Alcatraz: America’s Escape-Proof Island Prison

Since the notoriously inescapable prison opened in 1934, Alcatraz has loomed large in America’s vision of itself—and in the world’s imagination of America.

The subject of dozens of books, films, and headlines, the infamous island still fascinates, attracting over a million visitors a year. During a period of four years, Virginia Hines made more than a dozen voyages to this place the San Francisco Chronicle once called, “the grimmest symbol in North America of the hard hand of justice.” She photographed the desolate ruins of the one-time maximum-security, minimum-privilege institution in black and white, using lenses from the prison era.

Alcatraz: America’s Escape-Proof Island Prison depicts not a place frozen in time, but a fusion of past and present, history and myth, memory and dreams. The book also collects quotes from more than fifty historic newspaper articles, written in the vivid prose of the day. Together with the photos, they make a richly evocative album that brings to life the forlorn essence of “The Rock,” a place forever haunted by its demons.