Inquiries
To bring any of the exhibitions on women with life sentences to your community, please contact Sara Bennett.
Life After Life in Prison is an ongoing project, started in 2014, and was originally of four women — Tracy, Evelyn, Carol, and Keila — documenting their return to society after serving anywhere from 17 to 35 years in New York State’s maximum security prison for women. Three more women have since been added to the project — Karen, Leah and Claude. While each of the seven women’s stories is unique, they illuminate many of the problems inherent in today’s criminal justice system. The images are on archival paper and the project can be exhibited in whole or in part.
Life After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Project, also an ongoing project and also started in 2014, currently comprises 29 portraits of formerly incarcerated women in their bedrooms as well as details of some of the bedrooms. The images are on archival paper, size 20” x 24”, and on each paper is a reproduction of the subjects’ handwritten statements, providing glimpses of their lives both inside and outside prison.
Looking Inside—Portraits of Women Serving Life Sentences, comprises 20 portraits of women serving life sentences at Bedford Hills and Taconic Correctional facilities in New York. The images are on archival paper or vinyl, size 20” x 24”, and on each paper is a reproduction of the subjects’ handwritten statements.
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“You are my ‘why I do this.’” — A Bronx Defender, Photoville guestbook, Brooklyn
“Thank you for letting these women have a voice and sharing their stories.” — Leah from L.A., Photoville guestbook, Brooklyn
“Your work is powerful, provocative, and inspiring. Both the Law School and the community have been educated and enriched beyond any measure that words could have accomplished.” — Mary Lu Bilek, Dean, CUNY School of Law, April 30, 2018.
“Our great rotunda regularly draws countless judges, court staff, jurors and all manner of visitors to our court. From the moment your exhibition went on display it attracted significant attention from all of these quarters and ... it was very apparent that so many of those viewers were ‘connecting’ with your important work.” — LS, Senior Court Analyst, New York County Courthouse, November 27, 2017
The room was hot, but students, faculty and outsiders alike sat and stood wherever they could, all attentive and fascinated.... “I think students are hungry for real things,” said [Dean] Kessler, “things that bring what they’re learning in the classroom in contact with something concrete.” — The Purchase Beat, September 16, 2015.
Thank you for sharing these wonderful photos.... I am a state court judge in Wisconsin and I know that it is important to think about the human story of every person who comes before my bench. — MH, W83 Gallery guestbook, NYC
Thank you for pointing your camera in a direction we need to look at with love, care, and deep concern. — CJ, Photoville guestbook, Brooklyn
“First you opened our eyes and hearts to the women who had been released after serving long sentences in prison and were trying to live on the outside. And now you take us inside the prison to show us the women who have been invisible and voiceless in our society. I can’t think of any more significant way to use photography than what you are doing with it!” – Patricia Lay Dorsey (Grandma Techno)
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, MoMA PS1, 2020-2021
Life After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Project, Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, 2020
Looking Inside: Portraits of Women Serving Life Sentences, Photoville, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2019
In the windows at CUNY Law School, Long Island City, NY (February 14 to March 28, 2018).
