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BLOUIN ARTINFO | “Prison Has its Own Art Culture”: Curator Dave Adler on the Clocktower’s Poignant Inmate Photo Show | by Chloe Wyma

Photographs of prisoners by prisoners, for prisoners, featuring prisoner created painted photography backdrops. The largest unseen 'art system' subculture in the United States.

 

Links: BLOUIN ARTINFO | “Prison Has its Own Art Culture”: Curator Dave Adler on the Clocktower’s Poignant Inmate Photo Show | by Chloe Wyma

 

It is possibly one of the largest photography subcultures in America. It exists outside of the art market and outside of the labyrinthine patois of the art world. It’s beyond the sphere of influence of galleries and museums, delimited by a type kind of institution altogether. Prison portraiture, known in New York as the “click-click” program, is practiced in nearly every U.S. penitentiary. Inmates pose in front of cheerful hand-painted backdrops depicting log cabins, lighthouses, city skylines, and beaches — signifiers of un-incarcerated, middle-class life. The photographs are sent to friends and family on the outside.

 

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Photos: Dave Adler Archive.

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Uploaded on September 12, 2012
Taken on September 6, 2012