Angola, Louisiana
March 19, 1999
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print on aluminum
Dimensions
image/plate: 12.6 × 10.2 cm (4 15/16 × 4 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Julia J. Norrell, in Honor of Claude Simard and the 25th Anniversary of Photography at the National Gallery of Art
Accession Number
2014.177.205
Art Historical Context
Deborah Luster's *Angola, Louisiana* (1999) is a poignant gelatin silver print mounted on aluminum, measuring a compact 12.6 × 10.2 cm. This intimate-scale photograph captures a moment at the Louisiana State Penitentiary—commonly known as Angola—one of America's largest and most infamous maximum-security prisons, situated on the site of a former slave plantation along the Mississippi River. Luster, a photographer renowned for her empathetic explorations of incarceration and human dignity, uses the medium's rich tonal range and the aluminum support's luminous durability to evoke the stark reali...
About the Artist
Deborah Luster
Deborah Luster, born in 1951 in Bend, Oregon, grew up in Northwest Arkansas and later made her home in New Orleans, Louisiana, with additional time spent in Galway, Ireland. Her path to photography was profoundly shaped by personal tragedy: the 1988 murder of her mother, which prompted her to take up the medium as a means of processing grief and exploring violence's aftermath. Luster attended the ...