Louise talked about a project that she and Magnum photographer Donovan Wylie carried out recently. This was to document the Long Kesh prison in Northern Ireland before it is redeveloped. A book has been published aptly called The Maze.
She talked about its history in relationship to the war in NI and it’s political move from a conflict to a criminalisation phase. The prisoners in the Maze changed from being political prisoners to being treated as criminals. It seemed that over its history the prison swung from prisoner self-organisation through heavy handed official treatment and back to self-organisation.
Now the prison is in Limbo, it almost represents the limbo status that NI is in.
Architectures often form our most complete historical record of a past civilisation.
Wylie spent about 100 days at the prison. Working in the end entirely with 10×8. He spent most of the time initially getting to know the place. He derived a set of rules from the architecture and the ground plan and then shot ridgidly according to this. These rules determined his positions and framing.
He created 4 sequences of images. Three exteriors and only one of the cells. The other three work in from the outer walls, they are the steriles, the inertias and the roads.
Steriles and inertias are proper prison architectural terms for dead spaces between walls.
All traces of habitation has been deliberately but ineffectually effaced. But the architecture was a complete record.
Wylie attempts to overcome the biased sectarianism. Through the abstraction and aesthetic nature of his work, not focussing on the politics of the acts but on the space.
The images capture the detail, the austerity and the blankness of the place but the viewer can turn away unlike the incarcerated.
