Pouria Khojastehpay - Crowbar Hotel - 2019

First edition, first printing of 400 copies.

Published by the cutting-edge London-based publisher 550BC, Crowbar Hotel is the raw and unsettling visual chronicle by Pouria Khojastehpay of California prison culture. Comprised of images taken and shared by inmates inside the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) penitentiary system through contraband smartphones, the book reveals a hidden world, made of violence, vulnerability, and survival rituals. Khojastehpay, an Iranian-born artist who works with themes such as mediated identity and systems of control, collects these images 'appropriated' not for voyeurism, but for critique: a study of how self-representation persists even under the weight of surveillance and confinement.