INTERVIEW WITH RUTH MORGAN (2011)

This conversation occurred in September 2011 between Ruth Morgan and Cell Signals curator Pete Brook.
This has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about how you became interested in photographing in prisons.

In 1978, I read a copy of the Village Voice in which someone described their experience teaching photography at Rikers Island, New York. I was a fledgling photographer. I didn't study photography. I have a degree in sociology but had taken a couple courses in photography so I went to the San Francisco sheriff's department and talked to Michael Hennessy who would be Sheriff [from December 1979-January 2012] and was then the legal counsel for the sheriff's department.

Hennessy vouched for you.

He said yes.

So, before San Quentin, you photographed in county jails?

It was a pretty extraordinary experience. We actually took the inmates outside the jail and created a dark room in the garage. Today, we could not do that but 30 or more years ago, it was possible. I taught photography for three years, first as a volunteer, and then as a California Arts Council grantee. Later, I became the coordinator of a multi-residency arts program in the jail and then many years later started Community Works, a non-profit that creates programs for prisoners, for formerly-incarcerated men and women, and for children of incarcerated parents. 

How did you go from the county jails to San Quentin?

A colleague and friend Barbara Yaley—who was a private investigator—was interested in doing interviews at San Quentin. She and I started talking and decided to go to Warden George Sumner and ask for permission to photograph and interview. For whatever reason or reasons, which we never figured out, he said okay to it. For three years, we had the most extraordinary access to the prison. We had no escort. We walked around. I with a two-and-a-quarter camera and a tripod. And Barbara with her tape recorder.

We walked freely in and out of the prison photographing and after three years when a new warden came in he immediately pulled our clearance and that was the end of it. So fortunate that we had as long as we did and the access that we had and the result of that was an exhibition that I created that toured a lot of places around the country. 

What did you learn during those three years at San Quentin?

At that time San Quentin was a maximum security prison and I was fascinated with the idea of sort of going in and seeing who was incarcerated, who the men were; I was interested in humanizing them in a way. I looked at who they were as people, found out what they wanted, what their beliefs were, and what their dreams were. Some of the people I photographed had an incredibly bad rap in our society and they were mostly men of color, mostly poor, and so it was only ever an incredible opportunity that I had. A responsibility.

When you eventually exhibited these prints you did so and blew them up to four by four feet. Was that in some way to reflect the closeness within San Quentin?

Yes. To have the viewer come face-to-face with life-size images of the men and to sort of meet them. Four feet was [is] almost the width of a cell.

SQ cells are 5 feet wide.

The size reflected the incredibly tight spaces in which these men lived. 

And that will to humanize the inmates did that also extend to a will to humanize the guards the correctional officers? 

I think that that happened. I don't know that that was my intention. Back then it was us against them; there was a whole mentality that the guards were the enemy and the prisoners were with the victims of the system in a certain way. Part of my learning process was learning that there were incredible men that were guards doing it for the best of reasons: for a good job, and to treat people well. Then there were many that were horrific. Just as there are in the jails and prisons today. 

Did you get an opportunity to photograph on death row? 

I did. After about three years, I had the opportunity to photograph on death row. I felt very…hmm… I've never used any of those photographs. I felt I didn't have a connection with the men on death row. We photographed and interviewed about ten different people in one day. I just didn't feel comfortable exhibiting them. I felt like there was something lacking in terms of integrity in the process. There was something else, on death row everybody says they're innocent. Which is totally understandable as they're all fighting cases…

But statistically it just isn’t the case. And so you know you’re hearing their legal narrative and not their real narrative.

It was a surreal day. We had a kind of surreal day. The people that we met in general population, we met over a long period of time, and most were accountable for what they did. By contrast, men on death row cannot be accountable whether they’re innocent or not. They really couldn't be. Because it meant death for them.

Now, the early eighties is just when mass incarceration takes a grip. So looking at your portraits from 1982, I think to the different system today and in some ways the different parameters for discussion we have. How do you think history could and should consider your body of work? Is it the view of like an old time jail? 

Even though the numbers of people incarcerated has grown exponentially the conditions were all the same then. I don't think San Quentin has changed very much and I think that it is a historical piece. San Quentin is no longer a maximum security as it was then, but I think that the men inside my pictures are the same men that are inside now; they're poor, they're people of color, they're people with addictions. The same kinds of socio-economic issues that feed the prison system exist today as they did then. 

Was it a disappointment when your access ended so abruptly? 

We felt fortunate that we had a body of work, but it was definitely hard. [When we had worked] we’d speak to the men, leave, speak again, come back, and photograph them another time; that felt like real relationship building—professional relationships. I had a big camera that many were not used to. And a tripod. They took me seriously. I think the men felt what Barbara and I were doing was powerful and that really helped in getting penetrating portraits.

