Satellite Image Gallery

This series of satellite images takes its inspiration from the Prison Map project by Josh Begley. It is similarly interested in showing how carceral forms of discipline are etched into the landscape. In the case of prison agriculture, there are not only an array of places, but also prison architectures and agricultural practices. And these carceral conditions are embedded in a set of social and environmental spaces. Like agriculture, prisons are commonly located in remote locales hidden from most of the public. Concealed in these landscapes and cages are stories of exploitation, discipline, and at times, hope and resistance. Bringing together this set of images highlights the difficulty of identifying and accounting for the social death of incarceration and the supposed freedom that lies right outside prison walls.

There are at least 662 prisons with prisoners who participate in some form of agriculture. This is sometimes visible from the air, revealing the carcerality of agricultural landscapes, while other times it is invisible, suggesting the carceral power to hide agricultural practices inside carceral architecture. While one could focus strictly on prisons, this would be to ignore the permeability of carceral space and the relationship of prisons to the broader social and ecological communities within which they reside. There are two images for each prison. The first is zoomed out to visually let the eyes stretch beyond prison walls, while the second is zoomed in to focus the viewer on the bricolage of agriculture and prison architecture.