The San Quentin Project collects a vast and unprecedented visual testimony of life
daily inside one of the oldest and largest
American prisons, demonstrating how these state archives are now
used to teach the visual literature of this subject and to address
the experience of incarceration. In 2011, Nigel Poor, artist, educator and
co-creator of the popular podcast Ear Hustle, has started teaching a course
of photography history as part of the Prison University project at the
San Quentin State Prison. Books and cameras are not allowed.
allowed into the facility, an unorthodox course ensued with
a series of inventive mapping exercises: students created
"verbal photographs" of memories for which they had no
visual documentation and annotated iconic images from different
artists. After the first semester, Poor says, "one student told me he
could now see fascination everywhere in San Quentin." \n \nWhen
Mrs. Poor had access to thousands of negatives in the prison archives,
Made by prison officers from another era, these images of
San Quentin's daily newspapers quickly became launching pads for
the keen observations of his students. From the banal to the brutal, including
distinct moments of respite, the images in these archives have given those who
participated in the project the opportunity to share their stories and their
thoughts on incarceration.
