 Okay, so I'm going to hit this. I'm going to start my screen share. It says you were in a practice session. Are you going to change that. I'm going to change it and I'm going to change it right now and we are. There we go. All right, so we'll get started in just a moment or letting folks in. Welcome friends will get started in just a moment. And I let the room fill up. Until then, I'm going to put a link in the chat box. To tonight's document. And make sure that everyone. And use the chat is open. I'm going to go ahead and get started with tonight's library announcements. Hello everyone. I'm an ESA. I'm a librarian at San Francisco Public Library. One of my biggest jobs is working on our one city one book campaign. And if you have not heard, I hope you've heard because I feel like I've been talking about it for almost a year now. But our one city one book for 2022 was this is your hustle. And so the, the amazing thing with this campaign is I get to work with all sorts of people who are tied to the concept of the book, which ear hustle is a podcast coming out of San Quentin, which brings us to tonight's presenter Peter Mertz, who is a photographer. And I will get to him and tell you all about him in just a moment. The one city one book events, most of them. Some of them were in person and weren't recorded, but some of them were in person and recorded and we had many virtual events they are available on our YouTube channel. I'm going to throw that in the chat in case you missed any of those amazing events because, wow, the people that work in this in the subject of incarceration reentry artist transformation, they are amazing. Let's get that out. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unseated ancestral homeland of the raw, nutrition lonely people who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homelands and as uninvited guests, we want to pay our respects to their ancestors, elders, and relatives of the raw nutrition community. I encourage you to check out a amazing women led group in the East Bay Sigourte Land Trust, and I will put them in the chat in a bit, and follow the work that they're doing they're doing amazing work, and I'm also going to throw down a great reading list. So I want to tell you about some upcoming events we have tomorrow in person at our main library. The Irish Repertory Theater and Fish Ambul will be doing a theatrical reading should be amazing so folks all the way traveling from Ireland. Today, we did a stop in New York City, San Francisco, and LA so we're one of the fortunate stops please come out 530 the correct auditorium. We are back open and available. We're operating in April climate action month, and we will be having our friends of the soulmates of the natural world. The National Park Services will be presenting about forced health and resilience in more and they are always a fun group and informative. We're partnering with our, one of our favorite bookstores on the 24th Street corridor medicine for nightmares, and the diasporic Vietnamese artist network, and we'll be having Jennifer Chang and Diana coin new in in conversation. And so I love an offsite event. Come check out the bookstore if you haven't seen it is gorgeous. April 15 main library learning studio hard to get to fifth floor and then it's way in the back corner but come this is sure to be a great book. It is a top seller, and I'm sure it's going to be very informative. If you've been in the Bay area for any amount of time you know who any sprinkle is so any sprinkle and her partner best Stevens are going to be celebrating Earth Day with a walking tour. We'll meet at Bernal Heights library out front in the amphitheater area. And we will be taking walking to Holly Park and it is so fun we did it last year we have about 40 people, and it is a fun ride so where you walking shoes, the rest for the occasion if you like. So this is an Earth Day eco sex walking tour with Annie and Beth of earth lab. Not to miss, I promise you. Alright, so tonight we have Peter Merz. And Peter is a photographer residing in the San Francisco area for decades he's focused on documenting the work of several arts based nonprofit organizations. He's the co author of paths of discovery, art practice and its impact in California prisons, and the author of X crucible the passion of incarcerated artists. And his books cover 15 years both women and men's prisons, showing images of incarcerated artists engaging in visual performance and literary art forms, more than 100 photos including images of prison towns. And we all know that. Well, if we don't all know I love you all to know how much art does transform people and I think we're going to learn some stuff tonight and see some stuff tonight. Without further ado, Peter Merz take it away. Thank you and it's in the San Francisco public library for this opportunity to present my work of photographing in California State prisons, and thank you for audience for for signing in today. And I'm going to start by sharing my screen. So, as I mentioned, for the last 15 years, I've been driving up and down the state of California to some of the remotest, most desolate corners, where the state prisons are. I visited all 36 California prisons, and I photographed an art class, at least one art class in each of those prisons and some prisons have been that many times. Over the 15 years, one of the products of that project was this book, Excrucible, A Passion of Incarcerated Artists, which I was delighted to have published last year by Daylight Books. But tonight, I think what I'll do is talk not about this product of my photography project, but really I'm going to lift the curtain and take you behind the scenes and show you some of my process of