Photography Hatje Cantz Verlag | Hakan Ludwigson

The Texas Prison System Registers 450 Deaths A Year. Families Make No Claim For 100 Of Them. They Have Been Buried In The Joe Byrd Cemetery Near Huntsville Since The Mid-Nineteenth Century. Inmates Look After The Cemetery As Well As Fabricate The Gravestones. An “X” Means That The Prisoner Was Executed. A “999” Indicates That He Died While Waiting On Death Row. The Swedish Artists Lennart Grebelius And Håkan Ludwigson Set Up A Final Monument To These “Unwanted.” Ludwigson Photographed The Stone Crosses In A Rigorously Aesthetic Manner Against An Identical Black Background. An Accompanying Table Lists Who The Deceased Were: Their Name, Their Age, Their Profession, Their Crime, The Duration Of Their Imprisonment, And Their Mode Of Death. A Macabre Yet Immensely Powerful Series.