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Part 2:

Justification of the images:

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Rationale:

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Even though these images are restricted to being of one prison, albeit one no longer in use, I selected them because they best embody my current thoughts on certain aspects of prisons and prison life.

The concepts I have of prison life are derived from the media, interactions with a prisoner and an ex-prisoner, my interest in architecture,  and the ‘everyday’.   Underlying this concept is the exhibition of suffering as entertainment.

For a more detailed account of the visit to Bodmin jail, please refer to my blog of the visit.

Influences:

The photographers who most influenced what photographs I selected from those I took are Donovan Wylie, Sara Davidmann, Debra Fabricius and Valerio Bispuri.  Two of these photographers have included people in their work while the other two have the presence of people implied in their work but not actually present.

Wylie’s work in Maze 1 & Maze 11 is inspirational from its clinical study of and pared down depiction of an obsolete  prison, and the political practice and philosophy of containment and control.

Bispuri’s ten year project, on the other hand, sets out to see how life in 74 different prisons in South America reflect life in that latin-American continent.  His images are gritty,  taken on the run in penitentiaries in use and reflect the chaos he experienced where, on the whole, prisoners run the prisons.

Davidmann’s depicted prison is of a different kind.  She has studied transgender people for over 14 years and, through  her manipulated found photographs in ‘Ken. To be destroyed’, she  posthumously releases a relative trapped in a psychological and physical battle in a time when society would not accept transgender men or women.

Fabricius looks at ‘temporality, memory and the everyday’.  In Urban Drift, she sees herself as a flâneuse on Regents Canal in London where human presence is implied through the remnants which have been left behind. “… my photographs shape themselves finding the traces of what has been left behind.” (www.debrafabricius.com).  The images selected for this assignment imply the presence of people in a time past and follow traces of the influences of people past and present.

Genre:

Given that my work is guided by  personal letters received from a prisoner, a strong interest in architecture and how both architecture and  personal histories impact on the ‘everyday’, this work so far dictates  either psychogeography as a genre which is entwined in a conceptual personal journey, or a conceptual approach in which I investigate the concept of 'suffering as entertainment'.   The artists whose photography partly influenced how I see the everyday, reflect elements of both conceptual art and psychogeography in their work.

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References:

Bispuri,V.:2014.Encerados. Contrasto srl. Roma.

Davidmann, S. 2016. Ken. To be destroyed. Thames and Hudson. London.

Wylie, D.: 2009. Maze. Steidl.

http://www.debrafabricius.com

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The text in blue denotes what I have added since the tutor report came out.