In 1998, photographer Deborah Luster and poet C.D. Wright set out to produce a record of Louisiana’s prison population through image and text. The resulting book, One Big Self, was published by Twin Palms Publishers in 2003. The publisher describes it as a document to ward off forgetting, bringing together Luster’s photographs and Wright’s text.

The publisher describes the book as an opportunity for inmates to present themselves as they would be seen, bringing what they own or borrow or use: work tools, objects of their making, messages of their choosing, their bodies, themselves. Luster has been commissioned, in a sense, by the inmates to make portraits for their loved ones, trying to ensure a balance between photograph and subject and to connect the viewer, whether mother, child, friend, or stranger, to the prisoner.

This approach makes the portrait a meeting between the person pictured and the person who may receive it. A tool, an object or a chosen message can carry an individual meaning that is not contained in the fact of imprisonment. The project invites readers to attend to those choices. Its concern with remembering also raises the question of how someone remains present to people from whom they have been separated.

Published by Twin Palms in 2003, this hardcover edition contains 180 pages and 151 duotone plates, at 11 by 12 inches. Wright supplies the text and Luster the photographs. Their different contributions give readers two ways of approaching the lives represented. The book can be read as a record of a prison population and as a collection of individual acts of self-presentation, with neither view completely containing the other.