Vadim F. Lurie | Facebook | May 24, 2021. In 2000, I was gathering material about the Crosses Prison. I went there several times and took pictures with a point-and-shoot film camera. The prison was then overcrowded: it was reported that it was simultaneously housing twelve thousand inmates, although it had a maximum capacity of two thousand. The people in the photos were standing in front of the prison, trying to catch sight of their loved ones. The sidewalk and part of the roadway was strewn with “arrows” — notes and scattered scraps of notes, which the prisoners launched from their cells in the hope that they would be picked up. St. Petersburg, 2000

Translated by the Russian Reader