STRANGERS by Poppy De Villeneuve

I found these pictures by Poppy De Villeneuve.
I find it interesting to see how some of these man appear so "peaceful".
More than once I have asked myself what leads people to committing crimes.

What does it take to get to the point of anger and hatred that puts you behind bars?

Occasional train rides to the suburbs of Melbourne, where I get to observe young, drug-influenced couples and their children, help me understand...

Shouldn't a child be able to look up to their parents and learn from them?
Shouldn't it grow up in an environment of love and security, where dreams can be dreamed until they choose to live them?
Doesn't family mean cuddles, warmth, shelter and mashed potatoes?

And that, for me is the least a child should be able to be smothered when growing up.

Thus, being born into a world full of blank reality, violence and drugs doesn't deliver a life of sanity.
It makes me sad, that these young people mostly don't have a choice.
If they are strong enough they might be able to change their future.
But how much strength does it take to step out and onto a different path in order to follow an uncertain light of hope...?


"Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola', is America's most infamous and largest maximum-security prison. Its 18,000 acres,(larger than Manhattan), hold over 5000 inmates, mostly African American.
Eighty five percent have killed, raped or robbed with violence and eight out of ten have life without parole.
In Louisiana, life means life and most will eventually die there.
When you spend time with these men and talk to them about their lives one starts looking without distortion and starts to see something else; a complicated moral issue about the sum of a man.
If in this controlled hardened environment one can honestly see something good in a man, then perhaps a man is greater than his experiences alone.
It is the structure that the penitentiary creates, one that enhances the guises that oscillate between good and bad and one that creates something murky, which demands some time.
The folly of mankind remains complicated."

Poppy De Villeneuve