engaging with this photographic project over the last 15 years. And I will say that when I photograph art classes, I have the same focus, which is that I tend to focus on process rather than the art product or the art performance. If I can only visit a class, you know, classes run 10 or 15 weeks, if I can only visit one class, my sweet spot is the second half of the class somewhere in there. So the guys have already started working together, they're hitting their stride, they got no other initial nervousness or jitters, and there's some art product that can be photographed, you know, three quarters of the way through the class. So that's my goal. So, so I'm going to talk to you about process. And the structure I'll use is I thought I would address three of the most common questions I get about this project, which are, how did I get started photographing in prisons that's a popular question. How did I get access to the prisons with a camera over such a sustained period of time. And the third question I'll address tonight is, do folks in prison want to be photographed an important question. So let's start with the first question, how did I get started on this project. I'm not saying myself, but this was the late 70s and I took the job with a nonprofit in burning county called bread and roses, some of you may know of bread and roses. Bread and roses takes free live quality entertainment into institutional settings where people can't get out to see live entertainment. Bread and roses takes performers into senior centers, children's hospitals, daycare centers, drug behaviors, and also jails and prisons. During my three years of working for bread and roses and those subsequent decades since when I've continued to photograph bread and roses programs. I would occasionally go to a program on at San Quentin State Prison. Here is Audrey all of Bay Area. Well, she's originally from Tasmania but she lived in the Bay Area until unfortunately her death some years ago but here she is going into San Quentin this is the Sally Port of San Quentin. And she's going in with some other musicians to perform a concert at San Quentin and this is the mobile home boys who played country Western and Americana on the upper yard and Quentin this way this is. And here's Michael Franti on the upper yard at San Quentin saluting the audience that came out to hear him on this day and also he seems to be saluting Mount Tomopaius which is in the background there. This is Michael from the upper yard at San Quentin. So, one of the days I was photographing a concert at San Quentin I think it was at Franti concert. A man approached me who was working at the prison and he said, Peter I teach art classes here at San Quentin, would you be interested in coming to have a look maybe you could help us document the art classes there. So, sounded interesting to me so I went up and visited the art class and I almost immediately fell in love with the art program and I'll explain why as we go further. But at that point I started visiting San Quentin quite regularly, going back to the to many of the art programs that were being taught at San Quentin so here's. This is a picture of the main gate at San Quentin, the main entrance into the prison. This is North Block housing unit at San Quentin. The San Quentin art studio is just to the left of this picture. And this is North Block from inside the San Quentin art studio. Now I have some. This is a painting by an incarcerated artist his name was Ronnie Goodman who painted this. This is a painting of the San Quentin lower yard. Ronnie was incarcerated for many years. Spent some of that time in San Quentin was an exceptional artist, and he was released some years ago. He struggled once he got out and unfortunately just passed away. But he's done. This is also Ronnie's work of San Quentin. What we're looking at here is the old there was an old building at San Quentin that was there since the 1800s it was knocked down because they needed to build a new hospital, but they love that the old facade. So they left the facade up they knocked the rest of the building down and then they built a new hospital behind that facade so here's this is the setting sun. And this is a painting by Ronnie Goodman of the art studio itself at San Quentin. That was how I got started with this project bread and roses kind of led me into it. So the next thing I want to talk about is how do I get such good access to prison programming particularly with the cameras. As you may imagine, prisons are skeptical of cameras. Well, with regards to my relationship with the Department of Corrections, as you can imagine, working with any large institution or particular security minded institution. It's important to follow the rules, learn the lingo communicate thoroughly, exercise patience, there's all sorts of things that happen that are unexpected in prison. And, and I tried to to streamline the process to make it easy for everyone that I was coming in contact with because I wanted to be able to return to the prisons. So I wanted, you know, to do what I could to make sure that my visit went well. To that end, here's an example of one way that I tried to streamline the process. A couple of weeks before I visit any particular class to photograph it. I have to mail in my equipment list of the all the equipment that I plan to take that day. This is my equipment list. You can see at the bottom it was signed by someone at the prison. This list was then forwarded to the security gate so that when I showed up for my appointment at the prison with all of my gear. There was an officer there who had this and he said, okay, let's open your bags and I want to see everything that you have and we'll check it off against this. So