A compelling collection of photos documenting prison labor and “chain gang” punishment in 1930s Georgia.

Six of the photographs appeared in a 1937 Life Magazine article titled “Portrait of a Chain Gang.” Shot by James N. Keen, these images document the brutal and inhumane carceral conditions at the State Penitentiary in Bibb County, Georgia, one of the last places in the US to utilize the “chain gang” as a method of punishment. The present photos represent the first time the facility was officially photographed because, as the article puts it, “So unsavory has been the reputation of the chain gang in novel, narrative and movies, that wardens have scrupulously kept photographers outside their stockades.” One photograph shows an inmate feeding the hounds trained to give him chase, should he ever try to escape. Another particularly-disturbing photograph shows two men locked in the stocks as punishment, the caption on the verso declaring the pair to be, “naughty boys.” And another poignant photo shows a prisoner quenching his thirst after “hours of toil on a road.”

Also included are a pair of photographs from the then-recently opened New Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, Tattnall County. One photograph, showing a group of men eating at a mess hall, bears a caption on a verso which notes that the modern facility is expected to be “the death knell of the Georgia Chain gangs.” The other photo shows a line of men lockstepping into the front entrance under a relief sculpture titled “Rehabilitation” which was done by the Georgia artist Julian Hoke Harris. This photo notes that the new building was constructed at a cost of thirteen million dollars and dubbed “Alcatraz of the Pineys.”