Photo Requests from Solitary 1 Favorite 

Featuring photographs that represent a unique collaboration between men held in supermax prisons and the photographers who fulfilled their requests.

Curated by Laurie Jo Reynolds, Tamms Year Ten, Jeanine Oleson, Parsons The New School for Design, and Jean Casella, Solitary Watch.

What would a person in complete isolation want to see? Men in solitary confinement at Tamms supermax prison in Illinois were asked to request a photograph of anything in the world, real or imagined, and Tamms Year Ten found photographers to make the images. The responses included the place where the Robert Taylor Homes used to be, a gray and white warmblood horse rearing in cold air and a lovesick clown with an old-fashioned feather pen.

“Photo Requests from Solitary” features some of these photographs, along with the unfilled requests from the next phase of the project in New York and California, where thousands of men, women, and children live in extreme isolation and sensory deprivation in state prisons and local jails.
The exhibit will be staffed by survivors of solitary confinement, family members of individuals in prison, and advocates from the New York Campaign Against Isolated Confinement, as well as students from Parsons The New School for Design. Visitors can ask questions and take action to end the use of prolonged isolation in New York. The men who requested the photographs and chose their subjects have been held in isolation in supermax prisons, some for more than a decade. A variety of artists volunteered to take photographs based on their requests.

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