Invisible PrisonsGiovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) opened up new vistas of confinement, breaking loose from practical requirements in order to explore imaginary worlds of incarceration. Trained as an architect, Piranesi abandoned the field at age 20, moving from his home town of Venice to Rome: the intellectual capital of Europe and the center of the Enlightenment.

Piranesi not only found beauty in the obvious monu-ments, he saw it in "the sewers, the walls, the aqueducts, the paved roads" of the city as well. But it is the Car-ceri, (Invisible Prisons) for which he has become best known. These engravings of Piranesi's imagined prison interiors are stark views into the artist's own tormented inner world.

These hellish views, sold as souvenirs to tourists, became touchstones for a later generation of surrealist artists known as the Dadaists, such as this fellow in the window, believed to be May Ray. Or maybe Chagall....

Initiative #3

Shall River City bond for $20 million dollars to build the Panopticon?

River CityPanopticon

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River City's Panopticon will be modeled on this historic design by Jeremy Bentham, with an educational Visitor Center and Gift Shop.

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Vote YES for Initiative #3

River CityPanopticon

Magna Dolorum!People can't handle too much

freedom. You know that. That's what laws are for. Prisons are America's fastest growing indus-try and the potential is unlimited. Why shouldn't River City get in on this profitable opportunity?

Out of the get-tough on crime era arose the nation's War on Drugs. The War on Drugs has not eliminated crime, but has succeeded in filling up the nation's prisons. By 1982 American prisons held 412,000 in-mates, a leap of 91,000 in only 2 years. By mid-1992 that figure had grown to 855,958. At this rate, half of America will be behind bars in the year 2050.

Prisons by Lois Warburton, Lucent Books, Inc. 1993

The United States now incarcerates be-tween 1.8 and 2 million of its citizens in its prisons and jails on any given day, an over 5 million people are currently under the supervision of America's criminal justice system. That's more prisoners than in any other country in the world...Todays' 2 million prisoners represent a prison and jail system ten times larger than that which existed a mere twnty-nine years ago.

The Perpetual Prison Machine: How America Profits from Crime by Joel Dyer, Perseus Books Group, 2000.

Vote! November 8, 1996

A maze of stairways, catwalks, and arches of inhuman scale lead into this imaginary dungeon by Piranesi. Below left: A more practical Opticon, designed by his near contemporary, Jeremy Benthem. Below right: Chart shows growth of prison population.