Grace Before Dying

Jimmie Burnett spent the final days of his life—and life sentence—being cared for by other inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. Also in the room with him was photographer Lori Waselchuk, who had rare access to the penitentiary’s prisoner-run hospice program for a magazine assignment.

The nation’s largest maximum security prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary has been called the “Alcatraz of the South.” Of its 5,100 inmates, 85 percent are expected to die there. The prison’s hospice program—begun in 1998—is unique, allowing inmates to volunteer as caregivers for dying prisoners. Prior to the hospice’s creation, most inmates died alone in the prison hospital.

Waselchuk’s images evolved into the award-winning photographic documentary Grace Before Dying. An exhibition of a number of the project’s photographs is at BU’s Photographic Resource Center through July 10.

“For me, I was very interested in what it was like for caregivers to give so much love and be completely selfless with their patients, and the courage it took for them to do this,” says Waselchuk. “I was wondering what their journey was like coming from a place filled with anger and regret to becoming a caregiver, a journey of men who will never see the outside of the prison walls…but who at the same time can show tremendous humanity for someone else.”

Waselchuk spent two and a half years photographing at the hospice. Working with a Hasselblad XPAN II rangefinder camera, her massive black-and-white prints capture moments of delicate intimacy between dying patients and the volunteer inmates caring for them. The images, she says, are designed to capture how “inmates assert and affirm their humanity through the hospice program in an environment designed to isolate and punish.”

Of all the inmates she met during the project, Waselchuk says, it’s Burnett’s story that stands out most. Staying by his side through his final 24 hours, she watched as hospice caregivers rotated through their shifts, comforting him as best they could.

“One photograph shows one of the caretaker’s hands on Jimmy’s chest,” Waselchuk says. “I have a lot of comments from people who have a loved one who has died, and I feel that the picture resonates with them. It’s something touching, something real.”

Waselchuk hopes that Grace Before Dying will provoke discussion about prison reform. (The United States has the largest prison population of any country—approximately 2.3 million inmates). “Considering the extreme costs of imprisonment, I don’t want people to change their ideas because of budgets,” she says. “I want them to recognize their sense of people’s lives, that certain men and women don’t need to spend the rest of lives in prison. I want to inspire conversations about our extraordinary incarceration rates in Louisiana and the country as a whole.”

Waselchuk’s Angola photographs have recently been published in the book Grace Before Dying (Umbrage Editions, 2011), with an introductory essay by historian Lawrence N. Powell.

“I’ll always sort of want to contextualize my work,” Waselchuk says. “Because I’m telling someone’s story, I need to honor their words with my own representation.”

Grace Before Dying is at the Photographic Resource Center Gallery, 832 Commonwealth Ave., through July 10; phone: 617-975-0600. The PRC is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday, noon to 5 p.m.; closed Sunday and Monday. Admission is $4 for the general public, $2 for seniors and students with valid ID, and free to members and students of member schools. For more information, visit the PRC website or the official Grace Before Dying website.

John Fichera can be reached at jfichera@bu.edu.