Prison Landscapes
Alyse Endur’s book Prison Landscapes is a compilation of prison inmates presenting themselves in front of visiting room backdrops. »Such backdrops, often painted by talented inmates, are used within the prisons as portrait studios. As inmates and their visitors pose for photos in front of these idealized landscapes they pretend, for a brief moment, that they are someplace else. The photographs are given to these visitors as gifts to take home and remember the faces of their loved ones while they are incarcerated«, she writes.