Strange Silence:
Portraits from Women's Prisons
in Louisiana, Texas, Kentucky
& New Mexico

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"Strange Silence" was conceived in 1999 when Ava Berkofsky was working on 900 Women, a film directed by Laleh Khadivi, which told the stories of five women in a Louisiana prison. After that film was completed, the crew took the film on a "prison road tour" and held screenings and discussions in women's prisons in states all over the country (click here for more information). Throughout the tour, Berkofsky photographed the women she met in order to continue to put human faces and stories to the exponentially growing numbers of incarcerated women, and to show the human cost of inane phrases like "war on drugs" and "tough on crime" as it relates to women, children and families.

Artist's Statement:

Walking into a prison compound, I expected to see pent-up rage, some kind of violence, implied or real. Although I've seen this in the men's facilities I've been in, I felt a distinct absence of this in most of the women's prisons. Instead, I witnessed a profound sadness & depression. I asked around about this and found that the percentages of women on mood altering drugs were shockingly high, ranging from 20% up to 85% in some prisons. This stayed with me throughout the shooting process of this project between 1999-2001.

The past 10 years have given us unprecedented levels of incarceration among all groups of people, but especially among women. The population of women's prisons nationally has doubled since 1997 alone. Most every woman I talked to knew this.

The complete photo project can be viewed at www.avaberkofsky.com.