Pictures from a Drawer: Prison and the Art of Portraiture

Praise for Pictures from a Drawer: Prison and the Art of Portraiture

“Printed large, these images depict individuals, people who had substance and weight in this world. You can’t trivialize faces when they’re printed large. You can’t staple them to an inner page of a folder and close the folder and file the folder away in a box or drawer that will never again be reopened. Printed large, their eyes meet your eyes.” —From the introduction

“Pictures from a Drawer is one of the most complex and compelling tales of the origin of documentary imagery I've ever read. Jackson writes clearly and insightfully in ways that help us understand the images before us while still leaving the pictures ample room to extend their own meanings to us. His attempt to explain their origin, function, and language is original and nuanced. Jackson presents no easy answers about prison life, and in so doing is suggesting something very real and important about any rendering of another person in an image. In the end, though, after providing wonderful context, Jackson gives us the photographs and leaves us—and them—to derive the latent meanings.  Jackson has crafted a book about just what it means to make and see a portrait.”—Tom Rankin, Director, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University