To examine life in confinement poses a serious challenge to photographers; attempts to see inside any closed and secretive prison system seem doomed to produce limited results. Still, South Africa’s jails exert an unusual fascination, for until recently many viewed the country itself as a gigantic prison for its black majority; furthermore, the country continues to have one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. On his website, the photographer Mikhael Subotzky quotes the most famous of South Africa’s former prisoners, Nelson Mandela: “It is said that no one truly knows a nation