Pictures from a Drawer: Prison and the Art of Portraiture Book

An interesting collection. In his introduction, Bruce Jackson, tells of how he came across this group of photos of Arkansas State Penitentiary inmates. Taken between 1920 and 1950, the photos were handed over to Jackson, unceremoniously and without the accompanying dossiers. Fascinating, heartbreaking, and unsettling, this collection allows us to view the images as just that--images not connected to a narrative or a rap sheet. As Jackson writes, "What I'm hoping to do here is to liberate these faces from the dossiers, not to reimprison them in them."