Looking Inside (Women with Life Sentences)

Sara Bennett, a former public defender, has spent the past 13 years photographing dozens of women convicted of homicide and sentenced to life in prison in New York State. Looking Inside: Women with Life Sentences collects these intimate portraits of women throughout the prison, in their post-incarceration bedrooms, and making their way in the outside world after decades behind bars. The images are accompanied by the women’s handwritten reflections and ephemera, including Polaroids, letters, poems, writings, and drawings. With an afterword by a woman who spent 37-1/2 years in prison, and pictorial endnotes by Bennett, Looking Inside shows the complexity, humanity, and resilience of women who are so much more than the one act that sent them to prison for life. As the British Journal of Photography has written, “[Bennett’s] portraits serve as arresting reminders that those convicted of serious crimes are no less human than you or me.”