Customer Reviews

Too Much Time: Women in Prison

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This an extraordinary book of photographs and text about women in prison. The title of the book is an apt and ambiguous description of the plight of the women prisoners she describes, for two of her major points are that they generally lead more barren lives than men within prison walls and also are often given heavier sentences than men for comparable crimes.

Jane Evelyn Atwood is a compassionate American who has spent most of her adult life in France, and has become one of the outstanding photojournalists in the world. While other talented photographers earn a lot of money taking pictures of fashion models and high society, Atwood's committed outlook has led her to depict the less-fortunate specimens of the human race. Her subjects have included blind children and Parisian prostitutes. Years ago, she was the first to photograph the terrifying physical decline of a man dying of AIDS, which broke new ground when her reportage was published in Paris Match.

In Too Much Time, the striking and poignant photos, in black and white, are reason enough to buy the book but that would be only half the story because Atwood is one of those rare photographers who can write as well as they take pictures. Indeed, when I became engrossed with the text, not only her own words but also transcriptions of what American women prisoners told her, I almost forgot that it was a picture book.

The authors visited about 40 prisons. The pictures she took are of very good quality and very expressive. She interviewed the women in jail. The stories of those prisoners are really moving. It's a moving, respectful book about the life of women in jail.

This book is absolutely awful. It's full of ad hominem remarks and plays to the emotion of women being in prision. Why are most people (not just women) in prison there? Because they commited a crime!!! The author blames men for most of these women's crimes throughout the book - they were abused at a young age by men, they were poor . . . excuses. When will people take responsibility for their actions? The book has some beautiful photography - they should have taken the ink used for the text and put in some more pictures. Don't buy it, don't read it. I'm sorry I wasted my time.