Donovan Wylie

It was suggested by my tutor that I had a look at the work of Donovan Wylie who had had unprecedented access to the Maze Prison during the latter part of the prison's life before it was demolished. He also referred me to Wylie's take on the Watch Towers. I assume this, in part, was because I had spent 35 years of my working life in penal institutions in England.

I have to say that I was less than impressed. The images were common place, bland and largely uninteresting. Superficially there is very little difference between the architecture of the Maze and a number of other prisons in the UK so that the uniqueness of the Maze has not been captured. The interior shot of a cell seems to be staged and the walls surprisingly clean. The shots between the fence and the wall fail, for me, to provide any idea of what it is like to be incarcerated where your view of the wider world is limited by the exterior perimeter wall. I well remember the reaction when long term prisoners were transferred from a Victorian prison in London to a modern prison in Suffolk where the only external security was a wire fence which gave good views of the surrounding countryside.

I presume the problem for Wylie was the lack of any activity when he was there. Prisons are about people - those who are locked inside and those that keep them locked inside and the interaction between the two. The Maze had the additional tensions of the segregation of the prisoners by their connection with different military groups that was quite unique in the UK.  Then there was the extra-ordinary perimeter security that impacted on everyone's lives. None of this is made visible.

I think that this underlines the difficulty for all photographers. (S)he cannot control the audience. Everyone will bring with them a different history that will get between the viewer and the photograph. My experience of penal institutions and knowing a number of staff who had worked at the Maze necessarily impacts upon my interpretation and how I react.

Wylie's take on WatchTowers also left me unmoved. I have seen far better images of these Towers that give the viewer a sense of what they meant and the impact they had on the people who were constantly under surveillance.