When artists as varied as Johnny Cash and Akon choose the same topic to sing about, you know it must be of some cultural importance. In this case, it is prison life that commands public fascination.
Duke's Center for Documentary Studies is currently offering a rare opportunity to observe prisons' interior workings, thanks to Bruce Jackson's photographic exhibition Cummins Wide. The show displays Jackson's 1975 photographs of Cummins Prison Farm in Arkansas, which has a sordidly unique claim to fame-in 1970 the dismal living conditions of the Cummins prison inspired a judge to deem the entire prison system unconstitutional.
Jackson's black and white photographs, which chronicle daily life within Cummins' confines, are meant to reveal an otherwise invisible institution.
"Each states' prison system is pretty much closed to everyone but the people that work there and the people that are locked up there," the artist said. "So I thought it might be useful to show people what they look like, or what one looks like."
It is Jackson's insight into the seldom-visible lifestyle of prisoners that also appealed to Courtney Reid-Eaton, the exhibitions director for the Center for Documentary Studies.
"I have personal interests in prison life and prison reform, because my father was in prison when I was a child. So it's an issue that is of particular interest to me," Reid-Eaton said. "I'm really curious about what it looks like to live in that kind of environment."
In addition to being documentary, the photographs are aesthetically noteworthy due to Jackson's unusual use of a Widelux camera. The Widelux produces panoramic prints that span 140 degrees, making them nearly twice as wide as traditional photographs and allowing them to approximate the human visual field. The resulting prints provide a more complete understanding of the scene being photographed, capturing details that are lost in conventionally-sized images.
Jackson explicitly highlights the specific advantages of Widelux pictures by pairing a normal-sized photograph with its panoramic counterpart, a combination that is displayed at the entrance of the exhibition. The two photographs display a prisoner getting a haircut and were taken almost simultaneously. However, the smaller picture shows only the prisoner and the people directly surrounding him, while the wider panoramic shot reveals previously hidden groups of people who are gathered on the sides of the central action.
"[In the Widelux image] you see the convicts close by looking at him, and some are looking at me, and you get a sense of what his predicament is," Jackson said. "Here, he's a young guy and he's raw meat for these guys. What's going to happen to him? What are they going to do to him? How is he going to survive there? You don't get a sense of that from the smaller picture."
Jackson's ability to convey the social and emotional intricacies of his subjects is enhanced by the arrangement of the pieces. The works are grouped in horizontal columns of corresponding photographs, giving the viewer the perception that he or she is watching a scene progress.
"He is a filmmaker, and I think that these images and the way that they're put together as an exhibit are particularly cinematic. There's a lot of movement in it.. It's really narrative," Reid-Eaton said. "You see these little stories on the wall, rather than a series of images."
The combination of close attention to detail and a film-like movement serves to fully capture the actuality of prison conditions, which the artist aims to bring to the viewer's attention.
"Prisons are improved now and then... but the changes are all cosmetic," Jackson said. "Prison is still an awful place... a place in which very few people are helped to improve themselves, a place which costs society dearly in money and human consequences. We still haven't figured it out."
The photographs featured in Cummins Wide exemplify a successful fusion between form and content. Still, one of the show's most compelling aspects is that it allows a glimpse into an otherwise inaccessible world. On a recent visit to Arkansas, Jackson was denied entry into the Cummins prison, indicating that exhibitions such as Cummins Wide constitute one of the sole ways for contemporary viewers to observe prison culture.
Cummins Wide will be on display at the Center for Documentary Studies until April 6 in the Kreps Gallery.
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