In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}At first glance, the childhood photo of Alyse Emdur, her sister and brother could have passed as an ordinary vacation snapshot, complete with palm tree and beach sunset.
But the picture was taken in a New Jersey prison, where M.. Emdur’s brother was serving a sentence for drug-related crimes. The sunset was a painted backdrop.
“I remember how weird it felt to be standing in front of such a happy scene during one of the saddest experiences of my life,†she said. “I didn’t come from a culture where I knew other people who had been in prison. It wasn’t part of my world.â€
Collection of Alyse Emdur Remi Emdur, Bruce Emdur and Alyse Emdur, the photographer. Bayside State Prison, Leesburg, N.J. 1988.Ms. Emdur’s rediscovery of that photo in 2005, nearly two decades after it was taken, set her on a five-year exploration of the postcard-perfect trompe l’oeil landscapes that are ubiquitous in prisons across the country. She collected more than 100 photos of inmates pos! ing in prison visiting rooms against misty waterfalls, autumn forests, city skylines and bald eagles.
“They’re about going to another place and escaping the prison into this dream land,†said Ms. Emdur, 29, who grew up in Cherry Hill, N.J., and now lives in Los Angeles.
Her original idea was to go into prisons and personally photograph the landscapes and inmates, and the artists responsible for them. But she soon discovered that the inmates’ own photos, taken by friends or family, were much more powerful than anything she could produce.
“I didn’t want my presence to have an impact,†she said. “I wanted to see people represent themselves.â€
With that decision, her project changed direction drastically. The book that came from it, “Prison Landscapes,†published this month, is an unusual collection of photographs taken by others, with only a handful of her own pictures included. Her photos are striking, tw-page pullouts, each one a different backdrop, along with the cinder-block walls and security cameras alongside them.
Ms. Emdur tracked down the inmates’ photos by writing to about 300 inmates on pen-pal Web sites and asking them to send her a portrait standing in front of a backdrop. Roughly half of them responded, and she received scores of pictures - a man in prison khakis in Marion, Ill., holding his children in front of a row of skyscrapers; a blond woman kneeling in Quincy, Fla., next to a bunny rabbit; a bodybuilder flexing by a waterfall in Malone, N.Y.
She was fascinated by the various backdrops, which she saw as small grace notes from inside cold, hard places.
“Letting these images be happier, idealized landscapes, it’s a humane gesture to soften the blow of the reality,†she said.
Some of the prisoners wrote letters to Ms. Emdur to accompany their photos. She corresponded regularly with a few of them, but the terrain was complicated to navigate.
“Th! e relatio! nship between the incarcerated and the free is very complex,†she said. “Whenever you’re working with people, when the project ends, the book is published, the relationships don’t end.â€
In her book, she republished many letters that inmates wrote to her.
“When I took this picture, I was thinking about being free,†wrote Tyler Miesse, who posed before a snow-capped mountain in prison in Aberdeen, Wash. “I felt like I was ready to go kick it, hang out or go to the waterfront and enjoy the nice warm summer breeze and sunset but my reality is that I’m locked up.â€
Follow @samdolnick and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.
In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player 
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}