Prison Chess

Today I will have the chance to complete my prison chess project.

Once again I will accompany a bunch of chess heroes from Princeton to a maximum security prison for another "book smarts vs. street smarts" battle.

I will try to talk to each player to have some text for each image.

Prison Chess #11 - Thoughts about a series


So here is what I would like to do with the prison pictures. I would like to put them together to a series, each image accompanied by some text - text written by the inmate who is shown in the picture.
I find it interesting to read answers by different people to identical questions, so this would be one way to approach this. On the other hand, this might not give a person much space to express himself - it probably depends on how the questions are defined. Ideally, the viewer should face the inmate who is a perfect stranger and totally out of the viewers world over a somewhat intellectual topic.

To make this happen, I would have to try if I can get some kind of forms to the inmates, make them fill them out and get the filled-out forms back. I don't know if this is technically possible (it should be). If the inmates are willing to cooperate? Well that's also a question. However, before I try that, I need to come up with the right questions. Here are my first ideas. I don't want to waste this opportunity (if there is any), so your input and ideas are very welcome. Especially as comments, so we could discuss it here.

They might be a bit too straight forward, but everything is optional anyway.

Your Name and/or inmate number:__________

Your age:__________

Sentence:__________
(is that what it's called? I want to know why and for how long the person has to stay in prison)

Inmate since:__________

What was your occupation outside prison?__________

For how long have you been playing?__________

Your rating and/or chess achievements:__________
(I know there was at least one grandmaster among the people I photographed)

Do your have a certain strategy in chess?__________

Do you have any thoughts about life in prison and chess that you would like to share?__________

Your message to the viewer of your picture:__________