Silvia Camporesi Photographs Abandoned Prison Island of Pianosa

Photographer Silvia Camporesi documents the abandoned prison island of Pianosa, a former Roman colony and maximum-security penitentiary off the coast of Elba, Italy. The island, measuring 10 square kilometers, housed a prison built in 1856 for 350 inmates, later converted in 1974 into a high-security facility for Camorra and Red Brigades members, enclosed by a 3-kilometer-long, 6-meter-high concrete wall. The prison closed in 1998 due to high operating costs. Camporesi first visited in 2014 on commission from the Fotografia Europea festival in Reggio Emilia, accompanied by a prison guard. She explored the decaying village and prison, photographing cells, corridors, inmate lockers with 1980s posters, a recreation room with a foosball table, a kitchen with giant pots, and a hidden archive of thousands of inmate files left untouched since closure. She also entered a ruined house overlooking the sea, an abandoned school with a letter from a girl named Selene to her father, and the cemeteries for inmates and residents. During her return, rough seas forced her to travel on a police boat with seven inmates heading to trial in Tuscany, including a young man who had killed his mother. The island remains a natural park with a few inmates maintaining buildings and fields.