The latest review of KYOPO by CYJO appears in this month’s LEAP Magazine, the top contemporary art, bilingual magazine in China.

Here’s an excerpt:

“The diversity of [the kyopos'] individual stories is countervailed by a doggedly homogenous format, as the scale of each shot has been adjusted so that all subjects appear the exact same height, always against an identical white-and-wood background. It’s an apt metaphor for how the specific narratives are backgrounded by a larger, shared set of sociohistorical circumstances: a compelling reason for them to now be on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.”

In anticipation of tonight’s event with Grace Before Dying photographer Lori Waselchuk and photographer Deborah Luster, check out Room 220′s insightful interview with Lori, posted on their blog. Interviewer Aubrey Edwards asks the kinds of questions that reveal the world behind the photographs: the interactions between Lori and the prisoners, the comfort or discomfort the hospice system prompted (“Even the guys who I met in the hospice program told me they didn’t sign up for the longest time because they thought it was crazy, that the prison was trying to kill them.”), and the relationships that Lori wasn’t able to photograph. A truly intriguing read.

Join Lori Waselchuk and Deborah Luster at Barnes & Noble in Baton Rouge tonight for a fascinating discussion about crime, punishment, death and redemption – parallel themes in the artists’ work. Lori’s book, Grace Before Dying, captures the revolutionary inmate-run hospice program at Angola Prison in searing images. Deborah has photographed convicted felons, as well, and her latest work, Tooth for an Eye, documents abandoned murder scenes in New Orleans.

Barnes & Noble / 7707 Bluebonnet Blvd #100 / Baton Rouge, LA / 225-766-1337

On Friday, October 21, WHYY (Philadelphia’s leading public media provider) aired an interview by Peter Crimmins, host of NewsWorks, with Grace Before Dying photographer Lori Waselchuk. Lori discusses the difficulty of photographing the sterile prison environment, and how she overcame the visual bareness of white cinderblock walls and cement floors by focusing on the faces, bodies, and hands of the inmates to, “create landscapes using just the human form.”

Click here to listen to this moving interview.