Judith Alice Clark

Thank you so much for having me.

So Sarah, your career as a photographer began when you were working on the case of a woman named Judith Clark.

Can you tell us about how you became involved in that case and how it led to your career as a photographer of women with life sentences?

Yeah.

M. Gessen is known for their incisive writing on autocracies, including Putin's Russia, on political repression and state terror in the U.S., and on violations of rights.

But their latest project has been a more personal one, a serial podcast exploring a crime their cousin Alan committed, trying to hire someone to kill his ex-wife and the mother of his children.

Alan is now serving a 10-year prison sentence, and Gesson's podcast series explores how Alan could do such an unthinkable act, as well as the range of reactions from their family members and their own capacity for empathy and compassion.

Listeners, have you had a relative do a terrible thing?

And like he has kept up relationships with my exes and all the kids who come into his orbit are like his kids.

And so when Alan, not quite a spoiler, but when Alan showed up originally in the United States a couple of years before he was arrested with his five-year-old son, whom he had taken from Russia without his ex-wife's knowledge or permission, obviously.

My father sort of threw his – he didn't exactly throw his arms around them but he included my cousin and his son and his mother who also came with them.

And for a couple of years, they were very much a part of the family and then it snapped.