'A roadmap to redemption': how a photographer helped a prisoner see beyond his cage

After a Minnesota inmate wrote to Alec Soth on impulse this year, the two began a freewheeling exchange of ideas on culture and isolation that developed into an astonishing new book

In January this year, having completed a working road trip, Alec Soth returned home to his native Minneapolis to find a letter marked Minnesota correctional facility. “Please forgive the audacity of this letter,” it began. “I reach out in great admiration and respect. For years, I have relied on photography for reference material, given my incarceration, and have developed a great admiration for the genre.”

The letter was signed C Fausto, short for Christopher Fausto Cabrera, an inmate who on “sheer impulse” had written to the photographer with “no real expectation, but to connect with other artists”. Intrigued, Soth decided to respond. “There was something about the letter,” he recalls. “A politeness and a sense that the guy was really bright and self-aware.”

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/31S8KPC