This 37-by-21-inch vertical panorama documents the West Cell Block at Ohio Penitentiary—one of the massive housing units where thousands of inmates lived during the prison’s 150-year operation. The vertical format emphasizes the multi-tier cell arrangement that stacked human beings in efficient architectural volumes.

Created in 1996, the work documents the cell block during the prison’s demolition period. Ohio Penitentiary’s design evolved over its long history, adding cell blocks as population increased, creating the overcrowded conditions that made the institution notorious among prison reformers.

The “Version 1” designation suggests Hayashi created multiple studies of the West Cell Block, exploring different perspectives on this housing architecture. The vertical format captures the cell block’s multi-story construction, tiers of cells rising toward skylights that provided the only natural light in interior cells.

The vertical composition creates almost ecclesiastical proportions—the cell block’s height suggesting nave rather than prison—while the cells themselves contradict any sacred association. Each cell represented the state’s control over an individual’s body, the architecture making mass incarceration physically and administratively possible.

Ohio Penitentiary’s cell blocks were demolished after Hayashi’s documentation, the site cleared for development that erases visible evidence of the institution’s troubled history. This panorama preserves the West Cell Block’s architectural presence, documenting confinement infrastructure that housed generations of Ohio’s imprisoned population.