RUTH MORGAN Photography Collections
1979-2018
About Ruth Morgan www.ruthmorganphotography.com
Ruth Morgan is an award-winning documentary photographer and a prison reform advocate. Since the 1970s, she made thousands of courageous, uncompromised, and challenging portraits of inmates in California prisons. Her photographs made in San Quentin maximum-security prison were used in a Supreme Court case against brutal prison conditions. An exhibition of life-size prints of men in the 4x4’ cells traveled throughout the country. In 1994 Morgan founded an organization that combines her interest in working directly with people and communities impacted by incarceration and her commitment to social justice, Community Works West, serving as its founding executive director until 2021. Throughout this time, Morgan continued to make art for social change by working on major projects documenting Native Americans in their historical homelands: California and Kentucky. Morgan’s photographs are in private and museum collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oakland Museum of California, Menil Collection, and the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. She has received numerous art awards, including the Creative Work Fund, the California Arts Council, and the San Francisco Arts Commission.
SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY JAIL #3
1979-1981
From 1979 to 1981 I was a California Art Council Artist in Residence in San Francisco County Jail teaching photography to men incarcerated in the jail in San Bruno. It was the first time I set foot in jail and my first glimpse into the impact of mass incarceration on the lives of the mostly black and brown prisoners I would see and work with every day. It would be the start of my 40-year career as a portrait/documentary photographer and as the founder and Executive Director of a non-profit organization dedicated to a more humane criminal justice system. County Jail #3 in San Bruno was built in 1934 and was closed down in 2006 and demolished in 2012. The old San Bruno jail was the oldest operating county jail west of the Mississippi River until 2006. When opened in 1934, it replaced the outdated Ingleside jails, which dated from the late 1800s. The mostly “tier” structured jail was replaced by the newer “modern” direct supervision facilities with an open dorm-style design.
Negatives: 40 sheets medium-format black and white Prints: 24: 8" x 10" Collections: The Menil Collection
SAN QUENTIN: MAXIMUM SECURITY 1981-1984 Exhibitions: MOPA, San Diego, CA, 1988 SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA, 1988 Fireside Gallery, Houston Photofest, 1988 Light Work, Syracuse, NY 1987 More College of Art, PA, 1987 North Light Gallery, Tempe, AZ, 1987 University Art Gallery, California State University, Chico, 1986 Houston Center of Photography, TX, 1986 Women’s Building, Los Angeles, CA, 1985 Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, 1985 University Art Museum, MATRIX, Berkeley, CA, 1985 Triton Museum, Santa Clara, CA, 1984 College of Marin, Kentfield, CA, 1984 Otis School of Design, Los Angeles, CA, 1983 Minnesota Museum of Art, MN, 1982 Eleventh Street Gallery, New York, 1981 Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA, 1979
“It is the humanity in the inhuman humorless situation that I have tried to confront in these images. From 1981 to 1983 I had the unique opportunity, with a colleague Barbara Yaley, to photograph and interview the men at San Quentin State Prison, which at that time was a maximum security facility. For approximately two years we had incredible access to the prison and to the men locked up inside and I was able to produce a portfolio of life-sized portraits that would tour the country.”
Ruth Morgan and Barbara Yaley negotiated for months before they were able to convince the prison warden to let them photograph and interview in San Quentin, allowing the women unprecedented access to this man’s world. Equipped with a tripod and long-exposure camera, Morgan faced the prisoners. The exhibition prints are life-size portraits: 4 x 4 ft--the width of a prison cell.
Morgan’s photographs were used as evidence in a Supreme Court case Toussaint v. McCarthy (1984/86) that declared conditions in the segregated lock-up units at San Quentin, Folsom, Soledad, and Deuel Vocational Institute unconstitutional.
