You're reading: Roads & Kingdoms: In prison, in pictures

Ask Michal Chelbin what surprised her the most when entering Ukrainian and Russian prisons and she’ll tell you it was the wallpaper. Those walls, coated with blooming flowers, ocean views and grassy meadows, were the inspiration behind the name of her latest series, “Sailboats and Swans.”

Over four years, the Israeli photographer shot portraits of the residents of seven prisons, sitting at times several hours with one subject. A monograph published by Twin Palms earlier this year features 62 of her images, all taken with Chelbin’s signature Hasselblad 503. At times inscrutable, always honest, the portraits immediately make you question the rather faceless word inmate: here, what you see is a person first—and that person is looking straight at you. With a body of work that explores contrast in all its shapes—the old and the new, the innocent and the perverse, the familiar and the strange—Chelbin often finds her characters and stories in the depths of Ukraine and Russia. She joined me for a Skype interview from a small Israeli village between Haifa and Tel Aviv.

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