Jeff Barnett-Winsby: Mark West & Molly Rose

Artist Jeff Barnett-Winsby’s attraction to persons exiled to the fringes of society led him to photograph in Lansing Prison, in Lansing, Kansas. A year into his project, he found out that in February 2006, a convicted killer named John Maynard had escaped from the prison, concealed inside a dog crate, with the help of a volunteer who worked at the facility named Toby Young. Maynard and Young, operating under the aliases Mark West and Molly Rose, were captured two weeks later, after a high-speed chase, in Tennessee. Illustrated in color and black and white, this book is a collection of Barnett-Winsby’s photographs of and correspondence with the two lovers, both before and after the escape, and a unique record of an extraordinary tale of escape. I have always been fascinated with loneliness and the outsider in society, Barnett-Winsby writes, of his attraction to West and Rose’s extraordinary story. Growing up, I felt pretty out of it (who doesn’t?) and was always in trouble for something. His reconstructed narrative of their tale constitutes a highly original portrait.