囚犯与艺术家

你能想象囚犯会与知名的艺术家保持联系吗？今年一月，在狱中的一名囚犯向一位艺术家发出了交流邀请，在将近一年的时光中，他们用信件、电子邮件等保持交流。这是一种怎样超越世俗的友情？让我们一起来看看吧！

一、

一封信开始的故事

    This past January, photographer Alec Soth received a letter in the mail at his studio in St. Paul, sent from the Minnesota Correctional Facility just north of him in Rush City.

    It was from an inmate and self-taught artist, Christopher Fausto Cabrera, asking to start a dialogue.

    "Please forgive the audacity of this letter. I reach out in great admiration and respect," wrote Cabrera. He said he was reaching out to local artists, hoping to connect. "By no way am I absolved of my past -- but I seek to pay something forward through my art and writing..."

    Intrigued, Soth replied, forming the first link in a chain that would bond the two men.

    今年一月，摄影师艾克·索思在他位于圣保罗的工作室收到了一封信，是从北面拉什市的明尼苏达州教养所寄来的。

    信件来自囚犯克里斯托弗·福斯托·卡夫雷拉（同时也是一个自学成才的艺术家），请求与摄影师艾克·索思联系。

    “请原谅这封信的冒昧。卡夫雷拉写道:“我怀着极大的钦佩和敬意写这封信。”他说他正在联系当地的艺术家，希望能联系成功。“我无法改变过去——但我希望通过艺术和写作来弥补过去……”

    索思很感兴趣，回了卡夫雷拉的信，这形成了将两人联系在一起的链条的第一环。

    Nearly a year later, Cabrera's initial outreach has turned into innumerable letters, emails and phone call A portion of their conversations has been published in a recent book, "The Parameters of Our Cage" published by Mack.

    "The physical nature of a letter in the mail is touching, just because there's so little of that," Soth said during a video interview. He is a photographer who works primarily with tactile media, shooting 8x10 film and publishing photography books that attempt to gaze into the interior lives of his subjects. Cabrera, meanwhile, has cultivated his own creative side while in prison.

    将近一年后，卡夫雷拉的最初尝试接触变成了无数的信件、电子邮件和电话。他们谈话的一部分已经发表在麦克最近出版的《笼子的界限》一书中。

    索思在一次视频采访中说:“信件是感人的，因为这种东西太少了。”他是一名摄影师，主要从事触觉媒体的工作，拍摄8x10的电影，出版摄影书籍，试图聚焦拍摄对象的内部生活。与此同时，卡夫雷拉在狱中培养了自己的创造性。

    In their letters, Soth and Cabrera grapple with complex topics that reflect larger undercurrents running within the country: the inequity of the criminal justice system, the effects of isolation, how polarization sows discord between people. They confide deep personal truths and discuss photography and art through a critical lens.

    And though their friendship may be unexpected due to the physical limitations inherent to it, Cabrera doesn't necessarily find it any different from a friendship that could blossom under more ordinary circumstances.

    "We meet people all the time that change our trajectories with their presence " he wrote to CNN .

    在信中，索思和卡夫雷拉努力解决反映国内更大隐患的复杂话题:刑事司法的不平等，隔离的影响，两极分化对人与人之间距离产生的影响。他们揭露真相，从批判的角度讨论摄影和艺术。

    尽管由于固有的限制，他们的友谊可能是意想不到的。但是卡夫雷拉不认为它与普通的友谊有何不同。

    “我们总是会遇到一些人，正是他们的存在改变了我们的人生轨迹。”他给CNN写道。

二、

意想不到的联系

    Cabrera first reached out to Soth to expand his creative community beyond what he had carved out for himself while in prison. Following his convictions of second-degree murder and first-degree attempted murder for committing a drive-by shooting in 2004, he spent over a decade at another correctional facility in Stillwater (Cabrera is due for release in 2030). He had worked in the art department there, teaching and "developing a path for future students to follow," he said.

