Introduction:

Transcending Prison Walls.

 

In this project, prison walls are seen as a paradox of separation which connects.   As such, the walls are interfaces between the world and a world-within-a-world, allowing a free flow of information relating to time, place and self via letters, phone calls and emails.  They attest to the aspirational potential of redemption and reintegration into normal life, in time. 

 

 The function of the leaves in this project is metaphorical.  Furthermore, in increasing numbers of prisons, gardening is becoming more and more important and is considered a form of therapy for the inmates' wellbeing.   You will not, however, see this in the mass media because it is not a sensational topic. The Royal Horticultural Society awards the Windlesham Trophy annually to the best prison garden in England and Wales.

 

This project is the outcome of a correspondence I initiated with a friend and local preacher who was arrested on his fiftieth birthday for a crime he had committed in his mid-teens, and who spent thirteen months in HMP Dartmoor. What if ... ? underlies my reason for writing, and Ian replied.  

 

Unlike mediated prison genre images, these images reflect the perspective of personal development, as recounted in letters, spanning a year spent in prison, in Britain, in 2016.