Deborah Luster's pictures and C.D. Wright's words capture life behind bars

09:49 AM EDT on Thursday, April 14, 2005

BY BILL VAN SICLEN
Journal Arts Writer

For years, it was known as the bloodiest prison in America, a place so brutally harsh that 8 out of every 10 inmates died behind bars. And while recent reforms have curbed some of the worst abuses, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola remains one of the country's most dangerous places to do hard time.

Photos & poems from prison

Deborah Luster

Christina Kolozsvari, St. Gabriel, Louisiana.

View a slideshow of the photos and poems

Yet as poet and Brown University professor C.D. Wright discovered when she and another artist, photographer Deborah Luster, began visiting Angola six years ago, the prison didn't always live up to its violent reputation.

"The first thing you notice is that the whole place is incredibly clean," Wright recalls. "Then there are the grounds, which are always perfectly manicured and maintained no matter when you visit. If you didn't know better -- and if you could somehow block out the guard towers and the razor wire, which is everywhere -- you could easily think you were looking at a nice state-college campus."

The prisoners, too, were a surprise.

"As a group, they were extremely polite," says Wright "It was always 'Yes, ma'am,' 'No, ma'am,' 'Would you like some Kool-Aid, ma'am.' I'm sure part of it was just trying to be on their best behavior. But it's also bred into them. Many of the inmates are from the rural South, where good manners still matter."

Two years ago, Wright and Luster published One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, a book of poems and portraits based on their visits to Angola and two other Louisiana prisons: the minimum-security Transylvania Prison Farm and the 1,000-bed Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel.

The book, which brought readers face to face with everyone from rapists and murderers to petty thieves and drug dealers, earned Wright and Luster the 2003 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from Duke University.

Now the book has spawned an exhibit, also called "One Big Self," opening tomorrow at Brown's David Winton Bell Gallery. (Note: as part of the show, Wright and Luster will present a free gallery talk today at 5:30 p.m. in the List Art Center Auditorium at 64 College St.)

According to gallery director Jo-Ann Conklin, the show will feature about 60 of the more than 800 prison portraits Luster took between 1998 and 2001. Though small in size, the black-and-white pictures are both finely detailed (Luster uses an old-fashioned view camera) and disarmingly direct. Except for their prison uniforms -- and a few rather colorful tattoos -- these could be friends, neighbors, co-workers.

Accompanying the portraits are excerpts from Wright's poems, in which inmates talk -- at times in their own words, at times through Wright's spare, hardscrabble verse -- about everything from their childhood dreams to life behind bars.

"It's pretty powerful stuff, especially when you put the words and images together," Conklin says. "Without trying to idealize them or makes excuses for their behavior, the show reminds us that these prisoners are people, too."

Shedding light

Wright agrees that there's a humanizing intent behind "One Big Self," noting that the show's title comes from The Thin Red Line, a brooding 1999 Terrence Malick film about American soldiers fighting the Japanese during World War II. Even in the midst of war, observes one character, "Maybe all men got one big soul where everybody's part of -- all faces of the same man: one big self."

At the same time, Wright and Conklin say the show -- along with a smaller exhibit of death-row photographs by Indiana artist Lucinda Devlin -- isn't meant as a call for better prison conditions or an end to the death penalty. Instead, the goal is simply to shed light on an otherwise hidden part of American society.

"As Americans, we hear a lot about crime and criminals," Wright says. "But once someone is convicted of a crime, they basically disappear from view. In a sense, our goal was to make them visible again."

Ironically, Wright says she initially balked at the idea of writing poems based on the lives and experiences of prison inmates.

"At first, my reaction was, like, 'Ugh, no way am I doing prison poems,' " she says. "There's a whole sub-genre of poetry devoted to prison stuff, and most of it isn't any good.

"But then Deborah, who'd already started making contacts in the Louisiana prison system, invited me to come down and see for myself."

What Wright discovered changed her mind.

"Despite all the dangers and hardships of prison life, most of the people I talked to had managed to come to terms with their situation," she says. "They read books, took classes, worked out, joined clubs -- all the things the rest of us do. In effect, they'd made their own life and their own society behind bars."

