The works commissioned for this series have inspired some of today's foremost photographers to create fresh chapters in ongoing projects as well as
wholly new bodies of work: Sally Mann's inaugural commission supported her shift to landscape work, and Alec Soth's 2009 commission resulted in many of the photographs that would become his celebrated Broken Manual series.
As an editorial photographer, he found himself
working with teenage fathers and elderly prisoners, and this set him on his route to
working with terror suspects, prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, and, most recently, a three - year residency at the UK's only
wholly therapeutic prison, HMP Grendon, where he
worked with the inmates to produce four
new bodies of challenging
work, each employing methods
new to his practice, which are now on show at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.