Touching

While doing a browse on facebook I noticed someone had linked to a rather interesting site. At the time I thought, 'Should I bother?' But I'm glad I did. What I came across was imagery of many women, some holding scars, others smiles, some not. They seemed raw and true. What I came across was a project held in a Romanian Women's prison in which the cell mates were given a camera for a period of time and they were told to take pictures with two rules: They were not allowed to use the flash, and they were not allowed to use the zoom. There is more information surrounding the project on the site, if you scroll down there is a section about it in English.

Once I got onto the site I clicked through every image there was, I was curious, very much so and managed to look through all of them without noticing till I jumped back to the beginning quite suddenly. I thought they were wonderful and very touching and more to the point, truthful. It is not often we see imagery which looks like they're going about day to day things but they're imprisoned, the only clue to this is an image of two of barbed wire and bunk beds. Why were they there? What had they done? Just two of the questions that ran through my head.

So this is what I'm thinking about today, I'm glad I'm free, I get to live my life how I chose. And yet, there is a small part of me that can't help but wonder what it is like to live in that small community of women all sharing one common trait: Prison.