Stephen Tourlentes

Tourlentes (b. 1959, Galesburg, Illinois) has been photographing prisons across the United States
for over a decade. He works in black and white and shoots these complex reflections of the social compact at night—both strategies sharpen contrasts and at the same time unify his compositions.

From a distance his images of state and federal prisons, state death-house prisons, and private prisons have an overall glow that might recall Mark Rothko’s paintings. Up close, however, the haunting source of light in the photographs is revealed—and it is as mundane as it is uncanny.

Tourlentes shoots from a bit of a remove—there is only so close one can really get to a prison. His depictions highlight our tendency to locate prisons on the periphery of our society’s consciousness and raises questions about attitudes toward crime, punishment, rules, and boundaries. Time seems to stand still in these dark scenes, a reminder of the wide gap between temporal experiences inside and outside of these institutions.

Tourlentes received a BA from Knox College and an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art, where he is currently Visiting Professor of Photography in the Media and Performing Arts Department.

LINKS
www.tourlentes.com