Prison rodeo

Wright was particularly impressed by Angola, a former slave plantation that ranks as the country's largest (at 18,000 square acres, it's almost twice the size of the City of Providence) and most populous prison. Located within its walls are farms, schools, churches, playing fields -- even an athletic stadium.

It's in this stadium that Angola hosts one of the most unusual events in the history of American penology: the Angola Rodeo.

"If you're a Southerner, you definitely know about the Angola Rodeo," Wright says. "It happens every year, and it's one of the biggest tourist attractions in Louisiana.

"Basically, you have these inmates who've never even ridden a horse before risking their lives by riding bulls and bucking broncos. It's extremely dangerous, and people are always getting hurt. But if you win the Angola Rodeo, you're pretty much The Man around the prison yard -- at least until next year."

Another tradition, observed at Angola and other prisons, is for inmates to make their own costumes for holidays such as Halloween and Mardi Gras.

"Louisiana is heavily Catholic, so events like Mardi Gras are a big deal," Wright says. "People spend months making elaborate costumes out of little more than old bits of clothing and maybe some scrap paper or cardboard."

Some of Luster's most striking photographs show inmates wearing these costumes.

In one, a man poses wearing a black-and-white-striped prison uniform and a huge stovepipe hat. The hat, wrapped in the same striped fabric, makes him look like a jailbird Mad Hatter. In another, an older woman wears an old-fashioned lace dress and fringed shawl. She could be someone's fairy godmother.

Tattoos are also popular. Indeed, Wright says tattoos represent one of the few ways inmates can assert control over their own bodies.

"It's really one of the few forms of self-expression they're allowed," she says. "For people who otherwise have very little control over what happens to them, getting a tattoo is way of asserting authority over their own bodies."

Focus is on inmates

One thing gallery-goers won't find is an explanation of why Luster's sitters are in prison in the first place. Instead, the show's wall labels list only the inmates' names, where they are incarcerated and a few other basic details.

"That was a conscious decision on our part," Wright says. "Obviously, if you're in a maximum-security prison like Angola, chances are you did something worse than if you're in a minimum-security facility like Transylvania. Otherwise, we wanted viewers to focus on the person, not the crime."

The author of 10 books of poetry and winner of a 2004 "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wright lives with her husband, poet Forrest Gander, in Barrington. Luster is an award-winning photographer based in New Orleans.

So how did the two hook up for "One Big Self"?

"Actually, we've collaborated on a number of projects," Wright says, noting that the two first teamed up on The Lost Road Project: A Walk-in Book of Arkansas, a 1994 book that combined Luster's photographs with excerpts from the work of Arkansas writers such as novelist Maya Angelou, historian C. Vann Woodward and bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson. (Wright is an Arkansas native.)

Since then, Luster has contributed photographs for two of Wright's books: Just Whistle (1996) and Deep Stick Come Shining (2002). The two also collaborated on a 1998 exhibit at The Poet's Theatre in New York City.

Photos without people

In addition to "One Big Self," the Bell Gallery is exhibiting excerpts from The Omega Suites, a series of large-scale color photographs by Lucinda Devlin. Unlike Luster's portraits, which focus on the humanity and individuality of prison inmates, Devlin's photographs are entirely devoid of people.

Instead, Devlin casts a coldly clinical eye on execution sites such as electric chairs, gas chambers and lethal-injection rooms.

"In a way, Deborah's and Lucinda's photographs represent different sides of the same issue," says Bell director Conklin. "Deborah's photographs really come from a humanist tradition and highlight the humanity of the inmates. Lucinda's pictures, on the other hand, focus on places that are designed to end human life."

"One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana" and The Omega Suites open tomorrow and continue through May 29 at the David Winton Bell Gallery, List Art Center, 64 College St., Providence. Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday, 1-4 p.m. Phone: (401) 863-1562.

In conjunction with the exhibit, poet C.D. Wright and photographer Deborah Luster will discuss their work tonight at 5:30 in the List Art Center auditorium. Photographer Lucinda Devlin will present a separate slide lecture on her work at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 21.