what I've done to streamline the process is I know where everything is in my bag and my cart so that when we, it's really fast for us to go through this. We go through it when I go in and we go through it when I come out. So that's just an example of ways that I can make things easy for the officers with my photography. So another thing I do is I share the photos with the Department of Corrections. Because it's their program this the arts and corrections program that is the main thing that I'm photographing the Department of Corrections was happy to use my photographs to promote this programming and I was happy to let them use my photos. And in fact I maintain an archive of all of my prison art photos for the last 15 years on my website. As you can see, each time I do a new shoot, I create a new folder which goes here this is in reverse chronological order so that you should skip to the top of this stack. And that's, and the archive is searchable on a number of features like the, the prison name, the type of art that's being taught, which could be anything from drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking. So visual arts, also performance arts, music theater, literary arts such as creative writing, and even audio journalism is being taught now in a few of the prisons. Another thing that helped me a lot. And this is not something I could arrange myself but I was lucky enough to develop a supporter in the Department of Corrections who appreciated the work that I was doing. And she's been whenever I go to a new prison and I want to photograph a class there if the prison doesn't know who I am and wants to know why I want to take a camera into a prison. So my friend up in Sacramento and CDC are headquarters. It helps grease grease the wheels for me so that's really appreciate it really helps a lot. Her name is Chrissy Coco Bush feeling she's great. Corrections there are entities that need to coordinate with and stay in contact with for all of my shoots so this little chart is the only one like this we'll have to look at today but let me just walk you through this. And the Department of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation they fund the arts and corrections program and all of their state prisons, but CDC are wisely recognized they don't know how to teach art or run art classes. So they connect they contracted with the California Arts Council. And so money passers from CDC are to see a city. The California Arts Council then works with providers and instructors throughout the state. Now, I just listed three here but there can be as many as 20 at a time. These are the organizations that provide the teachers William James Association when Shakespeare Company Fresno Arts Council actors gang down in the LA area. Each of these teaching organizations, then contracts with one or more prisons. And there are 36 prisons I didn't have them to show all of them here. This is just sort of a sample representative sample. And then there are multiple teachers teaching different subjects in each prison. And then of course they the teachers interact directly with the art students. And either before during or after a shoot I will have connected with someone at every level of this chart it's just how it, how it works. So it's a great it's a great team. All right, let's look at some images. This one is from San Quentin. Now some of the images I'm showing tonight are in the book the excrucible book that I showed you in the beginning and some are not. I'm showing you more of my overall process here not just that book, that one book. This is origami class at San Quentin portraiture. This is Ronnie Goodman on the left the painter. This happens to be at San Quentin as well. This many of the art classes are held wherever they can in chapels and visiting rooms are very common. This is a gymnasium. The rooms are not very well lit. So this man was in the corner of this gym. They had a, they all had their easels set up and the whole class was painting their instructor was there so they painted for three hours. And then the class was over and so they were all leaving. So this man was curious to see what he had been painting on in the dark, basically for the last few hours. So as he was leaving, he stopped in this window light to take a look at his painting by taking pains to coordinate with all of those organizations and smooth things and make things go as smoothly as possible. I do get some benefits had access to all 36 California State prisons. They're actually only 34 now they've been closing the couple in recent years. I get support from all levels of CDCR and from the teaching organizations. My expenses covered by the teaching organization so if I get invited to go down to Southern California, I live in San Francisco area if I get invited to go to Southern California to photograph a class in a prison there, I'll have to spend the night. So the teaching organizations who invite me to do the photography often cover somewhere, or most of my expenses. So during that 15 year period, when I was working on this project for 15 months of that I was actually on contract for the California Arts Council, which allowed me to go to all the prisons, especially the most remote ones. Visiting their two prisons in Blythe, California, which is on the Arizona border right there on the Colorado River, Ironwood and Chacoala Valley and here I am going into Ironwood this day. The sign says no video or filming or picture taking beyond this point. Almost, I think all the prisons have that sign somewhere that I noticed as I'm driving in the course I have special permission so I'm able to photograph beyond that. Okay. Now this is a big question right the folks in prison want to be