For my image manipulation on the need for prison reform in our nation, in which prisoners are treated the same as slaves, I put two very famous African American cultural figures—Morgan Freeman’s Redd from Shawshank Redemption and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Solomon Northup from 12 Years a Slave—to suggest the idea that slavery has not really been abolished; it has only been reinvented as the prison industrial complex. The fact that men and women of all backgrounds are now subjugated to inferior treatment in our nation’s prisons and have their universal freedoms restricted is in many ways similar to the Jim Crow era and Antebellum South.
Both characters are positioned on either end of the image and are facing each other, as if they were conversing their current predicaments. The assumed nature of the conversation would eventually lead to the similarities of their sufferings. Both are held against their will, both are held for extended periods of time, and both are the protagonists of their original movies. So similarly, like in both Shawshank Redemption and 12 Years a Slave, we see the world through their eyes.
The color was desaturated to provide a somber feeling of reflection; to know that both characters are from vastly different time periods, yet the amount of progress achieved has been very slim. Minorities are still subject to unfair treatment by our society, no doubt. They are being exploited through our nation’s prison industrial complex. They are treated barely above the standard for animals. And this isn’t right.
I like to imagine that there they are, sitting in this prison yard conversing and both coming to the conclusion that their lives were stolen from underneath them simply because of the color of their skin. It isn’t fair, and the prison system must be reformed so that millions of people are not only treated fairly, but also are correctly reformed so that they may reenter society as rational, wholesome human beings. Not as slaves awaiting their new masters.
Thomas Lopez 