Women Prisoner Polaroids by Jack Lueders-Booth

The cover colors will be randomly selected

In the autumn of 1977, Jack Lueders-Booth began a decade-long tenure teaching photography at MCI Framingham, a women’s prison. His collaboration with the inmates yielded a profound series of Polaroid images, now showcased in a new book along with oral histories from that time. The collection captures the lives and expressions of the inmates in an environment that experimented with normalizing prison conditions, allowing for personalized cell spaces and mixed-gender populations

MCI Framingham, established in 1878, originally housed women convicted of bearing children out of wedlock, reflecting the stigma illustrated in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." Over the years, the facility evolved to incarcerate women for various crimes, often related to their relationships with men. By the mid-1970s, the prison had become a ground for reformative measures aimed at mitigating the psychological effects of incarceration, such as non-uniformed attire and decorated cells.

Lueders-Booth's initial two-year assignment extended to ten years, driven by his commitment to the photographic project and the personal stories of the inmates. His work, along with anonymized verbal accounts and poems from the women, provides a poignant insight into the lives of those inside MCI Framingham, offering a narrative of resilience and the impact of creative expression in confined spaces.