One Day at a Time
“The book includes essays written by writer and life prisoner Erwin James, and photographer Simon Norfolk who, he says, was left ‘reeling’ by what he saw. ‘What leaves me so out of sorts,’ writes Norfolk, ‘is that I don’t want to feel sympathetic to these people. In these days of electronic tagging and community service sentencing, you have to be real scum to be sent down for the rest of your natural life… But why are there bars on the window of a man who can’t walk without a frame? What kind of escape plan can be hatched by a man who can’t remember how to go to the toilet? It’s because Clark’s pictures pull me in these different directions, cleaving my half-baked prejudices, that they are so brilliant.'”