©CHANDRA MCCORMICK/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Today’s show: “Slavery, the Prison Industrial Complex: Photographs by Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick” is on view at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, through Saturday, May 28. The two-person exhibition presents photographs by the husband-and-wife team, who have, since 1980, documented the lives on inmates—from their cells and furlough visits to their work in fields and participation in the prison’s rodeo—at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the largest maximum-security prison in the country.
An excerpt from the press release:
Calhoun and McCormick have been documenting African American life in Louisiana for more than 30 years. Since 1980, they have made regular visits to Angola, which was founded on the consolidated land of several cotton and sugarcane plantations and named for the country of origin for many of the enslaved people who had worked the land.
Angola is also called “The Farm” because it continues to grow cash crops—as much as four million pounds a year—using inmate labor. “In the minds of Calhoun and McCormick, slavery never really ended at Angola,” says [Frist Art Museum] curator Katie Delmez. “As first-hand witnesses to exploitative labor practices, they use their cameras as tools for social engagement, reminding their audiences of persistent racial inequities, especially throughout the American criminal justice system.”
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Chandra McCormick, Work Call, Men Behind Barbed Wire Fencing Waiting to Go to Work in the Fields of Angola, 2004, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Chandra McCormick, Men Going to Work in the Fields of Angola, 2004, gelatin silver print.
©CHANDRA MCCORMICK/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Keith Calhoun, Field Work, Angola State Penitentiary, 1980, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Keith Calhoun, Ditch Digging, 1980, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Chandra McCormick, Young Man, Angola State Penitentiary, 2013, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Chandra McCormick, Freddy King, 2013, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Chandra McCormick, Daddy’O, The Oldest Inmate in Angola State Penitentiary, 2004, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Keith Calhoun, Glenn Demourelle Served 27 Years in Angola State Prison, 1980, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Keith Calhoun, Two to a Six-by-Eight-Foot Cell at Angola Prison, 1980, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Keith Calhoun, Twenty-Three-Hour Lockdown, 1980, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Keith Calhoun, An Angola Dormitory for Inmates Can House as Many as 100 to 200 Men, 1981, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Chandra McCormick, Untitled, 2013, archival pigment print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Keith Calhoun, Angola Rodeo, 2013, archival pigment print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Chandra McCormick, Waiting for the Bull, Men Waiting to Participate in the Angola Rodeo, 2013, gelatin silver print.
©CHANDRA MCCORMICK/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Chandra McCormick, Father Forgive Them, 2013, archival pigment print.
©CHANDRA MCCORMICK/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Chandra McCormick, Untitled, 2013, archival pigment print.
©CHANDRA MCCORMICK/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Keith Calhoun, Our Children Endangered, The New Prey For Prison Beds, New Orleans, 1982, gelatin silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST
Keith Calhoun, Glen Demourelle at His Mother’s Funeral, 1994, gelatin
silver print.
©KEITH CALHOUN/COURTESY THE ARTIST