More people are executed in Texas than anywhere else in the developed world. Here, death row is more than a holding cell—it’s a culture. Inmates spend an average of fourteen years awaiting their sentence in Texas. Some are granted reprieve or clemency; most meet their fate via lethal injection before an audience of family, law enforcement, and media.

The Associated Press has been a familiar presence for death row inmates in Texas since at least the early 1980s. As the only non-local news organization with a guaranteed seat at every execution, the AP is granted special access to prisoners, and as a result the agency has accumulated an unusual set of portraits made shortly before inmates’ executions.

The portraits are uncanny for a wire service. Eerily intimate, carefully composed. There are echo’s of Robert Bergman or Bruce Gilden here. Inmates’ stoic expressions seem to demonstrate an understanding between subject and photographer—perhaps the result of previous acquaintance, or the fact these men in the final weeks of life are steeled to their fate. Most are photographed within of month of being put to death, in a visitation cage which has been their only direct link to the outside world for years. Many of them have no family to see them in their final days. For some, a reporter with a camera may be the last free person they meet.