Sandow Birk’s foggy view of San Quentin State Prisonin wealthy Marin County evokes the transformation of California from a mythical nineteenth-century Eden into the home of one of the nation’s largest incarcerated populations. Birk notes that his Prisonation series is “based on the California landscape paintings of the 1880s, the image of California, and the romance of the West and the reality of what the West has become.

“Incarceration today disproportionately impacts and marginalizes people of color. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, explains, “More African-American men are in prison, or on parole, than were enslaved in1850, before the Civil War.” While serving their sentences, many prisoners perform labor for wages that in California range from thirty to ninety-five cents per hour. Upon their release, many former inmates experience state-sanctioned discrimination in employment and access to housing andthe loss of voting rights and public benefits.