1st Place: Kathleen Robbins

Kathleen Robbins - Burning Field

2nd Place: Sarah Cusimano Miles

Sarah Cusimano Miles - Pangolin

3rd Place: Priya Kambli

Priya Kambli - Dada Aaji and Mama

Publisher’s description:
Grace Before Dying documents the prison-run hospice program at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, Louisiana. The photo essay charts the extraordinary breakthrough in humanity that has helped transform one of the most dangerous maximum security prisons in the United States, Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison, into one of the least violent. Quotes from the incarcerated hospice volunteers and patients accompany the searing photographs set in a carefully built sequence that charts the development of a culture of caring and compassion that challenges stereotypes of incarcerated people, and provides an intimate perspective on what long-term and life sentences signify for those inside.

An exhibition of the work is currently on view at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, where Lori will be speaking on May 19, 2011.

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RM: How did you learn about this prison hospice initiative? Did foundations or anyone in particular approach you about the hospice, or was it the other way around?

LORI: I started the project then I received support and opportunities as the work progressed. I learned about Angola’s hospice program through an assignment from the magazine Imagine Louisiana – which has since closed. The editor, Arthur Smith, asked me to create a photo essay about the program. I worked on that assignment in the spring of 2007.

RM: How did you gain such extraordinary access to the penitentiary?

LORI: After completing my assignment for the magazine, I knew I wanted to try to continue working on the project. I explained what I wanted to do to the warden in charge of communications and asked for permission to continue photographing the project. I was persistent, but I tried to be conscious that my presence required extra resources and energy from the security and medical staffs at the prison.

RM: Did you have to gain pre-clearance for every photo session? Did you have concerns about spontaneity or staginess of the photos due to any restrictions?

LORI: Yes, every session took several days of negotiations and preparations. But because I had the support of the hospice coordinator, once I was in the hospital ward I was able to do my work without much interference. The volunteers and patients also seemed to understand what I was trying to accomplish. They supported my work and I believe they remained open to my presence because they appreciated the fact that I was telling their story.

RM: How long did this project take to come to fruition?

LORI: I was introduced to the hospice volunteers in Dec 2006. I continue to visit the prison whenever possible, but I took my the last photo for the essay in December 2008.

RM: How much time did you spend at Angola?

LORI: It’s hard to say. I made at least 15 visits and each visit averaged four hours.

RM: Did you get to know any of the prisoners well, specifically those being treated? If so, how did this affect your work?

LORI: Yes, I think I have gotten to know many of the incarcerated volunteers, especially the quilters. I think my relationship with the men has deepened my commitment to the hospice program as well as my project. I also feel deeply grateful to the patients and their families who allowed me to spend time with them during the most difficult of times.

RM: Were Angola’s authorities eager to get the word out about the hospice initiative, or reluctant, or somewhere in between?

LORI: I think they are eager to talk about the hospice program and consider it one of their most successful programs. It is one of the reasons they allowed me such incredible access. After I completed the project, a television producer was given access as well. She has completed a documentary about the hospice program at Angola Prison. It will be featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network at 8pm on July 28th, 2011. The film is called, “Serving Life” and is narrated by Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker.

RM: What equipment did you use? Were there particular lighting concerns at work here?

LORI: I used several cameras but my main camera is the Hasselblad XPan II. I shot Tri-X film because the lighting was institutional and difficult.

RM: Do you have any advice for photographers who may have difficulty getting to their potential subject matter due to security concerns or various rules and regulations? What I keep thinking about was how difficult it must have been just to get started on your photographic work here, what kept you going through what had to have been some difficulty.

LORI: I think each institution must be different, but a photographer should clearly present her idea, and be persistent. It helped that I approached my project as long-term, so if I wasn’t able to photograph something during a visit, I would ask to do it during the next visit.

Access is key to the work of documentary photographers. It is important that a photographer is able to clearly describe the project they hope to do. But that is only half of a conversation about access. The subject or institution that the photographer is trying to receive permission from has their own requirements and expectations. It is important to try to think about that when asking for access. ‘No’s’ are a big part of this process though.

While working on Grace Before Dying I was often denied access for months. But the hospice coordinator, and later the assistant warden at the time, were my advocates. We continued to stay in touch. I believed in the project a great deal – partly because of the positive feedback I received from reviewers at the PhotoNOLA Reviews. So I never gave up until I felt I had enough photographs to tell the story adequately.

RM: What’s next for you?

LORI: This summer I’ll be working on a project about the Block Captains of Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a city of eclectic neighborhoods, very similar to New Orleans. The Block Captains are like the seeds of grass roots organizing in the city. It will be a way to talk about the possibilities of community leadership and the personality of Philadelphia.

