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Our prisons: the plural of the title immediately seems to have to bring together particularity and universality. I do not say “particularity and generality”; it is the customary opposition which is reductive. Universality “encompasses all the objects, things and knowledge on all subjects”.

The word “prison” refers to both a space and an institution. A prison is an enclosed space where we lock up a person whom society wants to punish. “Deprivation of liberty” is the function of prison as an institution. This institution, prison “in general” or rather “the” prison as known today, dates back to the 18th century. Maxence Rifflet approaches this from the “particular” point of view. There are prisons (spaces); the artist conducted his investigative documentary in seven French prisons, each marked by its particular history.

Gilles Verneret