Jenny Stratton

Rubin “Jitu” Williams spent about 36 of his 44 imprisoned years in solitary confinement cells across California, including 26 years at Pelican Bay. He was integral in the hunger strikes that sought to end the use of indefinite solitary confinement in the state.

Rows of concertina wire and flood lighting surround the solitary unit at Pelican Bay in 2014. At its peak, it is estimated to have housed over 1,000 men, many indefinitely.

Since coming home from prison in October 2025, Frank Reyna has leaned on his church and music to cope with bouts of anxiety and help process what he experienced in solitary. “I’ve got headphones and I just put them on and think about things, especially the friends that I left [in the SHU],” he said. “What are they doing now? Did they survive? Are they at home?”

A photograph of the Reyna family, with a young Frank at the bottom right, in front of his Los Angeles home. Reyna would later serve decades incarcerated, many of those years in a solitary confinement cell.

Author and advocate Dorsey Nunn was sentenced to life in prison at the age of 19 and learned to read and organize from politically active elders during his time at San Quentin State Prison.

Jack Morris and Dolores Canales met through a mutual friend in the prison activism community. They married in July 2022, in a ceremony with multiple nods to the hunger strike that ultimately brought them together. “So much of our wedding revolved around those still behind the walls,” Canales said. “It was like they were there with us.”  Jack Morris and Dolores Canales photographed on November 17, 2026 in Los Angeles.

Surrounded by treacherous, frigid waters and overseen by formidable prison defenses, Alcatraz was largely considered unescapable during its time as a maximum-security federal penitentiary.  

Richard “Razor” Johnson spent nearly 20 years in solitary confinement after being convicted on drug charges under California’s Three Strikes Law. A hunger strike organizer and activist, Johnson went on to write a novel about his experiences in solitary and to advocate for the release of Security Housing Unit prisoners in a landmark lawsuit against the state corrections department.

A mixed-media collaboration between Donald “C-Note” Hooker, who has been incarcerated in the state’s prisons for 28 years and has spent time in solitary, and Brian L. Frank. It features Frank’s photo, over which Hooker drew a rose emerging from the cracks in the concrete floor.

Minister King X, who served 18 years in California state prisons, maintains a historical archive of materials from the protest, including letters from participants and the agreement drawn up by the strike’s leaders. Minister King photographed at Alcatraz Island on Dec. 16, 2025.

A guard points at the “exercise yard” provided for Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit prisoners in 2014, a concrete room where they spent the little time they had outside of their solitary cell.