Voyeurism in Harun Farocki's 'Prison Pictures'

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In the 2001 film »Gefängnisbilder« Harun Farocki shows excerpts from Jean Genet’s film “Un Chant d’Amour” (1950), in which a prison guard develops a voyeuristic fascination with the prisoners’ masturbation, “their love life.”

The prison is a place of prohibitions, and thus of secrets and transgressions, at least those hoped for and fantasized about.
– Harun Farocki, »Prison Images«, DE 2000, Min. 08:05

Filmmaker Farocki juxtaposes these excerpts with documentary footage from U.S. prisons, in which prisoners attempt to cover the transparent barred doors of their cells with their mattresses in order to create some semblance of privacy. These attempts are regularly and violently quashed with tear gas and physical force.

Video on Hammerschlag

Voyeurism in Harun Farocki's 'Prison Pictures'