***

To see more of Lori’s work,
visit her website and www.gracebeforedying.org.

Ray Mikell serves as chief contributor for the New Orleans Photo Alliance’s blog. This is the second in a planned series of photographer interviews for the PhotoNOLA blog.

***

RM: How did your relationship with Shelby Foote influence the decision to take photographs primarily in Mississippi and Tennessee?

NELL: The first building I photographed for GONE was a brick ruin farmhouse near my home outside Memphis in Fayette County, Tennessee. Afterwards, I went to Shelby Foote to ask him where to find similar antebellum structures. He told me to start looking in Washington, County Mississippi, in the heart of the Delta and the place where he grew up. He said that many of the houses around Vicksburg survived Sherman’s burning rampage as he floated down the Mississippi River and marched across the south to the Atlantic. “In fact,” he said, “I’ve written a story about it.”

Nell Dickerson

The story, “Pillar of Fire,” is a chapter from his 1954 Novel. “Jordan County.” It is set in a fictional version of Washington County. It is about a company of Union soldiers dispatched to burn an aging southerner’s home. His life (and the history of Mississippi Delta) flashes before him as he witnesses his entire legacy going up in flames.

GONE is a photographic essay of the buildings that survived Sherman’s burning, only to fall to ruin through social and economic neglect. The images are paired with the entire text of “Pillar of Fire.” Although they are not a literal translation of the story, the story informed the images I photographed.

The locations are informed by the Mississippi River and cotton country, for it is King Cotton that defines who we are and why we fought the Civil War in the first place.

RM: Did it strike you as best to stick with what you know best as far as choosing locations and structures? Were you already intimately familiar with these places?

NELL: Every place I went was a new discovery. GONE was an anthropology project. (My first degree was in anthropology/ethnographic photography.) Shelby sent me to the town historian in Greenville, Mississippi, and she sent me to the next person who sent me to the next person, and so on, until everybody was intertwined in a huge spider web of kinfolk, hearsay and stories. (This is before social media on the Internet was invented.) It took considerable research, footwork, driving the back roads, listening to oral histories and “visiting.”

House, circa 1843, Fayette County, Tennessee. Nell Dickerson

RM: Did the structure or building/home take precedence (or architectural details, etc.), or the photographs of them? (A chicken-egg question.) Or, more specifically, how did you strike a balance between showing what you would like to see preserved, and what you found more of interest from a more purely photographic standpoint?

NELL: GONE is not an academic endeavor. It is strictly from the heart. So many “documentary” photographers are just voyeurs. I do not consider this a documentary project. I am a fine art photographer. When I entered a building, I sat with in, and let the building speak to me. And or I walked around the outside and had a “conversation” with my camera on the exterior. The images that I selected for the book were the best “photographs” as well as those that related to Shelby’s text. “Pillar of Fire.”

RM: How long was this book in the making?

NELL: Seven years.

RM: How did you go from being asked to do a children’s book to doing this? Did it take much convincing to change anyone’s mind about what you should do?

NELL: It took about thirty seconds once I mentioned that I had the rights to Shelby Foote’s story, “Pillar of Fire.”

Nell Dickerson

RM: Do you expect this book to appeal more to people interested in architectural photography, or Civil War buffs, or historical preservationists, or some mix of all three?

NELL: I hope that the book appeals to people who appreciate a fine book as an object, beautiful photography, a fabulous story by Shelby Foote, Civil War history and architectural preservation.

RM: Is there much hope for the restoration of any of these properties (outside of ones that are more ruins than structures, strictly speaking, a la the Windsor Ruins near Port Gibson MS)? Are there owners who are interested in preserving them?

NELL: A few are restored since I photographed them. Sadly, most have been left to return to the earth.

RM: Would you say that your book is unique, as far as architectural or preservation-oriented photography books go, in focusing attention not only on grand old mansions but small homes, churches and even 19th Century equivalents of modern-day pre-fab houses?

NELL: There are many books and movies that portray the stereotypical “Southern Mansion.” What people don’t realize is that the people who built these temples to King Cotton tended to live in town, up on the hill, away from the mosquitoes and Yellow Fever. (Places like Memphis, New Orleans, Natchez and along the River Road in Louisiana.) The people who actually worked the land lived on the land. These buildings were lived in and used by the people who worked on the farms and grew the cotton for the absentee landowner in “the big house.” Most of the buildings are in the middle of present-day working farms or hidden deep the woods in the backcountry.

RM: Has there been much concern for the latter, previously? Or would see that as similar to gaining attention for, say, the once-overlooked New Orleans shotgun styles?

NELL: I hope that people are interested in preserving their own legacies; whether it is the family home, your grandmother’s quilt or your native language.

