Jailed Women by Michael Webster

Private Story

Jailed Women

Copyright Michael Webster 2024

Updated Nov 2018

Topics Documentary, Photography

My Jailed Women project was born as part of my Survivors project, but that idea was pretty much abandoned within a few minutes of sitting down with the jailed women. As a small town newspaper editor I had published many jailed woman's unflattering (to put it mildly) mug shot, often on the front page when it was a big meth bust. The publisher often enthused about how issues with mug shots were reliable best sellers, so I dutifully published all the mug shots I could. And as a photographer, I liked a lot of the pictures. Cheap digital camera's are very good these days and they put the women against a neutral gray painted concrete wall, so there was a lot to work with. Unflattering though they were, they often communicated interesting realities. But as I inevitably studied the photos and came to feel that publishing them, particularly on the front page, was a shitty assed shitty thing to do, I quit doing it. Still, I never stopped feeling bad about it.

That all came back to my when I met the jailed women and started working with them on how best to create photography with them. I wanted to somewhat make up for the horrible photos I published by giving them a beautiful photo, so I hit upon the idea of doing the glamour type shots. That, plus just getting them some time out of the cell to goof in front of the camera was a positive thing. And I gave them nice prints, which would be prestige objects in the jail. Some small good was done. The project continues, and will no doubt evolve.