    "There is a function to art in here: tattooing, portraits of kids and family members, memorial pieces and even original greeting cards can quickly establish a reputation for you as an artist," Cabrera said. "But I still wouldn't have identified as an artist; it was just something I did. Our identities are seeped in negativity here, not only because of the condemnation of the conviction but because of how the system is set up to maintain and perpetuate a certain stigma."

    卡布雷拉先与索思取得联系，他希望自己的创作能够突破监狱的局限。2004年，他因驾车枪击案被判二级谋杀罪和一级谋杀未遂罪。此后，他在Stillwater的另一个教养所度过了十多年（卡布雷拉将于2030年获释）。他曾在那里的艺术部门教书，"为未来的学生开辟艺术之路"。

    "艺术神奇之处在于：纹身，孩子和家庭成员的肖像、纪念品，甚至是原创贺卡，都可以快速塑造你艺术家的形象”，卡布雷拉说道："但因为我所犯的罪，外界依旧不会认可我。我们的形象是很负面的，这不仅是出于人们本身对犯罪的谴责，还因为这种耻辱感通过一个体系被加以维持和延续。”

    After having his art published on the cover of the Washington Post Magazine -- an illustration of his younger self holding his mugshot for a special issue on incarceration -- Cabrera felt "a different level of validation," he explained. "This was a major impetus in reaching out to Alec."

    Soth was curious about Cabrera's perspective on photography, and in one of their first exchanges, he asked Cabrera to choose only eight images he would bring if he were stranded on a desert island. Cabrera described them in intricate detail, some real, some imaginary: a real portrait of his mother laughing, just before she became too ill from cancer; an imaginary photo of his aunt and uncle's farm in the summer, with their family present. Cabrera's aunt and uncle raised him after his mother died.

    Cabrera also described an imagined image of singer Demi Lovato in her room, writing a song among all of her ephemera. Two of her songs had stayed with him for their sense of solitude. In response, Soth decided to hold an Instagram contest to bring the image to life, asking followers to make a composite based on his description. In his next letter to Cabrera, he included five finalists out of 40 submissions.

   在他的监禁专题摄影作品登上了《华盛顿邮报》杂志封面后，卡布雷拉感受到"不同程度的肯定"，两人间的故事就此开始。

    索思对卡布雷拉的摄影观点深感惊奇。在第一次交流中，他让卡布雷拉选择8张如果被困在一个荒岛上，他会随身携带的照片。卡布雷拉详细描述了这些照片，其中有些是真实的，有些则是虚构的：患癌症前的母亲的笑脸；和家人在叔叔阿姨的农场里共度夏日的幻想画面。他们在他母亲去世后一直抚养着他。

    卡布雷拉还描述了一个想象中的歌手黛米·洛瓦，用她的歌来排解孤独。对此，索斯决定在Instagram举办一场比赛，邀请粉丝根据他的陈述描绘歌手形象。在给卡布雷拉的下一封信中，索斯把40份参赛作品中进入决赛的5份附带寄给了他。

    "Man, the Demi challenge is awesome," Cabrera wrote back. "I am honored and so impressed by the extent of your effort to make my words tangible. There is a certain magic of possibility in this gesture."

    Early on, Cabrera sensed that Soth struggled with depression and felt a kinship between them. Despite coming from two disparate backgrounds, and being in two very different places in life, they were simply two people who saw one another.

    "I don't have a lot of friends, so it's just been really valuable to have (this)," Soth said. "And it's the most unexpected form of friendship."

    "伙计，黛米挑战太棒了，"卡布雷拉回信说道，"我很荣幸，同时也很感动。是你让黛米活了起来。这太神奇了！”

    早些时候，卡布雷拉意识到索思患有抑郁症，而且感觉到他们之间的不一样关系。尽管他们拥有不同的背景，生活在截然不同的地方，然而他们只是两个彼此守望的普通人。

    "我朋友不多，所以这对我来说真的意义非凡，"索思感慨，"这样的友谊太不一般了。”

   After months of correspondence, Soth said he would be "prone to forget" that Cabrera has a criminal background. But Cabrera reminds him and doesn't evade responsibility for his actions.

