What is perhaps most striking about the 32 photographs that make up Jack Lueders-Booth’s new book, “Women Prisoner Polaroids,” is the intimacy that occupies each frame. Inmates wear their own clothes and pose in cells embellished with personal effects, much like any regular college dorm room; one woman clasps a biography of Mick Jagger, others are pictured with their arms wrapped around friends. A warm sensibility, typically foreign to portraits of incarceration, is notable throughout.

Jack Lueders-Booth的新作Women Prisoner Polaroids收录了32幅摄影作品，其中最为引人注目的，莫过于每一张照片中流露出的亲密情感。囚犯们身着自己的衣物，在堆满个人物品的牢房内摆拍，仿佛置身于普通的大学寝室之中；有的女性紧紧抱着Jack Lueders-Booth的传记，有的则依偎在朋友身旁。这些作品散发着一种温暖的情感，这在一般的监禁肖像作品中是极为罕见的。

“Miriam Van Waters, the first superintendent at Massachusetts Correctional Institute Framingham (in 1932), was insistent that they not use this unfortunate period in their lives to form their identity,” the photographer told CNN in a video interview, relaying the Massachusetts’ prison’s early objectives. “To foster that, she tried to make it look like home. For that reason, (when I was there) the inmates wore domestic clothes and prison guards were also un-uniformed. Often the same age as the prisoners, many of them were studying criminal justice at Northeastern University, a co-operative college.”

“马萨诸塞州弗雷明汉管教所的首任所长Miriam Van Waters坚信，她们不能因这段不幸的经历而定义自己的人生。”Lueders-Booth在CNN的视频采访中提及了马萨诸塞州监狱的早期目标。为了实现这一目标，她努力让监狱充满家的温馨。因此，囚犯们身着家居服，狱警也脱下制服。他们中的许多人年龄相仿，甚至一同在东北大学合作学院学习刑事司法。

Established in 1878 as a reformatory confining women for the crime of having children out of wedlock, by the 1970s much of the prison’s population were being held on counts of shoplifting and sex work, or as accomplices to crimes of male companions. As per Van Waters’ previous intentions, the facility was at that time the site of many experiments in rehabilitation, an effort intended to reduce the psychological toll of being incarcerated.

这座监狱始建于1878年，最初是关押犯有婚外生子罪的妇女的感化院。到了20世纪70年代，因入店行窃、性工作等罪名或因作为男性同伴犯罪的帮凶而被关押的女性成为主流。Miriam Van Waters曾设想这座监狱成为诸多改造实验的场所，以减少被监禁者的心理创伤。

Lueders-Booth arrived in 1977, initially to spend just a year running a photography course as part of his master’s thesis for Harvard’s Graduate School of Education (though already lecturing at the college, he didn’t have a teaching degree). “I had specific ideas about what I wanted to do,” he recalled. “Teach photography to people in institutions of confinement, as a way of increasing morale and teaching them a skill.” The invitation to MCI-Framingham was serendipitous: another Harvard professor headed up a prison arts project and happened to be looking for someone to initiate a photography course.

1977年，Lueders-Booth来到这里，初衷是在一年内开设一门摄影课程，作为他在哈佛大学教育研究生院硕士论文的一部分（尽管他已在学院授课，但当时尚未获得教师学位）。他回忆道：“我有着明确的目标，即通过教授摄影来提高禁闭机构内的士气，并传授她们一技之长。”Lueders-Booth偶然接到前往弗雷明汉管教所的邀请，因为另一位哈佛大学教授正领导一个监狱艺术项目，并正在寻找合适的摄影课程教师。

Accompanied by his 18-year-old daughter, Laura — “she gave me a level of credibility, that this old guy knew something about youth” — Lueders-Booth was given a corridor of old cells to run his program, which the pair transformed into studios and darkrooms. With classes of about 10 women at a time, the groups began by creating photograms (photographic prints made by laying objects onto photographic paper before exposing it to light), eventually moving into portraiture. “I was apprehensive about them and they about me. I didn’t know anything (about the prison system) except for what I’d seen in the media,” the photographer noted of those early sessions. “But we came to trust each other in a matter of months. They had confidence in me that I was there to help them.”

