Digital BW, The Print

In the latest "LensWork" there are pictures of French photographer Jean-Michel Berts. I never heard his name before, never saw his pictures and I'm really impressed by them and puzzled.
The pictures look very unusual - very dark with all details clearly visible. I've scanned one of them just to see the histogram. The histogram is shifted to the left, almost all tones are in the left part but the line goes down right before the left edge so no blacks are clipped.
If you never seen his pictures you can see them here:
http://marcozna.wordpress.com/category/berts/

Now I'd like to know - how did he do it and how to reproduce this look?
The guy shoots film using zone system - he exposes for shadows and under develops his negatives. I can't do it with digital. Lightroom manipulation don't give this effect.
May be HDRI? 
Also I can't imagine how did he print it - to get such details in the shadows on inkjet printer close to impossible. Probably he makes platinum prints.

What do you think?

Jacob Mann
http://www.photo3dart.com