Pop culture unabashedly and even smugly jokes about the fact that that rape is an inevitable part of incarceration. Prisoners are given throw-away-the-key sentences, abuse is rampant, and due to demographic statistics, many argue that our justice system picked up where slavery left off. One of the most complicated moral questions every culture must face is what to do with, and how to think about, individuals who commit criminal acts. With the 40th anniversary of the Attica prison riots approaching, many have been contemplating our current prison system and its ongoing need for reform. The thoughtful and complex exhibit currently at Booksmart Gallery explores a previous era's disastrous attempt at changing the way it rehabilitated prisoners. Photographer, professor, and Booksmart owner Eric T. Kunsman reveals that this former era's shorter sentences and seemingly better conditions didn't necessarily mean a successfully humane treatment of inmates.

Kunsman's "Thou Art...Will Give..." book and accompanying exhibit of large photographs is the culmination of a yet-ongoing exploration of Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary, and the Quaker theories of prison reform from the 1700's through the early 1800's. According to the information provided by the artist, Eastern State "demanded strict and total solitary confinement of all of its prisoners throughout the 1800's," and prisoners were "cruelly punished" when caught trying to communicate with a fellow prisoner or guard. The ideology argued that solitary confinement offered prisoners a chance to atone, with the guidance of god through the bible - the only possession they were allowed, says Kunsman.

Research for this project involved many visits to the space beginning 10 years ago, when Kunsman brought a group of photography students on a field trip from Mercer County Community College to the Eastern State Penitentiary near Philadelphia. "It was a great photographic site," says the artist in his statement, praising the light and feeling of abandonment. When Kunsman later returned with a different class, this time as a student, he accessed Eastern State's archives and was absorbed by "Eastern State Penitentiary Logbook A." The logbook presented the warden's prisoner records, and for Kunsman, "the space now felt inhabited and connected to deep emotions."

One of the first images in the exhibition reveals that the title of the show comes from some faded partial text painted near a light switch on a cracked wall. Kunsman's chiaroscuro-heavy, black and white photos convey the echoing halls, the rasp of the gates, and the solitary drip of snowmelt. The building's architecture allows light to pour into the broken-down spaces, offering a weakly benevolent presence in a hopeless place. More images offer glances down crumbling corridors with rows of flaking iron-grate cell doors, bare ceilings with broken bulbs, all of it cracked and water stained.

"While my photographs from the earlier visit captured a lot of the physical presence and feeling of the penitentiary," says Kunsman's statement, it was the warden's writings that "started to, literally, flesh out the functional and human effects of this altruistic, but ultimately disastrous, Quaker experiment with reforming criminals." Kunsman scanned entries from the logbook, which he includes in the book and show. Shocking in comparison to today is the speedy release of many prisoners, even a convicted murderer. One page vaguely describes a "mulatto" jailed for rape who was pardoned, and an atheist in for burglary and discharged at the end of a short sentence, with the lamentation that he "remained hardened in atheism."

The fairly shallow description of each prisoner includes a few sentences on age, race or ethnicity, crime, term, and whether or not they repented - human beings distilled into very basic categories. Most entries are preoccupied with the acceptance of religion, a single-minded goal of those in charge. While viewing these pages, I thought of poet Amiri Baraka's furious recitation of "Dope," his voice mimicking religious leaders' instructions to suffer quietly in life, no matter how good all the clever vipers have it off your backs, because heaven awaits, they promise, after you die.

Light and shadow and wear are the dominant factors in each image, but Kunsman also emphasizes the Quakers's and the keepers's fixation on religion. A mural shows a congregation praying before a priest holding a cup up to a crucifix, requesting transubstantiation - perhaps a symbol meant to show prisoners they should convert the substance of themselves in this way.

"Although penitentiary staff and their Quaker supporters refused to acknowledge the fact for the greater part of a century," says Kunsman, it was soon evident that the extreme solitary confinement was "driving many of the prisoners over the edge both emotionally and psychologically." Many prisoners went insane, Kunsman says; one image included in the book is a particularly ominous photo of a mountain of chalky pills and glass bottles on a table.

This powerful exhibit restruck a chord in me already resonating with thoughts about inequity. Many of our role models and leaders are criminals, and humans learn by example. But if you are not powerful, or not from the right demographic, you will likely be removed from society, while many criminals at the top get to carry on dancing. Reform is a band-aid: talk of altering how we deal with prisoners takes the place of addressing the causes of crime in culture. The greater issue is our overwhelming unwillingness to regard people as full humans after they disappoint us. The problem, as with most things, is lack of education, and the wonton laziness preventing our search for truth and reality amid moral ambiguity. To heal our wounds, we need courage enough to face them.

"Thou Art...Will Give..."

By Eric T. Kunsman

Through September 25

Booksmart Studio, 250 N. Goodman St.

598-9322, booksmartstudio.com

Mon-Fri 9 a.m.-6 p.m., also Sat 10 a.m.-4 p.m. starting Sep 10