Carcere visibile. Rappresentazioni collettive di luoghi di reclusione

The narration of prison reality through the different representations that have been given is part of a deterrence system developed over time to make prison perceived as a punitive structure that is also sociologically protective and reassuring by those who remain outside. The representations provided by the security and deterrence system developed by civil society influence our social relationships and the way we see the world around us. Drawings, photographs, installations, films and documentaries which have as their subject the different realities of penitentiary institutions have thus become objects of study, providing new food for thought. From the exhibition developed during the Third International Penitentiary Congress of 1885 to the contemporary exhibitions that showcase the life and places of imprisonment, we have moved from detached observation to the emotional involvement of visitors, to make them experience the jumble of sensations that the deprivation of freedom entails. The use of documentary photography, rather than objectively reproducing places and people in prison to help develop social self-criticism, has lent itself to propaganda or rhetorical purposes of a highly contradictory nature. Interferences between different cultural models can be found both in the photographic campaigns driven by descriptive intentions of the first half of the twentieth century, and in more recent photographic projects apparently more inclined towards social denunciation. What seems to emerge, however, is the affirmation of a cliché, of an aesthetic inclination that goes beyond the authenticity of prison reality. As regards penal institutions for minors and therefore the condition of minors in prison, their representation is even more misleading. The image we have of juvenile prison today appears to derive in a distorted manner above all from television series, in which the condition of detention is presented as a training ground for young people, a necessary test for the affirmation of one’s identity and the achievement of maturity.