photographed. So let's think about a few things. Number one images of incarcerated people. They have their state ID badge which has their image on it, and that's maybe re photographed every five or 10 years that they're incarcerated, but it's usually a really bad photo. So I don't think incarcerated people get much comfort from their state ID badge. Another possibility of how they can get photographs themselves is in the visiting rooms when visitors come and incarcerated people go in to meet their loved ones in the visiting room. If they paid $2 they can have one of the prison staff use an inexpensive camera and take a quick snapshot. I've seen a lot of these snapshots that were made in visiting rooms and they're really bad. The colors bad the light is low they're just awful. The only good thing about it is that the incarcerated person can stand with their loved one who's visiting and they can be photographed together so that's really special. But in terms of good photographs of the incarcerated people. Well, they can't get those. Not only that but they don't really have real mirrors in prisons you know they have polished steel plates that shows reflection that you know in the toilet areas. So on the what so. Well, the other thing is that when I show up in the prison with my camera and other journalists go into prisons occasionally but when journalists go into prison and they make photographs. The men or women who are being photographed often never see those photos right it appears in a magazine or newspaper somewhere or they might not even know what the subject of the article is. When I show up and I'm being accompanied by a prison staff person because I have a camera. I'm most likely seen as part of the establishment part of the Department of Corrections like who is this guy and why is he here. So that doesn't work well for me making photographs right I. I think that the photographs I'm making of these art classes, I think the students will love to see them but how do I convince them of that how do I get buy in from him. So, I've developed a process for getting for trying to explain who I am what I'm doing. Now, here's an example. This is before I photograph anyone inside a prison. They must have signed a CDC or 146 form, which is what this is. So this gives me permission to photograph the person who signed it. And I will say, as you might be able to tell, it's a long form, there are a lot of fields, some of which are to be filled in by a staff person and some of which are to be filled in by the incarcerated person. It's hard to fill this in, and particularly for people who don't speak English very well. It's really difficult. So, one of the things I did to try to process this or was I just use a highlighter to highlight just the fields that the incarcerated person needs to fill out, pre populated some of the fields where I could. And then I make 50 or 60 copies of this and take them to the prison, because my escort who is supposed to bring these forms to the shoot usually forgets. And so they don't have to run back out through the security gate to their office in the admin building then come back into the forums. I usually just make sure I always have a stack with me. We asked the students to fill these out before I start photographing. So, another thing I do to try to get myself on the inside of these classes instead of being on the outside is I align myself with the instructors. The instructors are beloved by the students. The instructors are just amazing. They're such a, they're, they're talented artists. The instructors are, but they also are kind. And, and they have a way of engaging with incarcerated people that just really works. So, what I will do is a couple of weeks before I plan to go in and photograph. I'll ask instructor to inform the students that a photographer will be coming. This allows the students to think in advance about whether they want to be photographed. And if they do want to be photographed it allows them to come camera ready. So I asked instructors to inform the students in advance. And then on the day of the shoot. This is an art class but I asked for five minutes at the beginning of each class that I'm going to photograph so that I can address the students. And I take five minutes and I tell why I'm shooting it's to promote prison art programming. I know that I'll be moving in really close but you know give me a signal if I'm getting too close so you can't even concentrate on what you're doing I let him know the flashes. I used to flashes on stands 11 of the flashes are going to flash. So, I really try to just paint a picture for them of what I'm going to be doing. And it helps, I think, these days, many classes no one opts out. Or sometimes there's two or three people who might opt out in the big class. This, the scene we're looking at now the instructor is the woman with her. Her hand on her face. It's only one week to performance time and they're having a choreographic problem. It's kind of soft and so she's a little bit stress I think these lies paper dolls in front of the men represent the women in the men's lives. And, and they, and the men during the piece which is a movement and spoken word piece. They interact with these paper dolls. So more of these amazing instructors. This is a mariachi band class. This is Afro Caribbean drumming. This is down in Central Valley, I believe one of the prisons down there. So, so incarcerated people do have mixed feelings about photographs but I've been fairly successful in breaking through that initial resistance. This is actually a charcoal drawing of one of the instructors this Patrick was an art instructor at San Quentin he was a painting instructor. This is a charcoal drawing done by Ronnie