BIG CROSS — Willie, 2011. Willie wanted his family and volunteers at Tamms Year Ten to pray for his deliverance from Tamms, so he asked for a photograph of a vigil at Bald Knob Cross, located in southern Illinois. The group traveled to the cross, held a litany of song and prayer and celebrated with a dinner. The next day, they drove family members to visit loved ones at the prison. After 36 years in different prisons, Willie was transferred from Tamms. He was paroled in July 2012. Rachel Herman

The closest that most inmates in the nation’s prisons can come to seeing the outside world is usually a photograph.

For the tens of thousands of prisoners in solitary confinement, where as many as 23 hours a day are spent in isolation, connecting to the world outside their cell is all the more important in maintaining what over time can become a more tenuous link to reality.

That’s where the idea for Photo Requests from Solitary – a project to create photos of people, places, or dreams requested by prisoners in solitary – originated.

The project was conceived of by members of Tamms Year Ten, a non-profit based in Illinois named after the Tamms Correctional Center, a 15-year-old super-maximum security prison in southern Illinois that was recently shut down. The photo program was aimed at its 500 prisoners in solitary confinement (Tamms also housed 200 prisoners in minimum-security). The prisoners were not allowed receive visitors or phone calls and ate all their meals alone. They were allowed out for only one hour a day of exercise in a walled-off yard, topped with netting.

So in 2008, when artist and activist Laurie Jo Reynolds and a group of volunteers asked prisoners if they’d like photographs depicting anything they wanted, most jumped at the opportunity.

“Photography always implies there’s a real element,” said Reynolds. “It’s the real light. That’s part of the appeal. The photographer was there as a witness [to the outside world].”

The Tamms project was about more than photos. It sprung from a political movement made up of families of prisoners, activists and artists who together formed Tamms Year Ten to mark the tenth anniversary of the prison’s opening. Within months, human rights groups nationwide took notice. Amnesty International said Tamms flouted “the international standard for humane treatment.”

But Tamms Year Ten’s mission was also to bring a little bit of relief to prisoners.

Under prison rules, each prisoner was allowed only a few photos, sometimes as few as 15. In order to receive a new one, they had to give one up. Volunteers from Tamms Year Ten asked each prisoner what he wanted and then commissioned an artist to make a photo.



By creating photos that reflected prisoners’ desires, Tamms Year Ten was able to make a powerful statement about the lives these prisoners were denied by being placed in solitary.

“They have to replay their memories over and over again,” said Reynolds. “It’s a way of surviving solitary confinement. You can tell how carefully how each person considered (their photo choice).”