A photographer, photo editor, and formerly incarcerated author discuss the power of words and photos to reclaim life and identity.

The United States has a larger prison population than any other country in the world, with over 2 million people living behind bars. But it’s also staggering to look at the state-by-state numbers. At the beginning of 2020, Washington State had nearly as many incarcerated individuals as Sudan, a developing country that has five times as many citizens. Despite Washington’s legislature being run by progressive-identifying Democrats, many deeply entrenched barriers face people after they leave prison, which contributes to joblessness, homelessness, and recidivism.

Washington has largely abolished parole, and like many U.S. states, the average length of a felony sentence has dramatically increased since the early 2000s. “Many prisoners are spending longer and longer periods of time in prison and a growing number of these prisoners will die behind bars,” according to the ACLU of Washington. In most democratic countries, a long sentence is considered to be one or two years, and a sentence beyond 10 years is extremely rare.

For those who get out of prison in Washington State, one route to avoid recidivism is the education system. A college degree can re-level the playing field for someone with a felony conviction, opening doors that might have seen permanently shut. This path often starts while still in prison: Students behind bars earn their GEDs and take university-level courses. In December, Congress struck a deal to reinstate federal Pell Grants to incarcerated college students, a tuition resource that had been prohibited since the 1994 crime bill.

Last summer, University of Washington Magazine's photo editor Quinn Russell Brown commissioned Meron Menghistab to photograph 10 men and women who earned college degrees from the University of Washington after getting out of prison. Menghistab, named one of 2020’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch, is an editorial and commercial photographer known for putting his subjects at ease and creating quiet, moving portraits. As project manager for the feature, Brown also hired Omari Amili, a formerly incarcerated author, to recruit and interview the 10 people featured in the story.

Following the feature for University of Washington Magazine, Brown, Menghistab, and Amili connected to discuss this intimate and empowering project from the perspective of the photo editor, photographer, and interviewer.

Quinn Russell Brown, Meron Menghistab, and Omari Amili in conversation.

PostedFebruary 2, 2021

AuthorQuinn Russell Brown, Meron Menghistab, and Omari Amili

Categoriesinterviews

Tagslife after prison, Omari Amili, Meron Menghistab, Quinn Russell Brown, prison industrial complex, 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch, contemporary portraiture, empathetic portraiture, portraits as empathy, editorial portraiture, The Lit List

Kiliii Yuyan on living off-road and photographing Arctic communities with an indigenous lens

Few photographers spend more time on the road than Kiliii Yuyan, who travels up to 300 days a year. A Maryland-born descendent of both Nanai (Siberian Native) and Chinese immigrants, he roams the Arctic to live alongside and document Indigenous populations whose customs and cultures often remind him of his own ancestors.

Aside from the intrepid feat of Yuyan’s images—they require long flights and rocky boat rides into sub-zero climates, and living in remote villages— his work accomplishes something rarely found in “extreme travel photography.” His pictures do not strain to be “epic” in subject-matter. Instead, the scenes are often quiet and isolated. But his graphically assembled compositions, with strong lines and interwoven positive and negative shapes, bring forth an image that demands to be looked at with a tender and curious eye. This flips the awestruck, aloof, and often predatory Western gaze that traces back to the earliest days of travel photography.

Yuyan, who now lives in Seattle, is a member of Natives Photograph and a 2020 Nia Tero Storytelling Fellow, a yearlong program for Indigenous creatives. Quarantine has grounded much of his travels, but it hasn’t stopped him from shooting new work and publishing a book, “Chukotka,” out this year through Kris Graves Projects.

We talked to Yuyan about living on the road, photographing people who live off of the land, and approaching every project with an Indigenous lens.

Quinn Russell Brown in conversation with Kiliii Yuyan

PostedAugust 20, 2020

AuthorQuinn Russell Brown

CategoriesArtists, Photobooks, Portfolio

TagsKiliii Yuyan, Quinn Russell Brown, arctic photography, indigenous photography, Natives Photograph, Chukotka, Kris Graves Projects, photobooks, 2020 photobooks, photographing indigenous communities, National Geographic Photographers, travel photography, ethical documentary photography

Black Virgin Mary, 2018 © Adrian Octavius Walker

In 2018, photographer Adrian Octavius Walker completed We Matter, a series of portraits of Black men wearing various colors of velvet durags. The portraits are soft, stylized and empowering, breaking the stereotypes of Black masculinity often presented in popular media with bold, poppy and pastel colors.

“Black Virgin Mary,” an image from the series, was recently included in The National Portrait Gallery’s fifth triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and exhibition American Portraiture Today, on display through August 20th, 2020, among the work of more than 40 artists and photographers whose work addresses race, police brutality, immigration, and citizenship.

Photographer Quinn Russell Brown, who also has a piece in the exhibition – a portrait of Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson – speaks with the St. Louis-born, now Chicago-based artist about the higher meaning of a durag, the perspective that comes from personal experience, and the difference between photographing Black subjects and making work about Blackness.

Quinn Russell Brown in conversation with Adrian Octavius Walker

Life After Prison: Reclaiming Identity Through Photographic Portraiture and First-Person Narratives

Finding Homeland Through Ice and Snow

“We Matter”: Photographer Adrian Octavius Walker on Black Male Beauty