Goodman you can see at the bottom it was signed by many of the of Patrick's current and former students. Patrick taught at San Quentin into his 80s I believe he taught there for almost 20 years I believe. And he unfortunately passed away a few years ago, before the pandemic. Another thing the instructors do that makes them so beloved is they are where they can and it varies on how easy or difficult it is from the prison. But the instructors when they can they bring original artwork out of the prison to put it on display in public spaces. This is the San Francisco Opera House, the play of the Beethoven's Fidelio was playing there and of course that's a play about prison life. And so, the teacher of San Quentin had the opportunity to to show some of the inmates artwork here, including as well as context. This is an art exhibit going up in outside of Governor Newsom's office this is a state capital building in Sacramento. This included original artwork from the prison arts collective down in Southern California as well as some of my photographs which are used for context. Another thing that I will do in trying to in trying to give the artists anything that I can so that I'm just not wanting to take pictures. I want to be able to give them something back. I started thinking about families. Now, families are really important to incarcerated minimum and as you can imagine, if you look at all of these many of these people, this artwork was done by the father or an uncle of their child or their nephew niece, daughter or wife. But in addition to men and women making artwork about their family. The artists in prison are very well respected and people commission them to do to do portraits. So in some of these cases, a man might go to an artist with a photograph and say hey could you I love your drawing can you do the drawing of my daughter and in exchange will be made. So some of these may be contracted portraits here and occasionally when I'm shooting and I'm shooting the artwork but occasionally an artist will take the opportunity to speak directly to a loved one through my camera such as this. This is I call these URL strips what I'll do is in that five minutes where I'm addressing the artist before I start shooting when I'm asking if they will opt in for photographs. I give each person one of these slips of paper they're just small slips of paper. And this shows how to find the photos I'm shooting that day on my website so it gives a URL and a click sequence. Now, of course the incarcerated artist is useless to them because they don't have access to the internet, but this is information they can pass to their family members so the family members do look at these the photos that I make of their loved ones. I'm unable to do because I'm not able to give us directly to the people that I photograph inside. There's an over familiar policy that prevents to prevent over familiarization between visitors and incarcerated people. So I'm not allowed to give anything. So what I've done is found a way to post these on my archive on my website and I've got a widget on my website that connects to a third party photo printing service. So people can order prints from my photo archive at their cost at the cost of printing so I don't the money doesn't come to me. I don't get any I don't need any money off of this I do it as a service for the families. They're able to order prints and pay for them to this third party service and it works pretty well so a lot of the inmates so the families will order prints and send them into the inmates. Occasionally also sometimes the teaching artists will make prints and give them are able to get them into the students in some prisons where the rules are a little, a little bit less severe. The first thing I do when I have time at the end of a documenting of an art class. If there's finished work or even in process work, I'll photograph that for the artists. And so I've got some examples of some artwork that I copied here. In this case I just happened to pick the subject of birds to show you some examples of artwork that was made in the prisons. You can imagine why birds are a popular subject for artists in prison. I love the variety of styles to looking looking through actually any, any art class if it's a very beginner class they may all be doing exercises but some of the classes they're advanced students and the student and the teachers usually let the advanced students just work on whatever they want to work on sort of independent study. There's a lot of incarcerated artists will focus on their culture and heritage and really drill down into that sometimes, which you can see here. And yet another thing I'll do if there's time is so I'll check with the instructor and I'll say hey, do you think I'll be timed do a few portraits at the end of the class. And if it's okay with the instructor and I'll offer that to the students and it's usually in very enthusiastically received they love having portraits taken and of course the families love the portraits to. So whenever I can I'll take portraits that's a same Quentin in the background there. This is what Tony Steiner one of the more well known. Folks incarcerated saying Quentin, he's had quite a history. He's out now. Many of the people in the photographs you did some of the photo some of these photos are old, older than I'm showing you tonight and many of the men are out now, including what time. This man was in a storytelling class, and you can see that scar that goes across top of his head he told an amazing story about his attempted suicide with a gunshot to his own head and how he survived that. He did some work on his brain, which is why they see the scar there. California institution for women down