose) utterly unintended scope, the human dimensions of these images grant each an irreversible dignity for the first time, while simultaneously taking on the essential characteristic Jackson names: they become 'mirrors' of ourselves." —Publishers Weekly

"I'm intrigued by the portraits of these prisoners. These pictures all speak to me of another time not only because of the way the people are dressed, but also because of the direct simplicity and innocence of the images. Today, when so many photographs are altered and manipulated, the honesty and reality of these images make them stand out as powerful and true portraiture for all time."
Mary Ellen Mark

ISBN: 9781592139484

Dimensions: 254mm x 178mm x 20mm

Weight: unknown

200 pages