After finding out that a friend had been sentenced to 36 years in prison, Trent Bell began to photograph inmates at Maine State Prison:

The project was to capture and print large, almost life-sized photographs of inmates from within Maine State Prison, have them write a letter to their younger selves and superimpose those handwritten letters as vignettes around the inmate. The idea behind it being to display these images in a gallery for public viewing, in hopes that it brought a much more human element to individuals we often look at only as convicts living in a cell.

Leon Watson quotes from some of the letters:

[One inmate], named Peter, starts off his letter saying: ‘It’s great to be able to talk to you, I’m 55 years old, and living in prison for the last six years. Let me tell ya kid, it’s no way to live.’

Jack told himself: ‘Much more will be expected of you from these so-called friends. However impressing them won’t be worth it because in the end it’s you sitting in a cold cell.’

In another heart-wrenching letter, a prisoner, who did not leave his name, said: ‘I want to reach out to you and hopefully help save you from becoming me.’ On a similar note, Wes said: ‘Dear Wes, I’m reaching out to you today and I pray that the words of my heart are encouraging enough to keep you from making bad choices that could change your life forever.’

More about Bell’s work here, here, and here.