in Los Angeles area. The face pain is because this is a theater class, based on the theatrical form of committee adult art day this ancient Italian form, which uses masks to play stock characters. This man is a writer. So now more communication with family members you can see here. Another point is that for some art forms are less dynamic than others visually dynamic. For example, writing class. As you can imagine, it doesn't make sense to photograph people sitting and writing. You can't even read to each other so that's when I make the photographs is during the readings. This man was in a storytelling class. And he was interested in a portrait at the end of the class. And I'll interact with these artists when I'm making the portraits and together well, figure out ideas of, you know, what of how to pose and whether we want to use props or not. That's the three basic questions I wanted to, to explore here in terms of explaining my process. This is a bonus question. I'll throw in one more question. What is the meaning of crucible where they come so crucible you know that the original meaning crucible is a this inert stone container that you apply a lot of heat to and it's used for refining precious metals, such as gold and silver. So in my formulation. I believe that the prison is the immutable stone container. The high energy that's applied is, is just a fact of incarceration and the trauma that got men and women into the incarceration, the trauma that they're experiencing while they're incarcerated. This is this is the energy that. The precious substance that's refined in my formulation is artistic passion. So that's why I came up with the title from the crucible. What what delights come from the crucible. And that I believe is all I had to say about my photography project thank you all for attending. And let me say I'm going to stop share now and hopefully lists. I am here Peter. We did have a question in the audience which was how much time you get per shoot. How much time is each shoot. Yeah, like how much, how much time do you get to spend doing one shoot is a one day only or. So, this is kind of tricky because I have a camera I have to be escorted by a staff member of the prison. So when I asked to go in and photograph a class, I'm basically asking a lieutenant at the prison to spend half a day with me. In which case he can't do any other work because he's got to be sharp running escorting me. So, my preference is, is to attend the entire class, however long the class is most classes, they run two to three hours, something like that. Occasionally you'll have classes that run longer, even, but I'll try to shoot for typically an entire three hour class. I don't want to stop because you never know, you know, soon as I pack my lights up in my camera if the class is still going something will happen that I really wish that I had captured. So I shoot for the entire few hours of each class. That's great it seems like it seems like you I mean your relationship from what I can see with the photos it seems like you're spent like a week with them so that's amazing Peter. Thank you. Jennifer asks how do you choose the classes, if you're able to. That's that's a good question yeah. So, basically that I'm invited by the teaching organizations to photograph a class so I'll go I'll go and photograph any class that where I'm invited basically. And although we'll say that I have become particularly fond of theater and dance classes lately just because they're so visual. But I also love the challenge of photographing a writing class, or, you know, or, or a storytelling class with his less props and movement. Anything. Let's see we got any more questions out there. Let's see let's see I do. There was lots of comments during the while you were talking and lots of good stuff of course like wonderful. Everyone loved that the fact that you set it up so you could share with family members. I think that's amazing to people. Have you ever shot some of the same folks. Have you ever shot someone the same folks in different prisons and then you find them in another person that would be interesting. Yeah, I'll tell you what's happened three times just recently. I was at the Pelican Bay about a month ago, photographing a class up there. And a man came walking towards me handing with a sheet of paper in his hand. And he looked vaguely familiar. If he hadn't spoken to me and explained who he was maybe I could eventually figure out who he was but but he, he came up and said Peter. You photographed me so this was a Pelican Bay which is on the Oregon border it's the northern most California prison. He said Peter you photographed me at RJ Donovan, which is outside of San Diego, almost Mexico. Three or four years ago. And guess what I had that photo here he had with him that day of photographs that I had made of him years before on the other end of the state. What had happened was, his family had gotten the photos on off my website, mailed it into him on just printed it out on on note paper and sent it to him. And he heard that a photographer was coming to his art class at Pelican Bay, he thought, maybe it's that same guy who photographed me in RJ Donovan. So he brought that that's why he brought the piece of paper with him. So I've seen a number of, and there was another man at that same in the same art class actually that I had photographed in yet a different prison. He introduced himself to me again, and I love that right when they come up and say, In fact, I was just the other day at a prison in Chacoala, and all the guys were coming in there about 30 guys in the class. And I hear this, Peter Merz yelled out. And so yes, so I've been doing this long enough now that I'm, it's getting easier to