The purpose of the illustration is to represent a book written by a former prison guard about prisoners coming and going. If being a guard is your life’s profession, you basically become a full-time prisoner yourself since most prisoners’ sentences are shorter. The guard is in the negative space between the stripes of the prisoner’s uniform, which become bars of the guard’s own prison. The black stripes are exactly the same size and shape as the white prison bars—a strange kind of Yin and Yang.