在18岁女儿Laura的陪伴下——“她的存在赋予了我一定的可信度，让我觉得自己与年轻人有所共鸣”——Lueders-Booth获得了一条由旧牢房组成的走廊，用于开展他的项目。两人将这些牢房改造成工作室和暗房。每次小组活动约有10名妇女参加，她们从制作照片（将物体置于相纸上，在光线下曝光制成）开始，逐渐转向肖像摄影。Lueders-Booth坦言：“我最初对她们心存担忧，她们也对我有所顾虑。除了媒体上的报道，我对监狱系统一无所知。但几个月后，我们彼此建立了信任。她们对我充满信心，相信我能帮助她们。”

The Polaroid pictures, which the photographer shot alongside a wider black and white series, weren’t intentional, he suggested. In 1980 however, having been awarded two consecutive fellowships with the instant camera company, Lueders-Booth had access to infinite film and began making, “probably the most important project I did in my life. It was rewarding and wonderful, the comfort and trust with which the women came to the experience of being photographed.”

Lueders-Booth表示，宝丽来照片并非刻意为之，而是在拍摄更广泛的黑白照片系列时顺便拍摄的。然而，1980年，他连续两次获得这家即时照相机公司的奖学金，从而获得了大量的胶卷，并开始着手“可能是我一生中最重要的项目”。他感慨道：“妇女们在拍摄过程中感受到的舒适和信任让我受益匪浅，这种感觉非常美妙。”

He would end up staying on at Framingham for seven years, only concluding his workshops in the mid-80s, in which time he had become an accepted feature amongst staff and inmates alike. “I had increasing access and became quite trusted by the administration. I was doing photography for them, making portraits for their annual reports, and sometimes processing family photographs,” said Lueders-Booth. “Over the years, my photographs were appearing on their walls as part of their photo collections, which was very rewarding. I felt I was contributing something, and that was important.”

Lueders-Booth在弗雷明汉管教所度过了七年时光，直到80年代中期才结束此次工作。他说：“我获得了越来越多的接触机会，并赢得了管理部门的信任。我为他们拍摄照片，为他们的年度报告拍摄肖像，有时还处理家庭照片。多年来，我的照片作为他们照片集的一部分挂在墙上，这让我感到非常满足。我觉得自己做出了贡献，这是非常重要的。”

“The women and the unusual character of their lives kept drawing me back,” he continued. “It became an education, about this prison but also the unfairness of the system and how much depends on the womb factor — where you come from, how you were nurtured. Many of the incarcerations were economically determined. So I came to appreciate the humanity of it, really, that was the largest thing. That these women were very much the victim of circumstances.”

Lueders-Booth继续分享：“这些女性和她们独特的生活经历一直吸引着我。”他进一步阐述道：“这既是一种教育，关于这座监狱，也关于制度的不公，以及这种不公在多大程度上源于子宫——你来自何方，你如何被养育。许多监禁都与经济因素有关。因此，我逐渐体会到其中的人性，而这才是最为关键的。这些妇女在很大程度上是环境的受害者。”

A collection of anonymous testimonies closes the book, largely highlighting vehement accounts of the women’s experiences of arriving and returning to the prison. Their fervent words, recorded objectively by Lueders-Booth, initially appear contrary to the relaxed composure exhibited in the images which precede them; ultimately however, this speaks to the work’s broader function. “Very often, the most obvious characteristic of a person is not the most significant,” observed the photographer. “I may have identified them as a prisoner, but that’s dismissive and superficial. While it is true, other things are true, and many other things are perhaps more true.”

书的结尾部分是一组匿名证词，主要聚焦于女囚们抵达和离开监狱的经历。这些激烈的言辞，虽然最初似乎与前面图片中展现的轻松氛围相悖，但最终却凸显了作品更深远的意义。Lueders-Booth说：“很多时候，一个人的显性特征并非最重要。我可能将她们视为囚犯，但这种看法是轻率和肤浅的。尽管这是事实，但还有许多其他事实，也许更加真实。”

编辑 | ETTBL商务英语翻译

翻译｜Romola

来源｜CNN

声明｜配图取自网络，仅供学习分享使用，侵删