And how has the body of work been shared, exhibited, distributed? Has there been any social positive change that's come about because of it? 

Aside of the artistic acclaim (which as an artist is always validating), I was proud that photographs I made in San Quentin were used in a case against poor conditions in San Quentin: Toussaint v. McCarthy (826 F. 2d 901). Fought by the Prison Law Office, the lawsuit against the state and SQ conditions was successful. It was extremely important to me that the photographs were used in that way.

In 1994 you founded Community Works and this is a group that organizes arts programs within the different county jails within the Bay Area. Can you tell us firstly why you felt there was a need for that and then describe the programs at Community Works? 

I’ve been both a photographer and an administrator for years. I’ve had those two occupations and I’ve never stopped doing the work in the jails. I started out as an artist and then an arts coordinator and I started this nonprofit organization. Community Works was, at first, a purely arts organization in a community setting, or in the jail setting. But, in about 1997, I expanded the work that I did and the arts are a critical element in every project that Community Works does.

We also do a lot of re-education, interventions and programs where we are really trying to provide an opportunity for men and women who are in jail to change their lives and leave the jail in better shape than when they arrived. How can we provide them with opportunities that will help them when they get out? What can we do? 

About ten years ago, a lot of us realized that the one group of people that we were not looking at were the children. The people most impacted by incarceration are the children of the incarcerated. And so, a lot of our work has been focused in providing opportunities for children of incarcerated parents and for them to have a voice and an outlet through art. 

I understand that recently you are energized by restorative justice? 

There's a huge continuum of what is considered restorative justice. Obviously, victim/offender reconciliation is the purest sense of restorative justice: in which a victim and offender come together, and the offender is accountable to the victim, and the victim deals with that in whatever they might deal with it so that there's a real face-to-face, one-on-one reconciliation.

Though none of us called the arts programs we did years ago “restorative justice” they’ve always involved a public aspect, bringing the exhibit, bringing the theatre into the public arena, so that the community could have an opportunity to see who incarcerated people are and really understand why we have incarcerated them… and in a way that's one aspect of restorative justice.

One of the most effective programs we’ve pursued has been to use theater as a way to connect formerly-incarcerated men and women to the community by providing them the opportunity to tell their stories, to be accountable, to adopt a greater stake in the community, and to have an audience to be witness. In recent years, we’ve brought in incredible theater directors to shape performances and to help formerly-incarcerated men and women in their journey of accountability: to talk about what they've done and where they came from. We invite not an audience of strangers nor just the general public, but we invite victims (whether it's an indirect victim or a direct victim of the performer) and in so doing we’ve welcomed a whole spectrum of people, stakeholders… as well as the general community in San Francisco.

Such opportunities are extraordinary in providing men and women who are re-entering a greater stake in the community and providing the community a much better understanding of a multi-dimensional person of who this so-called formerly incarcerated man is. So you get the opportunity to see this person in just such a richer, fuller dimension.

The arts also gives the participant opportunity to see themself in that richer, fuller dimension. To do things that are risk-taking, that are legal, that are really deep and really powerful. I just think one the most effective tools that we have used as Community Works, in these last 30 years, is theatre.

Can you tell me about how the participants talk about the traditional (recent) modes of discipline? How do they talk about the theatre and the arts programs and the reconciliation programs? 

A lot of the men and the women have really felt like the programs have been effective in giving them a different voice and some tools. I think the San Francisco County Jail's mission is to have people leave better than when they arrived. Yes, you are incarcerated, yes, you've done something and you're paying back the community by having to serve this time, but we can offer tools that will help you move on when you leave.

I think most of the men and women would say that their incarceration was a part of the process, in some way, and that the opportunity to participate in arts programs has been absolutely transformative. That too has given people a whole other concept of self-concept. It's provided them an opportunity to be accountable in a powerful way. 

Restorative justice has not been accepted broadly but it is finally in the lexicon and practices. Federal grants now ask “What restorative justice activities are you doing?” So, for the first time I've see, even in grant applications, a recognition that restorative justice is a powerful modality. That, to me, that's very exciting and my experience is that through theater, it is very powerful for anyone in the audience. I have yet to see somebody in an audience walk away with any cynicism because the stories in theater so clearly from the heart, are really raw, and the process is so extraordinary We always have a talk-back after the performances which are always so humanizing for both for the participants and the audience. Transformative. I think the challenge is always to get the audience that is not convinced.

You want to change minds, not preach to the choir.

Community Works tries to reach out to communities that may be more skeptical. It's always a challenge and something that we try to conquer.

Changing the conversation on mass incarceration requires many approaches. I am thankful for yours and for Community Works’.

Thank you.