CAPE TOWN - Ex-Pollsmoor Correctional Centre inmates are using visual art to depict the realities of life behind bars.
This they say helps them deal with past trauma, their reintegration into society, and also to make a living.
Dubbed "Captured", the visual storytelling project, is set to eventually become a coffee table book.
Life behind bars is often reduced to statistics, without the human factor.
Enrico Samuels, an artist, served sixteen years behind bars for armed robbery said art connected him with people helping him to navigate life now as a free man.
"I want to become a successful artist, doctor is helping me to get there with the projects...lovely projects and I enjoy myself in the projects and from there I see a brighter future from doc's side, because she is taking me that way, so I can see the sun on the other side already,” said Samuels.
Michael Sauls said art serves as a conduit in helping them deal with their past and educate the public.
“People have no an idea of what prison is like, they think that everything is happy go-lucky or it's like a journey to another paradise, it's not worth it being there...you see it's easy to commit a crime, but it's not easy serving the time."
Dr Suzette Leal, the founder of Words Set Free, said the art tells the stories of the people behind it.
"If you say the work is beautiful, that's a complement to our artists and their ability, but the story is not beautiful. It's real and true and painful and traumatic. So, I think if anything I hope it discourages someone from getting involved in crime, but I think we don't reduce crime by making prison sentences longer or by making the conditions within them worse. We reduce crime by creating opportunities for people to create a livelihood outside of crime.”
Another artist, Kleinbooi Hendricks said: "I said to myself, although the parole board gave me a date to go out of prison, I'm not going. I will either complete my entire sentence but I'm not going out if I haven't worked on myself being a changed man or a different person. I did that because I said I'd either eat out of a dustbin outside, but I'm not going to commit crime again."