Eva Haule was imprisoned in 1986 for being a member of RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion), and she was held in isolation in a single-person cell for the first three years of her sentence. As a result of a hunger strike she took part in in 1989, she was sent to another prison, and her conditions were relatively "normalized". Here she met two volunteer photographers and took part in the courses they organized in the prison She carried out her first studies in photography with inmates of the prison. Upon the success of her first work, she held one-to-one interviews with inmates in order to transform this work into a project. Everyone she interviewed appreciated the idea of exhibiting photographs of women who had been excluded, isolated and rendered invisible. This was how, from 1998 to 2003, at the Preungesheim Prison in Germany, the "Portraits of Women Under Captivity" came about.

Eva Haule's comments about the inmates in prison is as follows: "We may have completely different pasts, but this was what bonded us: We could not conform at all to what everyone calls the life of a normal citizen, and we didn't want to. It is not our problem that we do not conform with such hegemonic forms of relationships and social criteria - and to the mold for women related to these criteria." She explains her approach as a prisoner with the words, "In order to protect inner freedom and vitality, even if it is in prison, it is an absolute necessity to continue producing." And this is what she says about her photographic project: "None of the women revealed themselves for a foreseen audience. Before all else, they wanted the photographs for themselves, for their families and friends. I have always said it: What I am doing here must get me out of here."

Portraits of Women Under Captivity was supported by the Goethe Institute and Karşı Sanat Çalışmaları.

Exhibition Program
8 January - 27 January 2007, Karşı Sanat Gallery, Istanbul
8 March - 3 April 2007, Diyarbakır Art Centre, Diyarbakır