Still Life Killing Time

For eight years, E Wing at HMP Kingston, Portsmouth, was home to a unique community of 25 elderly life prisoners: murderers, rapists, paedophiles and other violent criminals aged from their late 50s to over 80 years old.

A former administration block, it comprised of a canteen and recreation rooms, two single-occupancy medical cells and shared rooms partitioned into small bed spaces. The communal spaces were ordered and decorated by the prison staff while the personal spaces belonged to the prisoners.

Photographed over two years, Still Life Killing Time fuses photographic imagery with still life symbolism inspired by 17th-century Dutch vanitas painting to explore the prisoners’ experiences of extended incarceration and the ordering of institutional time and space.

For the texts, thanks to: Simon Norfolk (photographer), Erwin James (former life prisoner, writer and The Guardian columnist).

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