Another fun "Addiction"

[Scott]

True confessions time - I have some fairly unique addictions - one of them is for cool coffee table books. I also have a passion for prison related issues and stuff, so the combination of a really cool coffee table book about prisons is simply too much temptation. Had to have it...

So for roughly the price of a month's rent, I recently added one to my collection I have been looking for since 2002. First edition, signed by the photographer.

Check out some of the images here: Danny Lyons - Conversations with the Dead - 1967-68

Conversations with the Dead (1971), was published with full cooperation of the Texas Department of Corrections. Lyon photographed in six prisons over a fourteen month period in 1967 to 1968. The series was printed to book in 1971 by Holt publishing. The introduction of Lyon's book points to a statement of purpose that the penal system of Texas is symbolic for incarceration everywhere. He states, "I tried with whatever power I had to make a picture of imprisonment as distressing as I knew it to be in reality."

Lyon befriended many of the prisoners. The book also includes texts taken from prison records, letters from the convicts, and inmate artwork. In particular, the book focuses on the case of Billy McCune, a convicted rapist whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison during the climax of the book's popularity. In the foreword, Lyon describes Billy as a diagnosed psychotic, who one evening, while awaiting execution, "cut his penis off to the root and, placing it in a cup, passed it between the bars to the guard."

I first went to prison in 1975 in Florida - just seven years after these photos were taken. Chain gangs were just ending, although still existed (in the South), and the prison I was at for most of my time (Avon Park Correctional) was really just a farm setting in the middle of no-where. Compared to the standards of today's prisons, it was completely different than what we know now.

Some of the old timers there had been alive (and in prison) in the late 40's and 50's and their stories, which I loved listening to, were amazing. I was blessed to be "schooled" in prison culture, values and mores by actual "convicts" - of whom there are very few left. These were men who embraced their criminality as a badge of honor - and considered whatever they did a "vocation". Very different from today when addictions (sex, drugs or alcohol) or mental illness are the basis of most people's criminal behavior. When I see some of the things that people complain about on PTO, and compare it to how it was...we've come a very long way.

When we talk about Measure 11 sentences - imagine 40 years for robbery, or 15 for burglary...those kinds of sentences were common in that era. Check out these beautiful images. I'm sure you will be as touched by their power as I am.

Scott

[Fluer]

Thanks, they are very powerful images.

[Zelda50]

Aw - I thought at first you were a fellow Deadhead!! Thanks for the info.