Following my recent post of David Leventi‘s work, a reader contacted me to alert me of the potential (and presumably happenstance) development of Stateville Correctional Center, Joliet, Illinois as an art object.
Consistently through the representations of Stateville is the description of the roundhouse as one of the last remaining prisons in America adhering to the Panopticon model developed by Jeremy Bentham.
Let us be clear, the Panopticon is an outdated and abusive model for corrections; it relies on a small number controlling a large number through the threat of constant supervision. Modern correctional management must look beyond disciplinary techniques based upon spatial arrangement and look toward truly transformative (educational) engagement with prison populations.
Still one can only speculate that the roundhouse prison is of interest to artists primarily because of its “purity” of form as understood – and communicated – through the formal qualities of composition within the photographic print.
In 2002, Doug Dubois, along with Jim Goldberg, went to Stateville Correctional Centre, and took a picture (above) of the prison’s interior. The New York Times later published the photograph.
A while later, Dubois found out that Andreas Gursky had too gone to Stateville, apparently inspired by Doug and Jim’s photograph and took a picture himself (below). Gursky has admitted in his career he finds ideas for images in newspapers and other popular media. Gursky’s image put in context here, at the Brooklyn Rail.
So, this raises questions. Has Stateville prison inadvertently become a tease, and a subject for curious photographic artists?
Do the individual activities of artists have a bearing on one another? Should these images exist within the same discourse? Do photographic attentions of the 21st century have any relation to the need and stresses of current correctional politics in Illinois?
Does the ascendancy of Stateville onto gallery walls effect any significant – or measurable – impression of Stateville prison within public consciousness?
Or are Dubois, Goldberg, Gursky and Leventi just continuing an intrigue which has continued throughout the decades?
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August 21, 2010 at 11:09 am
Stan B.
That circular prison structure is both a (grand) visual and (freak) historical curiosity, no surprise it draws photographers of a documentary bent like moths to flame. Photography “duplicates” reality, and photographers have long duplicated each other. Hell, I sure wouldn’t mind poking my nose around there with my dinky little 35mm- then again, none of this addresses the fact that there are real, live human beings being stored in that curiously antiquated museum piece.
August 21, 2010 at 11:13 am
petebrook
Well said Stan. There are several discussions that could grow out of this three-photog mirror act, but I think the most pressing is have they adopted a type of engagement with the subject that serves the subject well? And I guess that depends on whether you think the subject is the architecture or the prisoners!
August 21, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Stan B.
Actually, I’m quite surprised Jim Goldberg didn’t delve further into the human equation there, since that is most definitely his MO. Perhaps he couldn’t wrangle the necessary permission.
October 11, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Billy Blankenship
I went through Sateville on or about 1962. #54297 From there to Menard, Il in the same year. #31417
Having been to the Old Prison in Joliet. in about 1960. #48250
When released in 1964 from Menard, went bck to Chicago.
Since 1969, I have been in the Ministry every since. I raised a large family in Illinois. But the above scenes will always be imbedded in my memory.
November 16, 2010 at 12:50 am
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