Graduate student Roz Croog has created something powerful from a place where hopelessness and despondency staked their claim. A second-year student in UMBC's Imaging and Digital Arts (IMDA) M.F.A. program, Croog conducted a multimedia research project to record images in Lorton Prison after it was shut down. Collaborating with a Howard University anthropology professor, Croog photographed a single row of cells and manipulated the images so that they appeared to be converging into each other. The effect is very dramatic and shows an intensity that both appeals to the eye and repels the viewer at the same time.

"What interested me about Lorton," she says, "were the buildings -- completely abandoned -- and the presence, yet invisibility, of the prisoners." Her work focuses on this invisibility as well as the impact of identity loss and isolation. "My intention was to create a feeling of claustrophobia and disorientation," which she accomplished by walking up and down a single cellblock with video camera recording "that long, lonely corridor with sounds of cell doors opening and closing, ghostly echoes, and voices far in the distance." Croog expressed the lack of privacy that pervades the work by setting up the cellblock photographs as a mirror image. "A prisoner is under constant surveillance," she says, "yet identity as an individual is never seen."

Another aspect of Lorton that she explored was the graffiti plastered across most of the walls. "The silent walls of their cells were the only listeners to the anguish of the prisoners," she says. "This was all they had for expression and identity, so they talked to the walls." Looking at these pictures, one cannot help but feel overwhelmed by the anguish and the anger that the art evokes. Calendars with days marked off, images of Jesus and Bible verses, and signs claiming territory for certain gangs were all a part of the prisoners' graffiti, acting as a running commentary on life inside a steel cage.

"Arriving at an interdisciplinary layering of media elements and concerns both aesthetic and political is very much what the IMDA program is about, and Roz exemplifies the effort our graduate students make in this regard," says IMDA Graduate Program Director Vin Grabill.

During four sessions at Lorton, Croog took more than 100 photographs and several hours of video, some of which she displayed in a public hallway of the Visual Arts building earlier this year. "To a certain extent, the placement of her enlarged images suggested the very corridors of the prison," adds Grabill. "Roz's interest in presenting her work outside of a gallery venue and within the less defined arena of a public space also points to our interest in seeking new ways for artists to express their works to the community."

Croog feels very strongly about the need to educate youth about the harsh realities of life in a cage. She hopes that the Lorton project becomes a means for teaching the consequences of what can happen when people become entangled in a life of crime. Croog also comments throughout her research and presentation on the value of life. "I'd like to send a message that every life is valuable and unique, that every individual is important. We must respect each other for our differences," she says, adding, "We're all human and we affect each other."

--Jennifer Leigh Gibson