Edgar Martins

These images belong to a multifaceted body of work developed from a collaboration with Grain Projects as well as HM Prison Birmingham (UK) over a period of 3 years, as well as its inmates, their families and a myriad of other local organisations and individuals (charities, colleges, universities, youth groups, etc.) In this project I used the social context of incarceration as a starting point, to explore the philosophical concept of absence. The project articulates image and text, evidence and fiction, to scrutinise how we deal with the absence of a loved one, brought on by enforced separation. By giving a voice to inmates and their families and addressing prison as a set of social relations rather than a mere physical space, my work tried to rethink and counter the sort of imagery normally associated with incarceration, usually revolving around themes of violence, drugs, criminality, race.