Isaac, © Nick Vedros, 2016
Faces of Change: Inmate Portraits by Nick Vedros
August 17 - October 30, 2016
(extended through December 18)
Thirty-three years ago, mental health activist SuEllen Fried and Greg Musselman, an inmate with a life sentence, founded Reaching Out From Within (rofw.org), an innovative and successful prison rehabilitation program. Today the program operates inside every Kansas Department of Corrections facility for men and women and has been successfully transplanted to North Carolina. At these facilities inmates meet weekly, guided by the 400-page “Blue Book,” the curriculum that helps members rigorously examine the roots of violence and its impact on themselves and their loved ones.
The Faces of Change exhibition features Vedros’s powerful black and white photographic portraits of twenty-six Reaching Out From Within members from Kansas Department of Corrections facilities in Ellsworth, Lansing, and Topeka, capturing the spirit of the program and the courage of its members.