Nell Dickerson

RM: Were there any special processes or post-processing styles or techniques used in the making of these photographs, anything you can share?

NELL: The magic is in the mix. I use about 5 different software programs for postproduction. Since you are from Louisiana, consider it a secret recipe for a hot sauce.

RM: What sort of equipment did you use? Did the choice to use that equipment influence your photographic or artistic choices?

NELL: The cameras changed over the course of the project. They were secondary to the vision…a means to an end and they did not dictate what I photographed. However, the capture was digital. The most important tool, the ultimate weapon, and the one I cannot live without, is a Wacom Cintiq monitor. It makes the entire work flow right-brained, spontaneous and artistic like painting.

House, circa 1843, Fayette County, Tennessee. Nell Dickerson

RM: Can you tell our readers how this ties into what some photographers might call your “day job” as an architect?

NELL: I have learned more about design and construction from photographing these buildings than I ever learned in school or from pushing papers behind a desk.

RM: Is this book in some ways a culmination of everything you’ve done in your career, or been trained to do, or everything you’ve learned? Or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to mix and match it all together?

NELL: I am living an incredibly rich, interesting and full life. I’ve done and am doing lots of creative things. Architecture is the mother of the arts and I have many design, films, books and multi-media projects simmering on the stove. This book is just one of many.

***

To see more of Nell’s work and a preview of the book visit her website.

Ray Mikell serves as chief contributor for the New Orleans Photo Alliance’s blog. This is the first in a planned series of photographer interviews for the PhotoNOLA blog.

Ann George: Prompt Sentinel

LightBox Photographic Gallery invited Blue Mitchell to curate a group show of alternative photographic artists. The six person exhibition, Dream Allegory, is up through April 5, 2011, in Astoria, Oregon.

We are delighted that he chose to feature work by two photographers he met while reviewing at PhotoNOLA last December: Anne Berry and Ann George.

View the entire exhibition online here.

GONE: A Photographic Plea for Preservation pairs Nell Dickerson’s photographs of antebellum buildings in ruins with a short story by Shelby Foote. Robert Hicks wrote the introduction.

Photographer and architect Nell Dickerson began her exploration of antebellum homesteads with encouragement from her cousin-in-law—renowned Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote. Her passion for forgotten and neglected buildings became a plea for preservation.

Gone is a unique pairing of modern photographs and historical novella. Foote offers a heartbreaking look at one man’s loss as Union troops burn his home in the last days of the Civil War. Dickerson shares fascinating and haunting photographs, shining a poignant light on the buildings which survived Sherman’s burning rampage across the Confederacy, only to fall victim to neglect, apathy and poverty.

GONE is a powerfully moving volume that will change how you see the forgotten buildings that hide in obscurity across the Southern landscape. The book will be released in time to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War on April 12.

There will be an author’s talk and book signing at the Garden District Book Shop on Thursday, May 12 at 5:30 PM.

Garden District Bookshop
2727 Prytania St.
New Orleans, LA 70130
(504) 895-2266

Nell has a schedule of additional upcoming signings here. You can also purchase a copy online through Indie Bound.

Orbit by S. Gayle Stevens

We’re thrilled to see the wet plate collodion work of S. Gayle Stevens featured in this month’s issue of Fraction Magazine. Many thanks to reviewer David Bram for showcasing another talented PhotoNOLA review participant! See Fraction Issue 23 here.

Also featured in this issue is Ailsa McWhinnie’s book review of Gita Lenz, a monograph recently published by Gordon Stettinius. (Gordon is a PhotoNOLA veteran who has attended every review, since we started in 2007!). Gita Lenz was a New York photographer, active from the 1940′s through the 1960′s, whom Gordon was introduced to in 2002 by their mutual friend, Timothy Bartling. As Timothy was helping then 92 year-old Gita move into an assisted living situation, he asked Gordon for advice about what to do with Gita’s images and equipment. Gordon offered to store the many boxes of prints and contact sheets and negatives at his home in Virginia.

As he lived with her archive, Gordon gained an increasing appreciation for the quality and depth of Gita’s photography. In the spring of 2006, with the help of friends and interns from Virginia Commonwealth University, he began the task of organizing and preserving her work, and putting together a timeline of Gita’s life. He founded Candela Books in order to publish a monograph of her work, in fall of 2010. Concurrent with the book’s release, Gitterman Gallery, in New York City, mounted a solo show of her work in September-October of 2010 which was warmly received and widely reviewed.

Gita Lenz passed away on January 20, 2011, at the age of 100. Thanks to the admirable efforts of Mr. Stettinius her photography and legacy will live on. An exhibition of her work is planned in Richmond, Virginia at Candela Books in the late spring of this year.