VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

Prisons are central to the way our society operates but they, and the people who live and work inside them, are mostly invisible in Scottish public photographic records. This practice-based research project in Fine Art Photography innovates socially engaged photographic methods to challenge this invisibility, in collaboration with prisoners at HMP Dumfries (locally known as Jessiefield), a prison in South West Scotland. While many participatory arts projects treat ethical considerations as peripheral, this project uses art critic Walead Beshty’s concept of an Aesthetics of Ethics to position the ethical complexity of working with incarcerated people at the centre of the creative process. Existing archive images of HMP Dumfries formed the starting point for discussion with prisoners, revolving around their experience of the place, what is and isn’t shown, and what other stories could be told. We then used a range of photographic methods to create, curate and install our own collection, reflecting what prisoners felt should be recorded about the prison. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of ‘evolutive time’ and Ariella Azoulay’s recent work on imperialism, photography and archives, the project charts new territory between the imperial institutions of prison and museum, investigating the symbiotic relationships that both have with photographic and archival technologies. This paper asks whether it is possible to use these technologies in a prison context without simply reinforcing existing power dynamics. It proposes ethically engaged polyvocal photographic practice as a new method for exploring how sites of incarceration might be remembered.