Name/Title
The San Quentin ProjectDescription
The San Quentin Project collects a largely unseen visual record of daily life inside one of America's oldest and largest prisons, demonstrating how this archive of the state was used to teach visual literacy and process the experience of incarceration.
In 2011, Nigel Poor-an artist, educator, and cocreator of the acclaimed podcast Ear Hustle-began teaching a history of photography class through the Prison University Project (now called Mount Tamalpais College) at San Quentin State Prison. Neither books nor cameras were allowed into the facility, so a course with a range of inventive mapping exercises ensued: students crafted "verbal photographs" of memories for which they had no visual documentation, and annotated images made by a range of acclaimed photographers, in addition to those sourced from the prison's own vast image archive.
From the banal to the brutal, to distinct moments of respite,
these pictures gave those who were involved in the project the opportunity to share their stories and reflections on incarceration.
After the first semester, Poor says, "one student told me he could now see fascination everywhere in San Quentin."