Prisoners

Rating:
Summary: a provocative story and compelling photographs
Review: The story of how Arne Svenson found the glass negatives used to produce the images in his book Prisoners is wonderfully told. He discovered a few in an antigue store and was able, over the next few years, to track down hundreds more of these compelling images. The faces of the prisoners pictured so haunted him that he set out to discover who each man was, even though the photographs had been taken nearly 100 years previous. The information he discovered is extensive; through newspaper and legal records of the day he was able to reconstruct the crimes of each of these men. The stories are riveting; a boy of 14 accused and convicted of murder, a one-armed drifter jailed for stealing a blanket, an elderly opium fiend run out of town. But what I found even more moving than the sad stories of these men were the photographs of them. They look more like portraits than mug shots, I find myself going back to look at these faces over and over again. A thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking book. Hopefully Svenson will stumble across another cache of fascinating images soon!