Dying with Dignity at Angola
1/11/2008
Photographs and text by Lori Waselchuk
Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, is not an easy place to understand. Built on a former plantation named for the country in Africa the slaves had come from, Angola has historically been known as the most violent prison in the South. But today it is known for its semiannual rodeo and nine-hole golf course—both of which are open to the public. It is the only maximum-security prison in Louisiana, a state with one of the highest prisoner-to-population ratios and some of the most severe sentencing laws in the United States. Angola sits on 18,000 acres (about the size of Manhattan) of rich Delta soil and is surrounded on three sides by a great curve in the Mississippi River. The thick forests of Tunica Hills enclose the fourth side.
A life sentence in Louisiana means life. More than 85 percent of the 5,100 prisoners at Angola are expected to die there. Until the hospice program was created in 1998, prisoners died mostly alone and unattended in the prison hospital. Their bodies were buried in shoddy boxes in unmarked graves at Point Lookout, the prison cemetery.
Angola inmates have long feared dying in prison. But a nationally recognized hospice program and Warden Burl Cain have changed that.
Now, when a terminally ill prisoner is too sick to live in the general prisoner population, he is transferred to the hospice ward where a team of six volunteers works shifts to look after him. The volunteers, all prisoners, change the patient’s sheets, keep his room tidy, write and read letters, read books to him, watch movies with him, and try to keep him as comfortable as possible. Then, in the last days of dying, the hospice staff begins a 24-hour vigil. The patient doesn’t die alone.
Hospice volunteers plan a memorial service and an elaborate funeral. The casket, made by prisoners, is taken from the prison to the cemetery in a beautifully hand-crafted carriage hearse, also made by prisoners, drawn by two Percherons and followed by a procession of friends and sometimes family members singing hymns.
Dying in prison is no longer one of the deepest fears of prisoners at Angola. In fact, many prisoners now ask to be buried at Angola, next to the friends with whom they have served their time.
Image Gallery:
Dying with Dignity at Angola
Scenes from inside a maximum security prison, where inmates care for fellow prisoners in hospice.
Photographs and Text by Lori Waselchuk
   See all 11 images.
 | | | |  | | About the Photographer | | Lori Waselchuk (B.A. ’89), a Wisconsin native, is a photojournalist living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She moved there with her husband and two children in early 2005 after living in Johannesburg, South Africa, for 10 years. A few months later, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit southern Louisiana. “For two months, I worked every day for national newspapers, driving up and down the Gulf Coast photographing people whose lives and histories had been washed away,” Waselchuk says. “The horror stories were endless, and I began to feel scattered and unhinged. I had to take a break from assignment work—I needed to photograph New Orleans in a way that reflected my own heartbreak.”
Waselchuk bought a panoramic camera and began shooting for herself. First, she photographed the empty and broken New Orleans, focusing on small scenes and objects that “echoed both a previous life and the loss of that life,” she says. “The new format was a breakthrough for me. The wide frame slowed down my process of shooting and my work became quiet.”
After the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, she wanted to work on a project that took her away from the disaster. The opportunity came when Imagine Louisiana magazine asked her to photograph the hospice program at Angola State Penitentiary. She used her traditional 35mm camera to cover the story but also took along the panoramic camera—“a tricky tool for documentary photography but a format that seems to anchor the subject,” she says.
Waselchuk fulfilled the magazine assignment but didn’t feel finished with the story, so she asked Warden Burl Cain if she could return. “It’s difficult to accommodate a photographer in a maximum security prison,” she says. “I am very grateful to Warden Cain, his staff, and to the prisoners at Angola for allowing me to document this incredible hospice program. I believe we all have a lot to learn from their work and commitment.”
More of her photography may be seen at www.loriwaselchukphotos.com. |
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