Inside Out: Dignity and the Art of Seeing Opening Reception

Inside Out: Dignity and the Art of Seeing Opening Reception

Join us in person for the Inside Out opening reception with co-curators Vikki Tobak and Emma Pearce and musical guests Loc’d N Band.

Inside Out: Dignity and the Art of Seeing is a groundbreaking exhibition that turns the camera around, placing power and self-perception in the hands of incarcerated photographers whose images and stories stand as a testament to the way image-making can change lives.

Emerging from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ pioneering 1980s “Arts In Prison” initiative, the exhibition brings together never-before-seen works by women photographers in DC Jail with historic images by men in Lorton Prison. Inside Out illuminates a vital chapter in prison arts education where photography became a tool for self-definition, solidarity, and community-building.

At its core, Inside Out asks: Who gets to control the narrative of incarceration? In these images, the camera is not an instrument of surveillance, but a means of liberation and refusal. Each photograph represents a deliberate choice about how to be seen, a declaration of agency rather than a reduction to a number, a case file, or a stereotype.

The exhibition is funded by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, co-curated by Emma Pearce and Vikki Tobak, produced by Alexandra Silverthorne, printed by Frank Hallam Day, featuring photography by Rodney Abney, Anwar Abdul Adil, Willie Battle, Eugene Clark El, Anthony Cross, Alonzo Davis, Sidney Davis, Calvin Gorham, Gerry Grey-Bey, Gary Keith Griffin, Martha Hubbard, Chris Keller, Eugene Lake, Alva Manning, David Mitchell El, Michael Moses El, Delores New, James Pellum, Antoinette Queen, Linda Ross, Karen Ruckman, Bernard Seaborn, Diane Smith Bey, Victoria Tedesco, and Valencia Whittle.