get access for one thing and I, it's getting in. Because the artists have heard about my photography now they, they, they trust me now and let me make that you know they opt in for the photographs. Yeah, it's fun to get my name called out and you know, on a prison yard when I'm walking by. Yeah, I think that's that's really amazing. I mean, it takes a special kind of person to be able to walk all of those lines so the judicial side of it and then the art side of it and then the incarcerated side of it so you must have a very even keeled temperament Peter. And how can the public know if there's an art exhibit from a prison somewhere currently on display. Yeah. You know, I don't think there's a really, really a central clearinghouse for it so it would be each of the teaching organization so I would say, if you want to see prison or if you could find out who are the teaching organizations in your area. You can get on their mailing list and you'll probably find like here in the San Francisco area there's the Marine Shakespeare Company, there's the William James Association down out of Santa Cruz. KELW teaches audio journalism. That's a radio station that's teaching audio journalism in prisons. I'm forgetting there's a lot of them that in Southern California, but that Southern California, if one were to go to the California Arts Council website and look for arts and corrections, you can see all of the arts providers listed there. And so that that's what I would recommend. And if someone wants to reach out to me, they're welcome to do that and I can help them find what teaching organizations are near them. That's great. Thank you Peter and same same with me you can reach out to me I can help. Let me help you I'm a librarian. And let's see, have you noticed any changes overall or specific prisons over the course of your work in them, have you noticed changes overall as specific prisons over the course of your work in them. What comes to mind, initially, I mean thinking about that is the announcement that just came out this week about San Quentin State Prison, which is going to be turned into a rehabilitation center. Governor Newsom announced that and that is very sounds very exciting course we don't know yet how it's going to be implemented. But the fact that there is a recent move to increase rehabilitated services is great, great to hear. And that, you know, I, it's people ask me about the differences between different prisons, but my view of each prison is very narrow when I go in, you know, I'm escorted by by a staff person from the front gate all the way into the classroom and the arts happening. So I'll see folks in the yards as I walk by but I don't really have an arrest so the only folks inside I'm interacting with the artists, art students. In fraction free for a year so it's you know it's the best behaved people in the prison who get to take the art classes. So it's hard for me to make generalizations about differences between prisons. I do get reports about which ones have more incidents of violence and things like that but but that I'm usually answer the art classes are usually insulated from any kind of trouble or violence and in fact, the students, the art students police their own classes because they know if anything happens, like if a cutting tool were to disappear from one of the classes. The class could get shut down for some time months at a time. And the men don't want that because they love their classes so they work together to help each other, make sure that nothing goes awry. Oops, I can't hear you and this I think you're. I was muted yes. That is interesting news about San Quentin and there is an ear hustle episode about Norwegian prison model that you can check out. It's very interesting. And you know what that would be just that could transform so many lives has this changed yours or any of the people you know perspective on the prison system after photographing so many folks. Well it's it's changed my opinion and yeah I've had friends who have told me that looking at my books about this project have changed has changed the way that they think about incarcerated people. And it changed me to I was really surprised at the spirit that goes on in these art classes there's a lot of mentorship is joking. I mean there's occasionally a little bit of jealousy I'm sure but the spirit of the feeling of room is very free that the men and women set aside the normal rules of the yard. When they come into an art class so for example, races don't mix on the yards at all in book cause. Well as there's just a rule unwritten rule about that, but in the art room, the races mentor each other they collaborate they work together so it's very it's just really different. I heard a number of artists have told me that the art class is their sanctuary inside prison. I can imagine. Let's see. I recently saw a film that Nigel and Erlon kind of moderated called art and crimes, and all about an artist who gets pretty famous from his work but then it also features, I think three other artists and it does tell their story and it's very interesting. They talk a lot about how much the artist is revered inside, and then the revelation of coming out and seeing that it's not quite exactly the same as, you know, it's not, you're more respected as an artist inside at times. And is that a is that a Ronnie Goodman painting in the background. Yes. Yeah, I showed a picture of that during my Ronnie Goodman is well loved at the library. He's done even some some illustrations of the library he often came by. So he's a well well he was a well loved person at our library. What's your most memorable photographic shoot. Oh man. My most memorable photographic shoot. I'm pretty I'm sort of drawing