Opening of Still My Mother, Still My Father at Art on 51st

Please join ART WORKS Projects and Communities and Relatives of Illinois Incarcerated Children (CRIIC) for the second Chicago opening of Still My Mother, Still My Father by photographer Isadora Kosofsky, winner of the 2017 Emerging Lens Mentorship Program. Still My Mother was originally presented alongside Vinny and David: Life and Incarceration of a Family at the AWP studio.

Kosofsky’s work will be installed at the Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation gallery Art on 51st. Art on 51st offers a place where incarcerated women, men and children can share their art and poetry.

Opening of Still My Mother, Still My Father
September 3, 2017 | 2 to 4pm
Art on 51st | 1238 W. 51st Street
Free and open to the public.

Still My Mother, Still My Father documents bonding meetings between children and their incarcerated parents at 12 women’s and men’s prisons in the state of Florida from 2012 to 2017. More than 2.7 million children in the U.S. have a parent in prison, and approximately 10 million children have experienced parental incarceration at some point in their lives.

The exhibition also includes a selection of images from Kosofsky’s photo essay Vinny and David began in 2012 when Kososky met Vinny, then age 13, as he was booked into a juvenile detention center for stabbing his mother’s assailant. Through Kosofsky’s close relationship with Vinny and eventually, his older brother David, she has captured an intimate look at a family struggling to remain connected throughout recurring periods of incarceration.

About the photographer:
Featured in global publications like Time, Slate, the Washington Post, Le Monde, the New Yorker and in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kosofsky’s long-term immersion into her subjects’ lives produces an intimate perspective on social justice issues. Please visit www.isadorakosofsky.com for more information.

Photo: Isadora Kosofsky, Okeechobee, Florida, 2017. Dexter Jr., age 3, puts stickers on his father Dexter’s face during a visit at the Okeechobee Correctional Institution in Okeechobee, Florida.