    "I know him only in the version of himself that he is now," Soth said. "I'm much more aware of his incarceration than (of) his crime. But he doesn't let me forget about the crime."

    "I now take on the responsibility of owning my past fully," Cabrera wrote to Soth in one letter. "I know that my incarceration in and of itself has done little to solve any of the issues of crime, but it has molded me into the person I should have been all along."

     "我从信中知道他现在的样子。比起罪行，我更清楚他的狱中生活。但他始终让我记住他的罪犯身份。”索斯说道。

    几个月的通信后，索思表示，他很"容易忘记"卡布雷拉的罪犯身份。但卡布雷拉会一直提醒他这一点，并没有因此逃避自己要负的责任。

    卡布雷拉在给索思的一封信中写道："我现在承担着对以往过错的责任。我知道，监禁本身对解决任何犯罪的问题没什么用，但它让我成为了我本该成为的样子。”

三、

对禁锢的回应

    Soth and Cabrera often return to the idea of restrictions and how they can influence creativity and connection. Restrictions abound in their lives and their relationship, from Cabrera's incarceration, to the new reality of the pandemic, to the very limitations that shape their friendship. (Soth once had a photograph intercepted because guards interpreted something in the image as a gang sign; another time, he said, a letter was returned to him a month later because he included 21 sheets of paper instead of 20.)

    The title of the book is drawn from this recurring theme. In a letter, Cabrera recounts to Soth about the time when he was transferred to the Rush City facility from Stillwater -- his allowable personal inventory was reduced to a 2-foot locker. The library of books and DVDs he had amassed for his art classes at Stillwater were gone; so were many of the art and photography clippings he had spent years collecting. Yet under the new stringent rules at Rush City, Cabrera saw improvements in his creative practice.

    索思和卡布雷拉经常回到限制的概念，以及这些限制是如何影响创造力和联系的。他们的生活和关系中充满了限制，从卡布雷拉的监禁到疫情的新的现实，再到塑造他们友谊的局限性。(索思的一张照片曾经被拦截，因为守卫把这张图像里的某个东西理解成一个帮派的标志了。还有一次，一封信在一个月后被退还给他，就因为他用了21张纸，而不是规定的20张。)

    这本书的标题来源于一个反复出现的主题。在一封信中，卡布雷拉向索思讲述了他从斯蒂尔沃特被送到拉什市监狱那段时间的事——他的个人物品被缩减到了能装进一个两英尺高的柜子。他在斯蒂尔沃特为艺术课搜集的书和DVD也不见了，他花费多年收集的艺术和摄影剪报也不见了。即使在拉什市的严格的新规则下，卡布雷拉也看到了自己创造力实践的提升。

    "It all boils down to limits, huh?" he wrote. "Whether enforced by nature -- biologic(al) or social, tangible or abstract, we all confront the parameters of our cage eventually. What we do when we reach those bars helps define us."

    During the pandemic, much of the world has had to confront those parameters. "I'm no stranger to having to adapt to an adverse environment. It's a culture shock to most of the rest of the world..." said Cabrera (to CNN) over JPay. "The pandemic has exposed our character and circumstances on an unprecedented level ... adversarial mentalities can be the strongest bonding adhesive across cultural divides, yet we are turning on each other.

    “这些都可以归纳于限制吧，嗯？”他这样写道，”关于是否被自然强制——生物上或是社会上、有形的或是抽象的，我们最终都会触到我们的笼子的界限。当我们触碰到这些栏杆时，我们的做法就是能定义我们的东西。“

    在疫情期间，世界上的很多东西都不得不面对这些界限。“我对适应一个不利环境这件事并不陌生。对世界上大部分其他地方来说这是一个文化冲击……” 卡布雷拉通过JPay对CNN说，”疫情已经史无前例地暴露了我们的性格和环境……对抗心态能够成为跨越文化差异的粘合剂，但我们却在互相攻击。”

   But Cabrera hopes "The Parameter of Our Cage" can show a meaningful connection formed under constraints, and during a time of deep polarity.

