Inside the Architecture of Authority

That's the title of Wired.com slideshow of photographs from Randy Ross' book Architecture of Authority.  It begins with a photo of the execution chamber at Angola prison in Louisiana.

A new book by photographer Richard Ross, Architecture of Authority, examines the way institutional buildings exert power over people. Ross managed to gain impressive access to all kinds of secretive or high-security buildings, from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, to the supermax high-security Pelican Bay prison in California. Ross credits his unprecedented access to a combination of persistence and sincere curiosity. "Many of these people want to show you these places once they know that you're interested in their world," he says.

And:

Ross has an exhibition at the Aperture Gallery in New York which is now open to the public.