a blank, you know what is it's often the most recent shoot I did. I come at, you know that the shoot like I say you're like three hours long often. Plus, I've got all my gear, my lights and my cameras and wagon and I have some pulling this wagon all over the prison. So it's exhausting, but invariably at the end of a three hour shoot, which more like a five hour effort on my part. I feel energized and excited just by being in this room with all this creativity and just the spirit that the men and women have. So, I always come out just really excited and enthused about the project. And so, even though I've just published a book and I'm doing these book docs. It's, I'm still shooting I still want to shoot that I still have ideas about different portraits I want to make and things like that so I'm continuing. That's great yeah there's there is a question about are there scenes that you are still hoping to capture that you haven't yet and I think you answered that. I will say also that when I first started doing this project, I thought about doing it. Objectively sort of this is an objective documentary photographer fly on the wall uninvolved sort of standing back and photographing. But what I found was that didn't capture the spirit of what was going on in these rooms so I started moving closer in closer. So, and now if there's a dance class I'm right in the middle of everybody or a theater product, you know, or they're a theater rehearsal. I'm right in the middle of things. And it's just an exciting place to be. Okay, we'll have time for two more. So you must. And this is, okay, three more including my own. You must know Redessa Jones work to then right. She does a lot of work in the women's prisons. Yes. She's amazing. Yes. It's just amazing. Are there prison are the prison artists allowed to keep or hang up their artwork after they make it. They are allowed to keep it. Sometimes they take it back to their cells. Well, I have not seen incarcerated artists organize their own art exhibits inside so I don't think they're allowed to display it inside unfortunately. And I've heard people suggest you know, why not. If artists on one yard could just put up a temporary exhibit in the mess hall or something like that. You know, the teaching artists have more experience with that than I do. There may be issues as to why that hasn't been done yet that I'm not aware of, but inside exhibits know but it's the outside exhibits. Even though the incarcerated artists don't get to see these exhibits which are in the public outside. They know that they're there and they love that they're there and their teachers go to these exhibits and photograph the exhibits with the people watching and the opening and everything and take those photos back inside. And in fact, at San Quentin, at one point, the men, a guest printmaker came and worked with the guys to do a huge collaborative print it was three foot by three foot carved on the nollium block. So they carved this really elaborate low and block. There were a group of like six right men who worked on this together. They didn't print it inside they took it to a book fair in San Francisco where there was a steamroller an actual steamroller who who and they use the steamroller as the press. And so they printed this thing and they, and so I went to San Francisco to the book fair and photographed the inking of the of the linoleum blocks and the steamroller, and we were able to take those photos back in to the guys inside so they can see how their work that they had produced was printed on the outside. And one last question is, have there been any images that the CD that the CD CD does not like that the So, at the end of every shoot, I go home, delete my rejects, get my selects, and I send those to the prison to be approved. Every prison requires me to do that because I'm accompanied on each shoot so they can see what I'm photographing, but for my own safety and just to make sure everything's about you know, every, no problems are created. I insist that the prison staff review all of my photos before I post them. And occasionally they will ask me to withdraw a photo, and usually it's because of some sort of infraction, such as improper dress. If there's over familiarization going on like there's a volunteer who's hugging, you know he's got his arm around an incarcerated person or something like that. And I've been really lucky so far, and no one has asked me to pull an image that was really unique and really special to me that I really loved it's usually been once that's been sort of replaceable anyway. So, so occasionally, yeah, I do get some images pulled. I think that also answers why you are invited back so often you know you do your due diligence and are able to hit on all three of those areas and really, really fit in. Peter Merz thank you so much for being here and audience. Thank you for sharing you had some great words and great questions. And, like Peter said you can email him. You can email me. I have a lot of resources San Francisco public library is one of the only libraries that does reference by mail for our prisons. And we do it for almost all of the prison systems this side of the Mississippi. So our little department of jail and range resources is a small and mighty team so you can reach out to me, you can reach out to Peter, and I'm going to give you one more time here in the chat. The link to tonight's doc and I put a lot of links in this as as Peter was giving his demonstration, I mean his presentation. And again, when it come on view so I can say goodbye to everybody. Right. Thank you Peter so much I really appreciate you being here tonight sharing your work and library community. Have a good night. We'll see you again.