Prison Landscapes: Surreal Photography From Prison Visiting Rooms

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To collect the images for her book she initially contacted institutions and asked permission to take photos within their walls. As you can imagine that request was denied so she joined prisoner pen pal groups and asked the prisoners direct if they would mind having their snaps included in the book.

Prison Landscapes - Photo - James Bowlin Trout

Eventually, in summer 2011, she did get permission to go into some prisons to take some of her own shots too.

Prison Landscapes - Photo - Genesis Asiatic

When asked about the choice of mural designs Emdur says “You do see some regional realism–so, prisons in Washington State will have evergreen trees in their backdrops, prisons in Florida will have white sand beaches, and prisons in Louisiana will have New Orleans French Quarter-style features. There’s also the question of where the prisoners are from: one thing that I’ve observed is that in upstate New York, for example, many of the prisoners are actually from New York City, so many of the backdrops in upstate New York prisons show New York City skylines.”

Prison Landscapes - Photo - city

Notice the cars are painted in non-gang related colours:

Prison Landscapes - Photo - Cars

Apparently the hand-painted murals are becoming less common as shop-bought ones take over. A lot of the relatives want the pictures to be as photographic as possible so that it really does look like they are somewhere else. It’s a bit of a shame really.

Prison Landscapes - Photo - Brandon Jones

Apparently one of the biggest challenges to finalising the book was getting the correct permission and release forms signed by the prisoners. It was especially difficult tracking down those that had been released from jail.

Prison Landscapes - Photo - Beach

Prison Landscapes - Photo - Antoine Ealy

When trying to find out how long the murals have been going on for she spoke to a sixty-five-year-old warden who just said, “You know, they’ve been here longer than I have”.

 â˜› Watch Now: VIDEO: Prison Officer Kills Inmate On Camera

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