If These Walls Could Speak: A Visual Ethnography of Graffiti at Boggo Road Gaol
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Author(s)
Costanzo, B
Bull, M
Smith, C
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2013
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
When analysed in context, prison graffiti can provide valuable insight into the lived experiences of incarcerated individuals. This study uses Brisbane’s Boggo Road Gaol as a case study site to evaluate the importance of historical, social and political context in the interpretation of prison graffiti. Visual ethnographic methodology was employed to allow the triangulation of various contextualising resources: newspaper articles, government reports, biographies and institutional records, and the graffiti. We discuss the theme of resistance as an example to demonstrate the value of the contextual analysis of images. By locating ...
View more >When analysed in context, prison graffiti can provide valuable insight into the lived experiences of incarcerated individuals. This study uses Brisbane’s Boggo Road Gaol as a case study site to evaluate the importance of historical, social and political context in the interpretation of prison graffiti. Visual ethnographic methodology was employed to allow the triangulation of various contextualising resources: newspaper articles, government reports, biographies and institutional records, and the graffiti. We discuss the theme of resistance as an example to demonstrate the value of the contextual analysis of images. By locating the graffiti within the historical, social and political context that it was produced, the significance of the graffiti is identified, and the ambiguity associated with the interpretation of images potentially is reduced. A contextualised analysis of prison graffiti provides a narrative of prison life, allowing the independent expression of prisoners to be ‘heard’.
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View more >When analysed in context, prison graffiti can provide valuable insight into the lived experiences of incarcerated individuals. This study uses Brisbane’s Boggo Road Gaol as a case study site to evaluate the importance of historical, social and political context in the interpretation of prison graffiti. Visual ethnographic methodology was employed to allow the triangulation of various contextualising resources: newspaper articles, government reports, biographies and institutional records, and the graffiti. We discuss the theme of resistance as an example to demonstrate the value of the contextual analysis of images. By locating the graffiti within the historical, social and political context that it was produced, the significance of the graffiti is identified, and the ambiguity associated with the interpretation of images potentially is reduced. A contextualised analysis of prison graffiti provides a narrative of prison life, allowing the independent expression of prisoners to be ‘heard’.
View less >
Journal Title
Queensland Review
Volume
20
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2013. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-ND 3.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/) which permits unrestricted distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
Subject
Criminology not elsewhere classified
Historical studies
Other history, heritage and archaeology
History and philosophy of specific fields