"‘Something Is Going to Explode’: When Coronavirus Strikes a Prison" for The New York Times Magazine
In Oakdale, Louisiana, the Federal Correctional Complex houses some 2,000 inmates and employs close to 500 staff members in two low-security prisons. The last time I worked there was during the government shutdown last year, when many of the prison staff saw their paychecks vanish overnight — it’s the unfortunate lifeblood for a town of fewer than 8,000 people. Now, the prisons at Oakdale are experiencing an alarming coronavirus outbreak.
"By the third week of April, seven Oakdale inmates had died. At least 100 inmates and staff members had been infected, with more than 20 hospitalized, as confusion, fear and anger gripped the interconnected community of inmates, officials, workers, family members and loved ones."
I photographed a few of the people - the mayor, the union president, and a prison employee - that writer Janet Reitman interviewed for a terrifying oral history of the first fatal outbreak of COVID-19 in the federal prison system, which published in The New York Times Magazine last week.
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‘Something Is Going to Explode’: When Coronavirus Strikes a Prison
An oral history of the first fatal outbreak in the federal prison system, in Oakdale, La.
Wendell Pierce for Esquire UK
I photographed actor Wendell Pierce at home in the Pontchartain Park neighborhood of New Orleans for a feature in Esquire UK. Pierce stars in a stage production of Waiting for Godot this fall in London.
Predatory Bail Bonds for The New York Times
As bail has grown into a $2 billion industry, bond agents have become the payday lenders of the criminal justice world, offering quick relief to desperate customers at high prices.
American Photography 34
I'm happy to have four pictures included in the American Photography 34 book this year! Two from "Rio Grande Recon", a New York Times assignment with US border patrol in Texas, and two from "The Plant Next Door", an environmental justice story I photographed in South Louisiana for The Intercept.
