The premise is simple. He takes a portrait, they tell him a story. It's a trade.
Robert Gumpert has made portraits and audio interviews of inmates in the San Francisco County Jail system for six years. He doesn't describe himself as a journalist or an activist, he is just a human being with a curiosity in stories and a promise to be honest. The tales his subjects tell are as eye-opening as Bob is modest. The project is ongoing and the archive is one of otherwise forgotten stories.
View images and listen to audio from the project at Take A Picture, Tell A Story.
Robert Gumpert and I talk about his motivations for working in the jails, the photographers we should look to for inspiration and whether or not photography still has the capacity to change society for the better.
BIO
Robert Gumpert is a San Francisco-based freelance documentary photographer. He started his career in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1974, documenting what turned out to be the last three months of the epic United Mineworker's strike photos from which are part of the Coal Employment Project Records Appalachian Archives in East Tennessee State University.
In 1998 and 1999, Gumpert's photographs of garment workers Faces Behind the Labels were shown as part of a traveling exhibit of garment workers mounted by Oakland's Sweatshop Watch
Since the mid nineties, Gumpert has documented many sides of the criminal justice polygon in San Francisco County - the homicide detectives, courts and public defenders, SFPD and the inmates and deputies of the County Jail system. The series is called Lost Promise: The Criminal Justice System.
He traveled the world as a photojournalist before turning his attentions to regional issues. Gumpert's photos have been used in outreach media by U.C.'s Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. He was formerly a photographer under contract with the California Department of Industrial Relations.
In 2011, his portraits from the SF County Jails were exhibited at his solo show Locked and Found at the Foto8 Gallery in London.
Gumpert's website is http://robertgumpert.com/
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Wow I didn’t realize anyone was doing this kind of photography. I was very interested in prison photography. How did you get started and why the interest? Do you feel that somehow you taking these photos has changed society for the better?