Artist

Louisiana, Deborah Luster's home state, incarcerates more of its population than any other state in the Union. The United States incarcerates more of its population than any other country in the free world. Luster's recent project, "One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana," is a hauntingly moving documentation of prisoners at three prisons in Louisiana--a minimum security facility, a prison for women, and Angola, a maximum security facility housing over 5,000 men.

Her powerful portraits are printed on black aluminum and like family keepsakes, are small enough to be held in the hand--4 x 5 inches. The information supplied to her by the inmates is etched on the back of each plate and the plates are then housed, loose, in a large black steel cabinets. To find the plates, the viewer must pull open the heavy steel drawers that hold them. Luster writes of her images, "This project is not about the powerful taking photos of the powerless for the eyes the powerful. This project is not about glamorizing or demonizing the inmate. This project is a simple and direct collaboration between photographer and subject…that can be realized through the act of simply and directly photographing another human being."