This photograph, a unique piece which has been offered to the Shelter Foundation, was taken in the Indiana State Prison. It is part of the Omega Suites series done between the years 1991 and 1998, and which documented execution chambers across the United States. One sees a symmetrical arrangement of warm tones of wood, beige and gray. Open wooden doors reveal a dark, barred-off detention cell containing a daybed—the area where the prisoner will spend the final hours before the moment of execution. Neither the light color layers nor the polished wood can disguise the actual purpose of the space. The photograph is utterly matter-of-fact. Uncompromising. The brutal barrier of the grid door reinforces the sense of the inevitable, and at the same time, fine cracks and dirt in the corners of the room convey a sense of near absurd banality. The room beyond the barrier remains inaccessible and, in turn, beyond the imaginable.
Lucinda Devlin (*1947 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA)
The American artist Lucinda Devlin captures in her photographs, often square in format, interior spaces shaped and molded by society. In factual photo series she holds fast for the viewer deserted spaces: amusement parks, spas, solariums, agrarian landscapes, treatment rooms, execution chambers. The exacting pictorial language of these silenced places allows one to intuit the customs, values and rules of the societies which have formed them. Her photographic works can be seen in numerous international collections including the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the Bibliothèque National in Paris.
