Slavery, the Prison Industrial Complex: Photographs by Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick

Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick

Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick were born and raised in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. As husband and wife team, they have been documenting Louisiana and its people for more than 25 years. In New Orleans, they have documented the music culture, which consists of Brass Bands, Jazz Funerals, Social and Pleasure Clubs, Benevolent Societies, and the Black Mardi Gras Indians. In addition to documenting New Orleans social and cultural history, Calhoun and McCormick have also covered religious and spiritual ceremonies throughout their community, as well as river baptisms in rural Louisiana. They have created several photographic series, including Louisiana Laborers; The Dock Worker, Longshoreman, and Freight Handlers on the docks of New Orleans; Sugar Cane Field Scrappers in the river parishes along the Mississippi river; Cotton Gins, and Sweet Potato Workers in East Carrol parish of Lake Providence Louisiana.

The body of work they call Slavery: The Prison Industrial Complex, began in the early 1980s and continues today. The series serves as both historical record and testimony of life at the Angola penitentiary, also called “The Farm”, It is an 18,000-acre prison farm where inmates are traded like chattel amount wardens of neighboring penitentiaries. Although the 13rd Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery in 1865, its prohibition of forced labor does not apply to convicted inmates. Their work, Slavery; The Prison Industrial Complex, sheds light on the “criminal justice” system, of forced labor under the guns of white men on horseback, in Louisiana’s Angola state prison. Calhoun and McCormick’s work restores visibility and humanity to a population often forgotten by the public at large.

-CalvinMcCormick Social Activism through Photography