Photo Requests from Solitary Confinement

Via Flavorwire, a photo project from activists working to close the Tamms supermax prison in Illinois:

In 1998, the first prisoners were transferred from prisons across the state to Tamms CMAX, in Southern Illinois. This new “supermax” prison, designed to keep men in permanent solitary confinement, was intended for short-term incarceration. The IDOC called it a one-year “shock treatment.” Ten years later, over one-third of the original prisoners had been in Tamms for more than a decade. They lived in long-term isolation — no phone calls, no communal activity, no contact visits. They are fed through a slot in the door. Prisoners at Tamms only leave their cell to shower or exercise which they are allowed to do, depending on their behavioral level, from zero to 7 times per week. Exercise is solitary, in a concrete pen.

The project invited the prisoners at Tamms to request a photograph “of anything in the world, real or imagined.” Volunteers then provided the photos. Here’s the request that produced this picture:

I would like my own picture done with an alternate background from the IDOC picture. I have no pictures of myself to give my friends and family. This would mean a great deal to me. If this is not able to be done. Then I’ll leave the picture for you to decide.

Additional instructions: If you can place my picture on another background. Nothing too much please. Something simple like a blue sky with clouds or a sunset in the distance would be fine.

Here’s another one:

Jennifer Lopez music videos with her ex Ben Affleck on the Boat. I will like to see her butt.

Additional instructions: Thank you.

In January of this year, the Tamms Year Ten project succeeded in their agitation to get the supermax prison closed. An estimated 30,000 people remain in solitary confinement in America, and, “as with the overall prison population, people of color are disproportionately represented in isolation units.”

Photo credit Laurie Jo Reynolds and Chris X