ABOUT

"Of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States, an estimated 100,000 of them are kept in solitary confinement, often for years on end.  Black is the Day, Black is the Night explores how that type of long-term isolation and incarceration can affect an individual's psychology, sense of self, and perception of reality.  Through personal correspondence with men serving life and death sentences, I create images that attempt to showcase the unexpectedly vulnerable aspects of my pen pals' incarcerated lives. Using appropriated material, I create composite landscapes of memories shared in letters, overlaying them to account for the number of years each has spent in prison as well as pixelated portraits using an image loss ratio of years behind bars to years alive.  I construct objects using instructions from pen pals, like jump ropes made of bedsheets and paint sets made of dissolved candy and tap water."
— Amy Elkins