I really like this one Rob, the photographer has captured this moment so well, and your technique has been done to perfection. Now I can only wonder what the tune was? tigs=^..^=

Huuummm....."Chattanooga Choo Choo"....or maybe not. Let's think about this think "Rhythm in a Riff" will work better kinda ....this is in prison huuummmm...get back on this. I'am back can only be one song " I want a big fat Mama "

Can't imagine what the song is, but he is doing a good job in the dance. Good choice to work on and he did nice work on this.

Rob, I've heard that prisoners / convicts had to remove their leashes and shoestrings to prevent suicide. This seems to be the case with the man on the right. However, this is in contradiction with the others.
See too that in these conditions the convicts haven't lost their optimistic character. Your perfect way of colorization has even created to a certain extent a festive mood.
It's like I'm watching to a party instead of some 'home made entertainment' (please notice the quotation marks) in this convict camp.
Perfectly done per usual, my friend.

Your subtle colouring is perfect.
A happy moment in time captured.
Too early for Jailhouse Rock :)

"You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind." Whether these men knew it or not, they were following the ideals of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known to the world as Mahatma Gandhi. Arrested six times in South Africa and seven times in India, he never let his captors get the better of him. "(In the dances on the slave ships)... Haunted by memories of Africa, beset by the slave trade whose laws and economic proscriptions violate their inner beings, the dancers perform an epic drama that announces the emergence of the New World Negro." -- Genevieve Fabre. When Africans were forcibly sold out of Africa across the Atlantic Ocean into foreign lands they were often totally detached from their own language communities. One of the cultural forms which helped people to survive and communicate with one another was music. Music could communicate across the language barrier that divided different enslaved Africans. All Africans could take part in music and dancing so it provided a tool for survival. Although it had been 78 years between Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued January 1, 1863, and the date of this photo, some elements of the Black American culture were too strong for the slave owners and their foremen to beat, and too ingrained within the slaves and their progeny to forget. These men knew that what was in their hearts and souls went far beyond the oppressive society that brought heavy payment for the smallest of infractions... "You can chain me... but you will never imprison my mind."

-Nik