Prison Work
Prison Work
Photography
Some years ago, I approached Sir Stephen Tumim, then Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, with an idea. I wanted to work with men at the beginning of life imprisonment, creating a space where they could express themselves through art.
Sir Stephen Tumim was a passionate advocate for prison reform and believed deeply in the potential for rehabilitation. After navigating considerable red tape, I was granted access to HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs in London, and specifically to D Wing, home to lifers and some of its highest-risk inmates.
For a year, I spent one day a week running an art class with ten lifers. Understandably, the men were initially apprehensive, deeply distrustful and wary of my presence. But gradually, as trust developed, their carefully constructed defences began to fall away. The work became more personal, the conversations more open, and I began to see the men beyond their sentences.
Eventually, I began photographing them.
What emerged was an extraordinary body of work, revealing moments of honesty, vulnerability and humanity in the men that might otherwise have remained hidden.
My time at Wormwood Scrubs was not without its challenges, but the experience proved profoundly rewarding in ways I hadn't anticipated.
Mugshots
One project centred around the traditional mugshot. I asked each of the men to create a mugshot of themselves that they felt more truthfully reflected who they were. I photographed them in the classic front and side profiles, then printed the images onto large canvases for them to work into.
Behind the Mask
Breaking through the men's inherent masks was always going to be one of my greatest challenges — as was helping them become more aware of the different identities they inhabited. The way they responded to me, the way they behaved among other prisoners or in the presence of prison guards, each revealed a different version of themselves.
I asked them to reflect on this and create a three-dimensional mask that expressed who they felt they truly were — or perhaps who they wanted to be. Finally, I photographed them throughout the prison, wearing these new identities.
