Mikhael Subotzky: Picturing Prisons and Interrogating Freedom

Abstract

The prison photography of South African Mikhael Subotzky (b. 1981) offers remarkable insight into the complexities of incarceration and inequality in South Africa. His work documents both the physical and social environment of the prison and the ways in which this specific structure is embedded in the larger South African landscape. In several linked series, Subotzky has undertaken a systematic analysis of the ways in which the prison system interfaces with society, beginning within the prison walls, then following released prisoners on their often difficult journeys to the “outside,” and finally looking at a particular prison as an element integrated within the civil society and the social fabric of one small South African municipality. Through his photographs, viewers are able to see both the prison as a microcosm of South African society and prisoners as marginal figures within the macrocosm of postapartheid life. Taken as a whole, Subotzky's work addresses an issue of global concern by depicting the intersection of an important human rights question (the rights of the imprisoned) with the distinctive history of racial inequality and violence in South Africa.