"These two photos were my first introduction to prison life"

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Insights Focus May 24, 2022

Thierry Chantegret is a photographer. In 2021, he joined the team of the Controller-General for Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL). This independent administrative authority is permitted to visit any facility where people are imprisoned: psychiatric hospitals, police custody cells, closed educational centres, detention centres, and prisons. He comments two of his photos,taken during a visit at the Toulouse-Seysses prison.

“You should take a picture, it’s disgusting”

These two photos were my first introduction to prison life.

They are from my first mission for the Controller-General for Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL), at the Toulouse-Seysses prison. My first impression wasn’t based on anything I saw on my way from the car park, instead, it was the amount of noise that really struck me.
Despite having a capacity of only 500, the Toulouse-Seysses facility houses about 900 prisoners. At the time of my visit, the prison had a 186% occupancy rate. It has two exercise yards that are used simultaneously, one for each unit.Our team was taken out to the two exercise yards. As you enter, you can find the toilets on the left. Dominique Simonnot[^cglpl] went in. She came back out, gasping: “You should take a picture, it’s disgusting”. So, I headed inside. It’s the photograph on the left. I had barely taken a step inside when a rat jumped out of the toilet bowl and landed on my feet.

[^cglpl]:Dominique Simonnot is the third person to hold the position of Controller-General for Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL), the French National Preventive Mechanism, established in 2007. An interview with Dominique Simonnot was posted on our site.

The photograph on the right is a follow-up to the last one. As you leave the toilets in the picture on the left, you come to the place on the picture on the right. It shows the area around the building strewn with rubbish. No one goes there except for the cleaning staff. This rubbish is an indication of the prisoners’ dissatisfaction, but there are other reasons for why it is there at all. It is clearly a food source for the rats. At the time of our visit, one of the prisoners had caught leptospirosis, which is a disease transmitted via rat urine.

When I was photographing all the rats, I found myself alone in the middle of the courtyard, where several prisoners were calling out to me. That was also very intense.

These two photographs represent my first two hours in prison. It was very overwhelming. The visit resulted in some urgent recommendations made by the Controller-General. For my first assignment, I can safely say that I got my fill.

Thierry Chantegret

Photographer

Thierry Chantegret has made photography his life’s work since he was 19 years old. He attended a photography school in Toulouse before becoming assistant fashion photographer, a career that included a great deal of travelling. He then worked for a marketing agency, and then, in a laboratory, where, among other things, he created exhibition prints for photographers from the Magnum agency. For the past 20 years, he has focused on his work as an author: institutional commissions, internships, exhibitions, and in particular, workshops in schools.
In 2021, he joined the team of the Controller-General for Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL). This independent administrative authority is permitted to visit any facility where people are imprisoned: psychiatric hospitals, police custody cells, closed educational centres, detention centres, and prisons. The visits are documented in reports that describe prisoners’ living conditions in detail.

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