This striking image features in a recent series by the Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins, titled What Photography and Incarceration Has in Common With an Empty Vase. The three-year project was a collaboration between Martins and inmates at HMP Birmingham, and offers “a thoughtful, original take on its inherent prison theme,” in the words of Emily Gosling for Elephant. It saw Martins photograph “offenders, ex-offenders and their relatives, as well as people enacting their stories”, with truly intimate results. “I went to great lengths to avoid images that just perpetuate the narratives we associate with prisons: race, drugs, criminality, violence,” he told Gosling. Discover more about the series here.
