In the summer of 1975, Bruce Jackson found a group of about two hundred 3x4 inch prison identification photographs, dating from between 1914 and 1937, in a drawer in the Arkansas penitentiary. As large-format (13x19 inch) images, their fading colours digitally stabilised, the human dignity of their subjects begins to re-emerge.
The images are mirrors, resonating with aspects of ourselves we perhaps have never before encountered...many of them are life size. You can't trivialize them when they're life size. Their eyes meet your eyes.
Many of these images can be seen in an online slideshow.
Amazing. Thanks for finding this.
Posted by: language hat | Tuesday, December 21, 2004 at 10:14 PM