Prison Images

In Jean Genet’s Un chant d’amour, prison guards ogle masturbating prisoners. Aware of their audience, the prisoners start behaving like performers in a peep show. In Robert Bresson’s Un condamné à mort s’est échappé, a condemned man escapes with the help of a spoon and a bed spring. “The object of desire” and “the escape artist” have become archetypal characters in film history. They stand in sharp contrast to the anonymous, intentionally pacified bodies monitored by surveillance cameras in contemporary prisons, where behavior that deviates from the norm is dealt with harshly.

In Prison Images, Harun Farocki juxtaposes excerpts from feature films and documentaries with video recordings from maximum-security prisons in the US. Cameras have become part of an arsenal of electronic control measures, both inside and outside the prison walls. Correctional facilities are increasingly kept out of the public eye, while inmates are subjected to permanent visibility and the impossibility of escape.