In 2015, when George Osborne announced that HMP Holloway, the largest female prison in western Europe, was to close, the news provoked mixed emotions among those who had served their sentences there. A site-specific trauma-informed community project set out to address former inmates’ experiences, and, last year, 25 of them were invited back to the building and asked to read aloud a letter to a person who – for better or worse – had played a significant part in their journey. Through video shorts and photographic portraits, the multimedia project – developed by Power Play Productions and Aliyah Ali of Daddyless Daughters – would platform their stories.
We recced the deserted London building before the shoot. When the gates first shut behind me, I felt I had entered a labyrinth. The mould, the peeling paint, things ripped off the walls, the bare bones of the metal furniture, all created an extra layer of hostility.
Prisoners are used to being stereotyped in reductive and harmful ways and many distrust the media and institutions. There is a fear that what you say or how you act will come to misrepresent you. Think about the “mugshot” taken after arrest. These unforgiving photographs forever connect someone to a criminal act, but they cannot incorporate the complexity of their backstory or the full spectrum of their emotions. For these subjects, stepping in front of the camera was going to be daunting.
When I photographed her, Tia was fresh from reading a letter addressed to her father, in the old counselling block where she had often recounted painful stories of him during her time as an inmate. She found her pose almost immediately. There wasn’t any back-or-forth, she was just going to stand the way she stood. I asked if she wanted to take off her jacket but she wanted to keep it on, hands inside pockets. It’s hard to explain the intensity as we watched her. There was so much going on inside her, she was defiantly holding in so much emotion. When she stared down the camera she did so with tears in her eyes. A line in her letter hit home: “I double think even triple think everything I do n wonder if I’m gona Eva mean anything to any1 in this lifetime and that’s all because of you.” For me, it encapsulated the correlation between abuse and incarceration. The Prison Reform Trust details that 53% of incarcerated women report having experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child, and half have suffered domestic violence as adults.
I photographed one woman who had been imprisoned because she had been forced to forge passports by an abusive partner. It was heartbreaking at times to hear how their sentences had affected these women’s lives: Kat had her newborn son taken away at 15 hours old, despite being told he could stay by her side. Some women decided to use props or pose in positions that reflected their journey. One mother and daughter returned to HMP Holloway together and asked to be photographed wrapped in a tight hug in the spartan visitor centre block, just as they had always done when reunited.
I heard dark stories of extreme isolation, mistreatment and deteriorating mental health. HMP Holloway was a place where those who had experienced traumatic events were being re-traumatised: it was not designed to help or rehabilitate. It makes me so angry that we spend £48,409 a year to keep someone in prison – a cost that could in many cases be avoided if there was proper investment in community support initiatives.
For many involved in the project it was transformative to be seen through others’ eyes. Their experiences had never been validated in such a public way, and they were able to leave the decaying prison one last time knowing that they were the strong ones. Many even had profound feelings of nostalgia, because it was the first place they found sisterhood or felt safe.
Every person I photographed redefined the word strength. I want them to be proud of their willingness to involve themselves in an emotionally difficult process and go back to HMP Holloway when many would just want to forget it. I hope that walking into Peckham’s Copeland Gallery this week and seeing their films, portraits and letters lining the walls, they will feel very much that it’s their exhibition.
Joya Berrow’s CV
Born: London, 1994.
Trained: Self-taught in photography, BA film-making at LCC UAL.
Influences: Jackie Nickerson, Carlota Guerrero, Camila Falquez, Jack Davison, Jim Goldberg, Harley Weir, Richard Mosse, Khalik Allah, Ben Rivers, Stuart Hall.
High point: “This year I’ve worked on two exciting projects, the Holloway exhibition and a Guardian short documentary. It’s been such an eye-opening process in how to create work, ensuring that people’s voices are really heard and every collaborator is listened to.”
Low point: “Covid was tough. I felt I was on a roll with my film-making career, and it’s taken me about two years to get back into it in the way I wanted.”
Top tip: “It’s all about feeling. If you start to overthink something, come back to what you feel when you look at the work.”
• Joya Berrow’s photographs and films are exhibited in Layers: Looking Inside Holloway Prison at Copeland Gallery, London, until 12 March
