The Parameters of Our Cage is an epistolary exchange between photographer Alec Soth and incarcerated writer C. Fausto Cabrera that transforms personal correspondence into a searching inquiry into art, justice, and American life.
About This Book
What begins as a letter from a Minnesota prison becomes one of the more remarkable intellectual exchanges in recent documentary photography. Over nine months in 2020 — as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement reshaped the country — Soth and Cabrera built a correspondence that moved between shared literary and cultural touchstones and the hard realities of incarceration. Their letters draw on Ralph Ellison, Robert Frank, Rilke, and André 3000 as they interrogate art's redemptive capacity, questions of justice and accountability, and the power of empathy to bridge radically different circumstances. This updated edition adds a new conversation recorded when the two met in person for the first time, following the unanimous commutation of Cabrera's sentence in December 2023.
Key Features
- 136 pages of correspondence, personal reflection, and cultural dialogue
- Authors: C. Fausto Cabrera and Alec Soth
- New in-person conversation between Cabrera and Soth, recorded after Cabrera's release
- Published by MACK, 2023
What You'll Discover
- How Cabrera and Soth use shared cultural references — from The Invisible Man to The Americans — to negotiate questions of visibility, representation, and witness
- A sustained, unsentimental examination of life inside America's prison system, written from within it
- The conditions under which empathy and intellectual curiosity can operate across extreme social and physical distance
- A new epilogue conversation confronting the disorientation of life post-incarceration, grounding the book's themes in lived consequence
About the Author
Alec Soth is an American photographer whose long-form documentary projects have examined American life, longing, and alienation. C. Fausto Cabrera is a writer who was incarcerated at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Rush City at the time of the correspondence; his sentence was commuted by a board led by the Minnesota Governor in December 2023.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 136
- Dimensions: 125 x 195mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781915743725
- Publisher: MACK
- Publication Date: 2023
Perfect For: Readers drawn to documentary photography, prison literature, and the intersection of art and social justice — and anyone interested in how intellectual exchange survives extreme constraint.