    "These are trying times for everyone, for different reasons," Cabrera said. "This project can do something to build and galvanize an expanded sense of community as we move forward towards a place with a newfound love (and) respect for 'other' people. That isn't limited to inmates. Anyone we consider an 'other' threatens our understanding of 'self.'"

     但卡布雷拉希望《笼子的界限》能显示出在对立如此严重、在限制条件下形成的有意义的联系。

    “有很多原因能说明对所有人来说这都是一个艰难的时期。” 卡布雷拉说，“当我们带着新发现的爱和对‘其他’人的尊重朝着一个方向前进时，这个项目或许能建立并刺激一个增强的社区意识。这并不是只局限于囚犯。被我们当作是‘他者’的任何人都威胁着我们对‘自我’的理解。”

    Though the book has been published, the project is indefinite as Soth and Cabrera continue to send letters to one another. But Soth found a fitting end to "The Parameters of Our Cage."

He drove to the farm owned by Cabrera's aunt and uncle, which Cabrera had described in detail as one of the eight images he would take with him to an island. He had only intended to pick up a few photographs of Cabrera, but while he was there, he recalled a conversation the two had about poker, and photographs that he could take began to take shape in his mind.

     尽管这本书已经出版了，这项事业仍无止境，因为索思和卡布雷拉还一直在通信。但索思给《笼子的界限》找到了一个完美的结局。他开车去了卡布雷拉叔叔阿姨的农场，卡布雷拉在信中具体描述过这是他会带去岛上的八张图像之一。索思本打算挑选几张关于卡布雷拉的照片的，但他在那儿的时候，他回忆起两个人谈到扑克的对话，他能拍的照片在他脑海里成型。

    "And somehow it all popped into my head," Soth said. "Wouldn't it be great to be out there and have this dreamscape of a poker game?"

    Soth returned and photographed Cabrera's extended family by a pond, the sunlight glittering on the water. They sit at a picnic table, with playing cards while photographs of Cabrera are strewn around the table. Though Cabrera isn't physically there, his presence is etched into the scene -- as is Soth's. It recalls an early discussion the pair had, when Cabrera said while studying landscape images, he had a realization about photography.

     “不知怎么的它就全部飞到我脑子里了。”索思说，“就在这儿享受这个扑克游戏的幻境不是很棒吗？”

        索思回来后在一个池塘边拍了卡布雷拉大家庭的照片，阳光在水面上闪闪发光。他们坐在一张野餐桌旁打着扑克牌，而卡布雷拉的照片散落在桌子上。虽然卡布雷拉没有在那儿，他的存在却镌刻在了这一幕里。它让人回忆起他们曾经的一次讨论，那时卡布雷拉说，他在研究景观图片时，对摄影有了一种认识。

    "It dawned on me one day that photos without people captured the solitude of a single viewer; that there is always someone 'in' the picture," he wrote to Soth.

    Cabrera is present in the pictures on the table, through the memories of his family, and through the connection they share with Soth. He was there in other ways, too: "The whole thing was like a dream, because he called his aunt while I was photographing," said Soth. "And I was there and his family was sad, but (it was) beautiful. And it was a perfect end to the book."

     他写给索思：“有一天我恍然大悟，一张无人的照片捕捉到了一个观看者的孤独。在照片‘里面’永远有人的存在。”

    卡布雷拉出现在桌子上的照片里，也出现在家人们的回忆和他与索思的联系里。他还以别的方式存在。“整件事就像一个梦，我在拍照的时候他正好给他的阿姨打电话了。我就在那儿，他的家人们很伤心，但这很美妙。同时这也是这本书的完美结局。”