CROWBAR HOTEL • Pouria Khojastehpay • 550BC 2019 • California Prison Photobook • Incarceration Documentary

Description

Published by the cutting-edge London imprint 550BC, Crowbar Hotel is Pouria Khojastehpay’s raw, unsettling visual chronicle of incarceration culture in California. Compiled from images shot and shared by inmates inside the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) system using smuggled smartphones, the book exposes a hidden world—equal parts violence, vulnerability, and survival ritual. Khojastehpay, an Iranian-born artist working with themes of mediated identity and systems of control, collects these appropriated images not for voyeurism but for critique: a study in how self-representation persists even under the weight of surveillance and confinement.

Presented in dense black pages and bold typography, Crowbar Hotel reflects the claustrophobic intensity of its source material. Each photograph functions as evidence of a parallel society, complete with codes, symbols, and improvised aesthetics born inside prison walls. Though it gained recognition in photography circles upon release, Crowbar Hotel remains elusive—its small print run (as well as the second printing) quickly absorbed by collectors of photobooks and prison-related visual archives.

A landmark in contemporary photobook culture—bridging documentary, found photography, and social critique. For collectors of prison culture, subcultural archives, and 21st-century image politics, Crowbar Hotel hits hard and lingers.