West Philly Local is proud to present a series of vignettes of local block captains drawn from Them That Do, a multimedia documentary project and community blog by photographer and videographer Lori Waselchuk. We profiled Waselchuk in 2011 upon the release of her book Grace Before Dying. She lives in West Philadelphia and Them That Do begins with stories close to home. West Philly Local will publish a ten-part series featuring a block captain profile every Wednesday.

Waselchuk is an award-winning photographer and author. She began Them That Do as a 2012 Pew Fellowship for the Arts.

Thirty years ago Gregory Pac Cojulun walked into his first neighborhood meeting. He walked out a block captain. “I was ambushed,” Cojulun said with smile that hinted that all was forgiven. “I just wanted to see how things were going and they nominated and voted for me.”

Now in his sixties, Pac Cojulun needs a cane to walk, but rarely sits down. He is still the block captain, but his bigger commitment is given to Malcolm X Park.

Cojulun likes to network on behalf of his neighbors. “I’ve met a lot of different people in different agencies. I’ve gotten to the point I can call people up and they recognize me.” He is also the president of the board that maintains Malcolm X Park, which he says can demand 60-70 hours of his time a week.

“Our park was a thug park in the 60’s and 70’s. Nobody wanted to come through it,” said Cojulun. Through a grant from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society nearly twenty years ago, a small group of residents began to clean up and restore the park. Today the park is an active cultural and social center in West Philadelphia. Cojulun says that it has been a slow process to revitalize Malcolm X Park and the board’s ability to plan programming and make improvements depends on donations.

Cojulun’s pride, though, is apparent. During a recent theater event, he walked slowly around the park’s centerpiece, a large round gazebo, checking in on young and giggling high school actors. He proudly watches and greets them as they prepare for a theatrical performance. “We try to make sure everything is done right, and make sure the people are happy,” he said.

Most of the 5,000 prisoners incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, will die there. Angola is the largest maximum security prison in the United States. Prisoners there have long sentences, virtually life sentences. West Philly-based photographer Lori Waselchuk released a book this summer documenting the prison’s inmate-run hospice program, which provides dying prisoners some comfort and dignity in their last days. You can talk to her about it this Sunday.

Waselchuk will sign her book, Grace Before Dying, and talk about the project as part of an event hosted by the West Philly-based non-profit Books Through Bars on Sunday, Oct. 16. Running from 2:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the A-Space (4722 Baltimore Ave.), the event will also feature quilts made by Angola inmates that are part of a traveling exhibit (now at Saint Joseph’s University) accompanying the Grace Before Dying project. Local quilters and textile artists will also be on hand to discuss their work.

The event ends with a screening of the documentary In the Land of the Free, which tells the story of Angola inmates Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King, also known as the Angola 3, who between them spent almost a century in solitary confinement. Wallace and Woodfox are still in solitary after more than 37 years.

Here is a schedule for the event:

3:30 p.m. – Quilter’s Roundtable. Local quilters and textile artists will present their work.

5 p.m. – Reception

6 p.m. – Lori Waselchuk talk and book signing

7 p.m. – Screening of the In the Land of the Free

Most of the prisoners incarcerated at the maximum security Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as “Angola,” will die there. Some 70 percent of its more than 5,000 prisoners are serving life without the chance of parole. It’s a place renowned for violence and misery. But West Philly-based photographer Lori Waselchuk found behind its walls the very essence of humanity.

Waselchuk spent three years from 2007-2010 photographing inmates who took part in the prison’s hospice program. She watched men, many of whom were sent to prison for taking a life, help each other confront their own mortality.

“It was watching these men take a courageous step toward compassion and expressing their love for another person,” Waselchuk said while sitting outside her home on South Melville Street near Baltimore Avenue where she lives with her husband, Temple University professor Shenid Bhayroo, daughter Mira and son Zahli.

Waselchuk’s work at Angola has been collected in the book Grace Before Dying, just released this summer from Umbrage. Dozens of black-and-white photographs document men, some of whom have know each other for decades, helping each other die with dignity. The book includes an essay by Tulane University professor Lawrence N. Powell on Angola’s place in Louisiana history.

A memory still vivid in Waselchuk’s mind is inmates massaging the hands and feet of their mentor from the prison carpentry shop as he lay dying of lung and liver cancer. She writes in the book’s preface:

“The physical contact between these men was new territory for all involved … It was a profound moment of grace, during which these men allowed themselves to break physical boundaries and accept physical expressions of friendship.”

Waselchuk also documented a group of inmates that makes quilts for each hospice patient, another expression of love that seems so paradoxical in a place like Angola.

The project grew out of a small magazine assignment for a Louisiana publication to photograph the hospice program. Waselchuk soon realized that what she was witnessing and photographing needed deeper exploration. She made several trips to Angola over the three years she worked on the project. And although the photographs are of a place a thousand miles from West Philly, their subject is universal.

“This has always been a statement on humanity and what’s possible in all of us,” said Waselchuk, whose work has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

The hardcover book is available through the publisher for $39.95. But Waselchuk is offering a special deal for her neighbors: if you’re in West Philly she will sign the book and hand deliver it you. Write her at lori [at] loriwaselchukphotos.com.

This project is more than a book. Waselchuk’s photographs and the prison quilts are part of a traveling exhibit, which will be at Saint Joseph’s University in the fall. A scaled down version will be at the A-Space (4722 Baltimore Ave.) for one night in the future as well in a joint program with the West Philly-based organization Books Through Bars. We will have more details on both of those exhibitions later.

Waselchuk’s next project is on block captains in Philadelphia, a subject she became interested in while walking the city’s neighborhoods as a Census taker last year. She is looking to get in touch with block captains in the city. Write her at the above e-mail address.