UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/UIG VIA GETTY
With roughly 2.3 million incarcerated people (a 500 percent increase over the past 40 years), the U.S. now leads the world in prison population—and African-Americans and Hispanics make up 56 percent of those behind bars. That disturbing reality inspired The Writing on the Wall, a collaboration between artist Hank Willis Thomas and Baz Dreisinger (pictured, right).
Dreisinger, an author who also teaches writing in prisons around the world, collected essays, poems, letters, stories, diagrams and notes to create the installation with Thomas, a conceptual artist and co-founder of the 50-state art collaboration project For Freedoms. The words of the incarcerated—handwritten and typed—are a moving testament to the often ignored humanity of those in prison.