Barbara Yaley (d. 2016) was a private investigator and a collaborator on the project. After a JD in criminology from UC Berkeley, she earned a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz, where she was in the same cohort as the Black Panther Huey Newton, writing her dissertation on the history of California prisons. Yaley used her academic training to work on such cases as the death penalty, racial discrimination, and long-term solitary confinement.
Negatives: 5 sheets medium-format color negatives of prison cells Approximately 245 black and white negative sheets (approx.12 negatives per sheet) Prints: 16: 20" X 20" black and white prints with overmats 15: 48" X 48" black and white prints mounted on canvas and rolled up 41 sample contact sheets Unpublished: Hard copies of 31 interviews (ranging from 2 to 25 pages) with men in San Quentin, 180 pages Conducted by Barbara Yaley and Ruth Morgan. Morgan owns the copyright.
OHLONE ELDERS AND YOUTH SPEAK: RESTORING A CALIFORNIA LEGACY 2006-2014
Negatives: 40 sheets medium-format black and white Digital Files: Over 3,000 color digital files Prints: Black and White 10: 8” x 10” (not framed) Color (framed with glass): 20: 20"x 30" portraits 13: 24" x 36" portraits and contextual images 1: 30" x 45" contextual image 2: 16" x 24" ? Publication: Ohlone Elders and Youth Speak: Restoring a California Legacy, 2014. 421 pages Ann Marie Sayers, Project Director (Mutsun Ohlone); Tribal Chairperson, Indian Canyon Nation; Founder of Costanoan Indian Research, Inc. Ruth Morgan Photographs Janet Clinger, Oral Histories 20 quotes and 19 full interviews with youth and elders Exhibitions: Tides Building, San Francisco, 2020 DeAnza College, 2017 Coyote Hills Recreation Center, CA, 2011, 2016 Jewett Gallery, SF Public Library, 2015 Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, Vallejo, 2015 Presidio, San Francisco, 2011
Writer, historian Janet Clinger and I documented the efforts of three generations of Native Americans in California committed to keeping their native culture alive and thriving, as they straddle living in two worlds. For fourteen thousand years the ancestors of contemporary Ohlone peoples served as caretakers of this beautiful region— from San Francisco to Pt. Sur.
The photos and desktop published book represent only a small portion of present-day Ohlone who are currently active in various aspects of cultural revitalization and committed to keeping their cultural expressions alive for generations to come. We dedicate this project to all of the Ohlone and their ongoing efforts and struggles to restore the rich legacy of their ancestors.
PIQUA SHAWNEE: CULTURAL SURVIVAL IN THE HOMELAND 2018 Writer and historian Janet Clinger and I documented and produced a traveling exhibit and a book of photographs and interviews of the members of Piqua Shawnee Tribe. The project chronicles the ongoing cultural revitalization process taking place within the tribe as they live in two cultures that are often in opposition to one another. The Piqua Shawnee was formed in 1990 to give Native people whose ancestors either stayed behind or returned after The Removal from the Ohio Valley in the 1830s, an opportunity to participate in cultural activities, especially ceremony, while bonding with other Native people. The Piqua Shawnee Tribe is state-recognized in Alabama, but members are scattered throughout the eastern United States. They come together in a central location in Kentucky three times each year. We were honored to be invited in to tell their story.
Negatives: 48 sheets medium-format black and white Digital files: Over 3000 color digital files Prints: Black and White 8: 8" x 10" Color 18: 20" X 30" 4: 24" X 36" 1: 30" X 45" Publication: Piqua Shawnee, Cultural Survival in the Homeland, 2018. 265 pages Ruth Morgan, Photographs Janet Clinger, Oral Histories Kenneth Barnett Tankersley, Ph.D., Cultural Consultant, Tribal Member Barbara S. Lehmann, Tribal Historian, Shawnee Elder 18 quotes and 17 full interviews Exhibitions: Lancaster Library, Lancaster, Ohio, 2019 Berea College, KY, 2018
Contact Alla Efimova alla@thekunstworks.com www.thekunstworks.com
ruthmorganphotography.com