PICTURES OF FAILURE : Incarcerated Youth
1st Place 2002 Santa Fe Center for Photography's PROJECT COMPETITION
My work centers on a theme of imprisonment—for reasons of crime, bad luck, or nature. My subjects lack the freedom and liberties afforded most individuals living in the United States.
To date, the majority of my photographs have been of incarcerated teenagers. They live in institutions officially referred to as “schools.” In fact, they are jails for juniors--full of secrets and hidden from the public's eye. I am continually struck by the simultaneous vacuity of these institutions and the intensity and passion found in the faces of its young residents. It is these faces that I ask to do the talking. There is more to read from the eyes than from the architecture. There are exceptions. The Green Hill School’s Intensive Management Unit, for example, demanded my attention as the most inhumane living environment I ever witnessed.
My images are all created with an 8X10 camera. The slow, detached and deliberate approach demanded by large-format photography seems like a good match in my attempts to interpret and present people and their lives. The extreme clarity and detail tends to demand a level of attention and consideration that my subjects deserve.
It is my hope that as viewers look at the people and their confinements in my images, they consider some of the messy and complicated issues surrounding such a great number of people who live, laugh, and suffer in exile—hidden from view.
--Steve Davis
All images © Steve
Davis, except Remann Hall ©Steve Davis and the Museum of Glass