Lena (left), sentenced for organizing a rape, and Katya, sentenced for theft. Juvenile prison for girls, Ukraine, 2009. © Michal Chelbin

Michal Chelbin‘s book Sailboats and Swans was recently released by Twin Palms Publishers. The images were made by the Israeli photographer in prisons throughout the Ukraine and Russia, and explore the idea of what it’s like to be locked up and constantly watched. Novelist A.M. Homes wrote the text for the book, an excerpt of which is below:

“The images are about a kind of discomfort–theirs, hers, mine and ours. It is like an old-fashioned staring contest–one guy looks at the other and the first one who blinks is the loser, except Michal Chelbin never blinks. Instead she captures with the click of a shutter. Chelbin is always looking, drawing what is hidden to the surface. She captures–we shudder.”

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© Michal Chelbin

The images in Twin Palms Publishers new book, The Black Eye, continues Michal Chelbin’s exploration of the world of athletes and performers.

Breathless, sweaty, and fatigued, the athletes are worn out after a hard training session or fight. During a typical photo shoot, Chelbin makes the athletes change poses and locations several times; sometimes she takes her subjects past the point of exhaustion to help free them from self-conscious expression.