Walled Women

My trip to see mountaintop removal coal mining in southern West Virginia gave me a new perspective of the connection between schools and prisons that parallels discussions we've had in class about the war on drugs and over-surveillance, and the ways in which public schools set certain students up for failure and oppression by the system. I hadn't expected to see such a connection, as I, like many, have a tendency to forget that all issues of oppression are inherently connected and stem from upper-class white male control as it dominates society; to see that the schools are about as confining and the war on drugs about as harsh in these poor, white, rural Appalachian communities as they are in the poverty-ridden, predominately black inner cities. In looking at the various images we all posted last week, HSBurke’s pictures particularly hit me, one of a man standing against the bars of his prison cell, the other of a little boy standing similarly against the bars of the school yard fence. Both people were white, which really made me think of how the over-surveillance in “third world USA” (WV) is less an issue of race than class.

I am particularly thankful for Zehr's decision to photograph the men and women in street clothes for their representation in Doing Life. The first thought I had upon cracking open the book was "Wow, these people sure don't look like prisoners." In fact, I actually had to flip back to the introduction to verify that I was indeed looking at people who would spend the rest of their lives behind bars. On one hand, I think that the choice to take these people out of their prison attire was one that influenced my inability to connect them with the institution. More so, however, this book reminded me that, "lifers" or not, these people ARE JUST PEOPLE. People who had jobs, families and aspirations. People I could have stood next to in the grocery store checkout line. Whoa. It is disappointing to me that despite this mini-epiphany, I still feel a burning desire to know why these people did what they did to land themselves in this situation. I see this as my minds attempt to understand what separates them from me. But of course, not having access to this information, separation is impossible. I wonder, know, how I will react to being with the women at the Cannery tomorrow. Will they look any less "normal" to me because they'll be wearing the prison uniform? Will I be able to more easily erect that wall of separation that I seem to subconsciously strive for because of this? I think also that there is something to be said about Zehr's use of black and white photography. I've always thought that a lack of color in photography serves to soften edges, blur the lines.

I am really interested in Christine Kim's work.

She explains her work as examining the physicality of sound. The Physicality of Sound seems unheard of (pun intended) – but it isn’t, or it shouldn’t be. We are physical beings and everything we perceive with our bodies is physical. But she reminds us that sound does not simply exist in one form, and does not have to be experienced in a singular way –through our ears.

Hearing people understand sound waves through the mediation of our ears; it seems abstract and bodiless, and we have developed a vocabulary for it that includes ideas applicable to sound alone, such as tone, pitch, notes, etc., and as Kim says, those of us with the ability to hear with our ears, claim ownership of sound. We can hear, and therefore we assert that our experience of sound should be prioritized. "Don't make loud noises, don't burp, don't drag your feet" etc. – but, Kim, who does not hear the way I do, explores the mediation through our other perceptual faculties, reminding us that sound does not belong to hearing people. Sound has or can have a physical form, a body in the world. It can vibrate. Or mediated through an amplifier, can create shapes – can move a paintbrush and therefore decide the composition of paint on paper. Sound can have texture.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWbxSZ2Nxw

I’ve been thinking a lot about the images I have of incarcerated women, and can’t help but be ashamed at my lack of knowledge of the topic before this summer. Before this summer, the media influenced all of my images of incarcerated people. I don’t have any family members or close friends who have had any contact with the legal system in the US. I think that as a result, in high school I was definitely guilty of projecting very negative feelings towards those who “have committed a crime.” In a sense, I really placed a lot of blame on them for not making the types of decisions that my family and I have made. In high school, I do know people who ran intro trouble with the law, specifically for drug-related offenses, and I used to think that it was their fault. I probably felt that way because I grew up in the same environment, went to the same school, but somehow I ended up attending an afterschool program instead of doing drugs, I was definitely to all of the other factors that contribute to incarceration.

When looking through the pictures together, one of the main themes we’ve noticed is the similarity between the physical spaces of prisons and schools.  This is apparent when we compare Erin’s photos of her school to Chinese prisons, Johannah’s images of a school cafeteria space to a prison block, and the photos of Overbrook high school as well.  To be sure, the feelings and connotations associated with these spaces are far from what we can call comfortable, positive, or perhaps even palpable.  This is evident in their harsh fluorescent lights, the cramped living spaces, the bare, white washed walls, and more generally, the stark, unfriendly nature of these buildings.  In other words, these places are designed to evoke bad feelings.

Because of this, I start to get a little worried about how people might approach the solving this problem. More specifically, I’m worried that people might think it’s appropriate to believe that the structure of these spaces are inherently evil and, by extension, believe that these spaces must be completely abandoned in order to address problems within these two institutional spaces.  The reason why I worry is because I don’t believe a complete rejection of these institutional buildings and is necessarily fruitful, or even possible.

I was first struck by the eroticization of female inmates when I was researching images of female offenders for Barb’s vision class, but it wasn’t until I saw the “sexy prisoner” costumes that I thought more carefully about the subject. A Google search of “women in prison” turns up a number of movie posters for pornographic or erotic films set in prison. That such a serious and life altering experience could be reduced to a sexual spectacle made me cringe.

After writing my paper, I looked up some images of 2Pac with his quotes and I found this. I really like and wanted to share.