Photographs by Lori Waselchuk
Essay by Lawrence N. Powell

“A moving compilation of photography that catches much soul, an essay from Lawrence N. Powell drives the soul of the matter, and makes for a very educated read. ‘Grace Before Dying’ is certainly a thoughtful read, a must for any socially active photography collection, highly recommended.” ~ The Midwest Book Review

“Lori Waselchuk’s vision finds the humane in the broadest landscape or interior view while her passion provides us all with the chance to experience it in close—so close—and deeply.” ~ Roy Flukinger, Senior Research Curator at the Harry Ransom Center

“These are literally life-and-death matters Waselchuk is showing. Which makes it all the more impressive the restraint with which she presents them.” ~Mark Feeney, The Boston Globe

“Grace Before Dying humanizes a nameless population–it bears witness to a community of men who provide love and support in an institution that was constructed to provide neither.” ~Press Street

Grace Before Dying charts the extraordinary breakthrough in humanity that has helped transform one of the most dangerous maximum security prisons in the United States, Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison, into one of the least violent. Poignant quotes from
the incarcerated hospice volunteers and patients accompany the searing photographs set in a carefully built sequence that charts the development of a culture of caring and compassion that challenges stereotypes of incarcerated people, and provides an intimate perspectives on what long-term and life sentences signify for those inside.

Lori Waselchuk is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. She has also worked for International aid organizations like CARE, The UN World Food Program, Medicins Sans Frontieres, and The Vaccine Fund.

Lawrence N. Powell is Professor of History at Tulane University exploresour country’s history of punishment, crime, and mercy. Powell specializes in Civil War and Reconstruction, Southern history, Louisiana history and politics, and the Holocaust. He is the author and/or editor of numerous books including: The New Orleans of George Washington Cable, Reconstructing Louisiana, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke’s Louisiana, New Masters: Northern Planters during the Civil War and Reconstruction. He also co-edited the four volume Encyclopedia of the Confederacy. Powell is currently at work on a history of New Orleans for Harvard University Press.

A moving companion exhibition will be traveling through 2012 to the following locations:

- Open Society Institute, 400 West 59th Street, New York, NY. Now through February 28, 2011. Part of the Moving Walls #17 Series

- Open Society Institute, 1120 19th Street NW #800, Washington, DC, March – December 2011.

- The Photographic Resource Center, 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston, MA, May 17 – July 10, 2011

- Concord Public Library (Satellite Exhibit of Grace Before Dying), June 1-30, Concord Public Library, Concord, MA

- Umbrage Gallery, 111 Front Street, Suite 208, Brooklyn,  NY, November 3, 2011 – January 15, 2012.

Hardcover / $39.95
11″ x 8.5″
120 pages / 47 B&W photographs
ISBN: 978-1-884167-22-5
June 2011

To order Grace Before Dying, please click the link below: