Johannes Keijzer, Pauper

You may have seen a version of this before - it's of the Pauper's Prison in Drenthe, Netherlands.  The authorities started out with good intentions, rounding up vagrants and beggars all over the country and offering them a new life in a purpose-built facility where they could grow their own produce and live out their lives in perhaps a more purposeful way.  In the end, though, it became a prison for many - impossible to leave and though they may have gained in some ways they lost their freedom.

The courtyard had these plinths with haunting images of some of the inmates, complete with detailed notes of their height, age, eye colour etc.

I was never really happy with the original print I did, which you can see here.  There was too much empty space in the first print which detracted from the objects of interest - the faces staring out at you with the deadest of expressions. But I always thought that there was a better print in there somewhere, so I revisited this negative the other day and played around with composition while under the enlarger to see what could be done.  I wound the enlarger up high and messed about with the easel to see if a tighter crop might work. This was the result:

The Pauper's Prison, Drenthe - on Ilford Warmtone RC paper

 I think it's a better composition.  There's more emphasis on the leading guy (let's give him his name, eh? - Johannes Keijzer) and the repetition of the images is, I think, more effective with the wider crop.

It was challenging enough to get it looking like this.  I had to dodge the face of Johannes and then burn in the white cards underneath so that the writing would at least be visible, if not entirely legible.  Then a bit of burn-in with the sky - I wanted a darker, moodier sky, given the subject matter.  Finally a burn-in of the gravel, trying to get it to lead the eye into the shot as well as balance out the trees.  That's a lot more work than I usually do for a print.