In connection with the exhibit, Prison Obscura, curator Pete Brook will speak about his PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY project, followed by a roundtable discussion featuring UM faculty Amanda Alexander, Ashley Lucas, Carol Jacobsen, Reuben Miller, Ruby Tapia, Heather Thompson, Isaac Wingfield.

Prison Obscura presents rarely seen vernacular, surveillance, evidentiary,
and prisoner-made photographs, shedding light on the prison industrial complex. Why do tax-paying, prison-funding citizens rarely get the chance to see such images? And what roles do these pictures play for those within the system? With stark aesthetic detail and meticulous documentation, Prison Obscura builds the case that Americans must come face to face with these images and imaging technologies both to grasp the cancerous proliferation of the U.S. prison system and to connect with those it confines.

Sponsored by the University of Michigan's Department of Women's Studies and English, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Prison Creative Arts Project, Institute for the Humanities and the LSA Dean's Office.

For more information about the Prison Obscura exhibition at UM and related programming, contact Ruby Tapia, Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies, at rtapia@umich.edu. For information about the Duderstadt Gallery, contact Kathi Reister, Gallery Coordinator, at 734-763-0606 or kreister@umich.edu.

Prison Obscura is a traveling exhibition made possible with the support of the John B. Hurford ‘60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Haverford, PA.