This image is taken from Michel Setboun’s third book about agencies. Eighty reporters were chosen to comment on one iconic image taken during their careers. The image we’re publishing today is a picture by Jane Evelyn Atwood. Every week we’ll be publishing an image from the book along with its accompanying text.
“I’ve been fascinated by closed-off worlds since I became a photographer at 28. I left the United States and settled in Paris in 1971, where I had an office job. It was boring but I earned enough to be able to stay in France.
I enrolled in printing and development classes, then started taking pictures of a prostitute on the Rue des Lombards. When I took my first image from the developing tray, I was hooked. It would become the subject of my first book. Years later, working as a professional photographer, I became interested in the prison system. In 1989, the Department of Justice allowed me to visit a women’s prison in Toulon. I was disappointed at first, feeling like they were keeping me from the “real” thing: male prisoners.
But once I was on the other side of the bars, I was no longer disappointed. I was shocked by their appalling living conditions and the reasons they ended up in prison. At the time, nobody was talking about it. I came away with one idea in mind: to bear witness.
I spent the next ten years working on incarcerated women across Europe and on death rows in the United States. This photo was taken in 1990 in a Siberian labor camp. The inmates make firefighter uniforms to pay for their imprisonment. Once a day they have access to a sauna. My translator, a man, wasn’t allowed to accompany me. So I found myself alone with the inmates, unable to understand what they were saying. They were laughing, finding it funny that I wanted to photograph them naked. Even in the worst situations, we manage to create moments of joy.”
Interview by Laurène Daycard
