The Age of Innocence : Prisoner Escapist Photos
Fantasy Self-Portraits by the Incarcerated
Collected and documented by Dave Adler
The Clocktower Gallery presents “The Age of Innocence: Prisoner Escapist Photos,” as collected and documented by artist Dave Adler. The exhibition consists of 16 photographs of prisoners, by prisoners, using prisoner created painted backdrops featuring a fantasy scene of life outside. The exhibit is open Tues. – Fri., noon to 5 p.m. from May 23 through August 31, 2012.
This collaborative photography movement is national in scope – virtually every major American prison has its own painted backdrop, created by inmates for use in taking photographs. The photographers themselves are also inmates, with the resulting photos the preferred method of communicating with family and friends.
Adler, who has been exploring prison photography for over 5 years says, “at a time when people are questioning work coming out of the market-driven art world, particularly after the financial crisis, prison photographs are examples of art produced in a different institutional framework altogether. Within this art system, money plays almost no role yet the photographs are imbued with a value often lacking in expensive portraits from the free world.”
Dave Adler is a London and NY based artist and critic. He is interested in the intersection of arts and economics, which he has written extensively about, most recently for Frieze Magazine. Adler has produced arts documentaries for the BBC and taught documentary filmmaking at a US prison. His prison photography project has been profiled in Aperture Magazine and was exhibited at the 2011 Athens Biennale. Adler is establishing a national multidisciplinary center for the study of the US prison photography system with the criminologist Dr. Emily Horowitz of St. Franklin College Brooklyn.
The Age of Innocence : Prisoner Escapist Photos
May 23 – August 31
Clocktower Gallery
108 Leonard Street, 13th floor
New York, NY 10013
